Google App Maker (discontinued) vs. SAP Build

App Maker is exceptionally strong when you need things to just get done, but your internal development team has a full queue. Or maybe you don't even have an internal development team! If you need a check-in system, an applicant tracking system, an office cleaning checklist with notifications and reports, etc. you can use App Maker to throw something together and make sure your team can use it. You can also collaborate on it, so teams can make this part of their process improvement goals.

Incentivized

SAP Build is a strong and reliable partner with a rich FAQ and consulting power. New features make sense and are easy to distribute within the team and to end users. The community is nice, and there are many discussions on product development, shared solutions, and productivity improvements. UI is also one of the strongest points.

Incentivized

• Minimal coding experience required. Javascript is a must-have, but the documentation is excellent, and once you're past the learning curve, it's great!
• Great WYSIWYG editor. It's easy to see the layout and still have deep control over what you're putting together.
• Excellent integrations with G Suite. There are methods built-in that allow you to easily authenticate and work with the G Suite APIs.

Incentivized

• Its drag and drop editor is even simpler than the very popular WordPress
• No code feature to build any type of website
• Not a lot of technical expertise is required to use this tool
• The client loves it as they can themselves use it for quick tweaks

Incentivized

• Definitely not for beginners. App Maker certainly isn't usable by "everybody," but it's excellent for those who are willing to learn and get their hands dirty!
• Experienced developers will have issues. The target user is someone who doesn't want to (or know how to) use something like App Engine or Kubernetes. People with more experience will certainly see limitations and find it difficult to use to the fullest extent.
• Data sources can be iffy to manage. It used to be that App Maker would use a sheet or "Drive table" as a data source, but it now requires a GCP data source like CloudSQL.

Incentivized

• Firstly there is a scope to reduce the pricing so that it can be more affordable.
• The customer support team is bit slow so it takes some time to get the answers for your queries.
• The integration is not so straightforward and it takes good amount of time.

Incentivized

Because I think it is fairly easy to navigate. But at the same time, I still think it’s not mature enough for non-developers. At least for our use cases, it has been needed to perform coding in some sense. But ofc. I think joule will help a lot here.

Incentivized

App Maker is a very "do it yourself" platform. There is a huge amount of documentation and plenty of examples to begin learning, plus a vast community support through StackOverflow that can assist anywhere that you're stuck, but the great thing is that it's all up to you. If there are specific features that don't work, Google is always there to help troubleshoot.

Incentivized

There are, for example, great blog writings about automation cases and examples. The studio version is updated often. There are also useful OpenSAP online courses.

Incentivized

App Maker is really kind of new in its own space. We haven't seen the level of functionality, nor the deep integrations, with anything else. It can replace a lot of products, and we've seen it in place in many applications across our organization, so it's been able to reduce our spend on products that offer specific functionality and still need to be customized.

Incentivized

Compared to Mendix, we decided not to go for low code application building and in the other parts of Build, Build is stronger and better integrated with SAP. On the hand of Coding, using Build Code, gives us Joule, which understands SAP better and also have a tighter and more secure coupling with SAP services.

Incentivized

• We have seen a reduction in time spent on manual processes by being able to automate functions in Google Sheets, take input with special functionality, and have App Maker do the work for us.
• We have seen the internal development queue decrease, which allows us to focus on larger projects that couldn't be handled by App Maker.
• We have seen ownership and process improvements increase in certain departments, as they are able to get to work themselves.

Incentivized

• SAP Build significantly reduces the effort on the integration side compared to other LCNC platforms.
• From a licensing perspective, the platform can kind of lock you in, but that's also true for other cloud platforms as well.
• Creating an app that fully works with your ERP (especially if you have S4HANA as the ERP System) is fast. It enables quick prototyping.

Incentivized