Deploy

Zoho Cloud

Zoho Creator is primarily a cloud-based development platform that offers real-time access to its users across devices. This means that users can access and manage their applications from any device that has internet connectivity, without the need for local installations on each device. The platform leverages Zoho's cloud infrastructure, offering users scalability and security.

On-premise

Zoho Creator also offers an on-premise deployment option, which enables users to host their applications on their own servers, behind their firewall. This option mainly caters to organizations that have strict compliance and security policies that do not permit them to host data on third-party servers. In addition, on-premise deployments offer users complete control over their application's environment, increasing their ability to customize the application to their needs.

Portal apps

Dedicated portal designer

Zoho Creator offers a powerful portal designer that enables users to create custom portal interfaces using drag-and-drop widgets. The feature allows users to design stunning web interfaces for their applications, making them incredibly easy to use, and providing an intuitive and engaging environment for end users.

Custom domains

Zoho Creator provides users with the ability to associate a custom domain with their application, increasing their brand visibility and enhancing their search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. With this feature, users can leverage their brand identity and give their application a personalized touch. Custom domains can be purchased through Zoho, or users can associate their existing domain with their application.

Multiplatform portals

Zoho Creator allows users to create multiplatform portals, which means their applications are accessible and can be deployed on multiple devices and platforms. This feature saves users time and effort, as they don't have to redesign and redevelop the application to run on different devices. The platform allows users to deploy the same application on iOS, Android, and web platforms without any changes to the application's logic.

Retain brand identity

Zoho Creator allows users to retain their brand identity when developing applications, ensuring that their application feels like an extension of their brand. Users can customize the look and feel of their application using the portal designer, assigning custom colors, logos, and fonts that align with their brand guidelines. This feature is essential to ensuring brand consistency and enhancing brand recognition.

Complete access control

Zoho Creator provides users with complete access control over their application's data, ensuring that only authorized users have access to sensitive data. The platform offers granular access control options, enabling users to assign roles and permissions to different user groups, ensuring that each user has access only to the data they need.

Efficient user management

Zoho Creator offers efficient user management capabilities, enabling administrators to manage users effectively and efficiently. With this feature, administrators can create groups, assign roles and permissions, manage user accounts, and reset passwords, among other activities. These capabilities ensure that user management is streamlined, making it easy to manage user accounts.

Strong authentication mechanisms

Zoho Creator offers users strong authentication mechanisms, ensuring that their data is secure and protected against unauthorized access. The platform integrates with industry-standard authentication protocols, such as OAuth, ensuring that users can log in securely. Additionally, users can set up two-factor authentication (2FA), which increases security by requiring users to provide an additional authentication factor, typically a code sent to their mobile devices.

Customizable notification preferences

Zoho Creator offers customizable notification preferences, enabling users to tailor their application's notification settings to their needs. Users can set up notifications for specific events, such as when a new record is added or updated, or when a specific condition has been met. Users can select the email address, phone number, or other channels they prefer to receive notifications, ensuring they are informed about important events. This feature ensures that users are notified only about the events they care about, ensuring that they are not overwhelmed with unnecessary notifications.

PWA

1. Browser support

Progressive web applications (PWA) built with Zoho Creator have exceptional browser support that enables them to run on modern web browsers and operating systems. The platform uses progressive enhancement to provide an enhanced user experience based on the available features and capabilities of the user's browser. This ensures that the application is accessible to users on a wide range of devices and operating systems, without compromising on functionality.

The platform enables developers to choose from various browser APIs, such as Service Worker, Cache API, and IndexedDB to enhance the PWA's functionality, improve caching, and provide offline support. Moreover, the PWA's advanced browser capabilities enable it to leverage features such as web push notifications, app installation prompts, and splash screens, to offer a truly native-like experience.

2. Cross-application login

Zoho Creator's PWA provides seamless cross-application login capabilities that enable users to securely access multiple applications with a single set of credentials. This reduces the need for users to remember multiple usernames and passwords, and streamlines the authentication process across different applications.

The platform offers authentication protocols, such as OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, and SAML, to enable single sign-on (SSO) functionality across multiple applications. This ensures that users can seamlessly navigate across a variety of apps built on Zoho Creator, and access each app's unique set of features and data.

3. Location support

Zoho Creator's PWA provides comprehensive location support APIs for developers to enhance their application's functionality. The platform uses browser-based geolocation APIs such as Geolocation API and GeoIP, to provide location-based services such as mapping, real-time weather updates, and more.

In addition, the platform enables developers to leverage custom maps and integrate with third-party mapping APIs, such as Google Maps, Bing Maps, and Mapbox, to create custom location-based applications. This enables app developers to create rich and engaging apps that provide enhanced location-based services, such as geofencing, vehicle tracking, and proximity-based notifications.

4. Update maintenance

Zoho Creator's PWA automatically updates the application to ensure that users always have access to the latest features and functionalities. The platform ensures that updates are rolled out smoothly and consistently across all devices and browsers, without affecting critical system operations.

The platform's update maintenance also ensures that vital security patches and bug fixes are released immediately, ensuring that user data and privacy are always maintained. This ensures that app developers can focus on creating new features and functionalities without worrying about security or maintenance issues.

MDM

Zoho Creator boasts a comprehensive mobile device management (MDM) solution designed to streamline the deployment and management of enterprise applications across a range of mobile devices. This built-in MDM capability is a cornerstone of the platform, providing administrators with powerful tools to ensure conformity with enterprise policies and regulations.

With Zoho Creator's MDM, administrators can easily deploy custom apps to their employees' mobile devices and ensure full compliance with corporate policies in terms of data access, user permissions, and security. The platform also enables remote administration of devices, making it easy for IT teams to enforce password policies, deploy updates, or even wipe a stolen or lost device.

In addition to ensuring compliance, Zoho Creator's MDM solution empowers administrators to gain deeper insights into the end-user experience. Administrators can track employee usage patterns, monitor app performance in real time, and proactively identify and resolve issues before they impact productivity. For example, they can generate detailed reports on app usage, app crashes, and device failures, allowing them to make data-driven decisions about optimizing workflows and improving user satisfaction.

One of the standout features of Zoho Creator's MDM is the ability to build custom device profiles that suit the specific requirements of enterprise use cases. Device profiles are sets of configuration settings that dictate how a device must behave when used for work-related tasks. Zoho Creator's MDM allows administrators to create, customize, and assign device profiles tailored to specific business needs. For example, a device profile may mandate that all devices must encrypt data at rest, turn off Bluetooth and Wi-Fi when not in use, and limit the number of times users can fail to enter a passcode before the device wipes itself.