Expert verifiedHighlights
- Mobile app developers traditionally face doubled effort and cost when building separately for Android and iOS.
- A "develop once, deploy anywhere" approach automatically generates both iOS and Android versions from a single build.
- Prebuilt drag-and-drop page components eliminate the need for a dedicated design or UX team.
- Layout generation across device sizes is handled automatically, reducing design overhead.
- Security testing is built into the platform itself, reducing the risk of vulnerabilities in apps built on it.
- A preconfigured mobile backend as a service (MBaaS) removes the need for a separate database team or backend setup.
Mobile app development has undergone a sea change over the years. Gone are the days when your mobile phone's screen was cluttered with prebuilt apps developed by the phone's manufacturer. Today, apps of all types, developed by countless app developers, dominate your device's screen space.
On top of multiple operating systems, devices also come in a variety of shapes and sizes, ranging from something that will fit in your pocket to tablets that are better suited for a bag. With such tremendous variation, the challenges that come in the process of developing apps for mobile platforms are many.
Let's take a look at some of the predominant challenges in mobile app development, and how developing mobile apps on a low-code platform like Zoho Creator can help.
Four mobile app development challenges and how Zoho Creator can help
Market share is split between Android and iOS in the smartphone universe.
According to StatCounter's latest global mobile operating system data, Android accounts for 67.99% of the mobile OS market, while Apple's iOS holds 31.95%. Despite Android's larger market share, developers must still support both platforms to reach the vast majority of smartphone users. This creates a development challenge, as applications often need to be built, tested, and maintained separately for Android and iOS devices.
So creating a mobile app involves double the effort if the publisher wishes to make the app universally available—which can significantly increase costs.
How Zoho Creator solves the OS problem
Zoho Creator, an AI-powered low-code application development platform, follows a "develop once, deploy anywhere" principle, when it comes to app development. Once an app is created on the platform, iOS and Android versions are also created, automatically. All that's required is to install the Zoho Creator app for the device running the respective operating system.
Zoho Creator also provides the option to deploy rebranded mobile apps. This saves developers from the hassle of creating the same app twice, from the ground up, for both Android and iOS. The organization also saves time and money with this deploy-anywhere philosophy.
Conventional mobile app development houses have their own design and user experience teams. These teams are responsible for:
- Designing the look and feel of the app
- Defining the user interface of the app
- Deciding how the app will respond to user input
The design process is an engineering feat in itself, consuming months of labor, and demanding considerable investment from the app makers.
How Zoho Creator eliminates the need for a separate design team
Zoho Creator provides prebuilt components, called "Pages," for use in app dashboards. Pages are visually intuitive, allowing you to build them yourself by dragging and dropping the desired page elements.
Page elements include visual components, such as panels, charts, gauges, forms, reports, snippets, buttons, and widgets, which automatically represent your app's data in a visual format. All the app developers have to do is to drag and drop the desired elements, using the Page Builder, onto their pages.
Besides these prebuilt elements, app developers can also use HTML and JavaScript widgets to customize the UI based on their requirements. Striking pages with custom UIs can be easily built using Zoho Creator in this way. The layout for various devices is also automatically generated, so the platform essentially eliminates the need for a separate design team.
Zoho Creator's AI capabilities can further accelerate this process—you can describe the app you want to build, and the AI assistant generates a starting structure, saving even more design effort upfront.
App security can be a major challenge for developers. Codebases often contain security vulnerabilities, and security issues also arise due to device and OS fragmentation. These security vulnerabilities are then prone to exploitation by hackers, compromising sensitive user data. Such loss of sensitive information can have serious ramifications for any app developer or business.
How Zoho Creator addresses the security problem
Zoho Creator, as an app development platform, is subject to constant, stringent security testing to ensure that it doesn't contain any security vulnerabilities. The platform takes the tedious task of security testing off the hands of app developers.
Apps developed on Zoho Creator inherit the platform's security architecture, reducing the surface area for common vulnerabilities. The platform is also ISO 27001 certified and SOC 2 compliant, so your apps meet enterprise security standards without additional effort on your end.
All mobile apps need a separate backend implementation for their database, to store and process information. This backend includes the app's database, which is implemented on a technology like MySQL, PostgreSQL, and MongoDB.
The implementation of the database also requires the expertise of a dedicated database team, which costs time and a lot of money, as database developers and administrators are expensive.
How Zoho Creator cuts down on the need for backend development
Zoho Creator apps come with a built-in cloud database, so there's no separate backend to set up or maintain. All that's required is to create the necessary forms, workflows, and pages for the apps.
The database required for the apps built on the platform is automatically constructed and maintained by the platform itself. The whole process of developing and maintaining the backend is abstracted away from the hands of the app developers.
Build mobile apps without the usual trade-offs
Most mobile app development challenges come down to the same three costs: time, money, and technical complexity. Zoho Creator removes all three from the equation. You get apps that run on both Android and iOS, a built-in backend, platform-grade security, and a drag-and-drop UI builder — without a separate team for any of it.
The result is a faster path from idea to working app, with fewer moving parts to manage.
Stop building twice.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. Zoho Creator follows a "develop once, deploy anywhere" approach. When you build an app on the platform, Android and iOS versions are generated automatically. You can also deploy rebranded mobile apps, so there's no need to rebuild from scratch for each operating system.
No. Zoho Creator includes a drag-and-drop Page Builder with prebuilt components like charts, gauges, forms, buttons, and panels. Layouts for different screen sizes are generated automatically. If you need more control over the look and feel, you can bring in HTML and JavaScript widgets to build a custom UI.
The platform undergoes continuous, rigorous security testing, so the apps you build on it inherit those protections. Developers don't have to run their own security audits on the codebase. This significantly reduces the risk of vulnerabilities making it into production.
No. Zoho Creator includes a preconfigured mobile backend as a service (MBaaS). The database is built and maintained automatically as you create forms, workflows, and pages. You don't need a dedicated database team or any backend infrastructure setup.
Yes. The platform is built for low-code development, which means business users and citizen developers can build fully functional mobile apps without writing code. Technical users can go further by customizing logic with Deluge, Zoho Creator's built-in scripting language, or adding HTML and JavaScript for UI customization.