Unlike the templated app builders (Tapcart, Shopney etc.), MobiLoud takes a different approach to building an app for your business. MobiLoud uses webviews to mimic your mobile website in an app. The resulting app won't be a native app so will have some drawbacks, but there will also be advantages. The drawbacks are that the MobiLoud app won't be as fast as a native app, it will be more difficult to make custom app experiences (e.g., in app sales), tracking app sessions vs mobile web sessions will be more difficult, and you won’t have a pre-built app dashboard. These are meaningful drawbacks, but there are a lot of benefits to this approach. Your mobile app will 1:1 mimic your mobile website so will feel more on brand and you won't be forced to use templates. Less development effort will be spent on managing a second channel since changes to your mobile website will be immediately reflected in the app. AB testing can be done using your existing tools. There will be less worry about integrations between your app builder and the rest of your tech stack. If it works on your website, it will work on the app. MobiLoud has recently pivoted to focus on eCommerce merchants which we think is great since most eCommerce apps (even native ones) don’t really take advantage of native app features (e.g, location tracking, camera usage etc.). We think MobiLoud could be a good solution for companies that are large enough to consider an app ($10M+) but don’t have the team bandwidth to manage an additional channel.
Read our full guide on: eCommerce App Builders 🔨
Best for: Medium ($10M+ revenue) size companies
MobiLoud is a tool for creating a mobile iOS and Android app for your website that takes a webview based approach as opposed to a template based approach.
MobiLoud was founded in 2013 by Pietro Saccomani and a business partner to help news publishers and blogs turn their content into native mobile apps, building on Saccomani's familiarity with WordPress and his partner's experience building an iOS app for a popular news site. After initially focusing on customizing their platform for individual clients, they later pivoted to a more scalable SaaS model with their Slide product line that could turn any website into an app. Over time, Saccomani took over fully as solo founder and slowly grew MobiLoud to $15k MRR by 2015, continuing to focus on the digital media space by helping small and midsize publishers cost-effectively build and manage mobile apps to better engage their audiences. Today, they have pivoted to focus on building apps for eCommerce companies.
Mobiloud takes a fundamentally different approach to app building than its competitors. Its competitors like Tapcart and Plobal use a templated approach to building a mobile app. With this model you use their templates and drag and drop builder (think Shopify theme builder) to recreate your website in a mobile app. This approach generally works well but has some drawbacks. Because you are forced to use pre-built templates you might lose certain branding elements that are on your mobile site but can’t be recreated using the builder. For example, your collection pages might have badges and button colors that can’t be recreated in your app. They are small things but meaningful. MobiLoud instead uses webviews to push your mobile website content into the app.
Pricing is based on the number of active app users (not app downloads). There are 3 pricing tiers: Startup, Growth, and Corporate. The Startup plan costs $350 per month ($298 when billed annually) plus a one-time $1,500 setup fee. This plan supports up to 1,000 active users, and it will include “Powered by MobiLoud” in the settings screen (not a huge deal in our opinion). The Growth plan costs $650 per month ($553 when billed annually) plus a $2,500 one-time setup fee. This plan supports up to 10,000 active users and is fully white labeled (no “Powered by MobiLoud”). The Corporate plan supports 10,000 plus users but the pricing of that plan is not publicly available.
Unlike some templated app builders, MobiLoud doesn't charge a success fee (a % fee on sales done through the app).
Templated App Builders
Webview Based App Builders
How does MobiLoud work?
MobiLoud uses webviews to recreate your mobile website experience in an app.
Does MobiLoud work with WooCommerce?
Yes, MobiLoud supports all eCommerce platforms including Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Magento etc.
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