In this article, we'll give you a brief overview of Shoutem, how it works, and the pros and cons. We'll compare it to 5 different Shoutem alternatives including our own platform, MobiLoud, which we believe is the ideal choice for serious businesses to convert web stores to professional eCommerce apps.
What is Shoutem?
Shoutem is a no-code app builder platform that offers a drag-and-drop interface for creating mobile apps without coding skills. It's aimed at the lower end of the market, providing a cost-effective solution for the most budget-conscious eCommerce store owners to create mobile apps for iOS and Android.
Now let's take a look at Shoutem's pricing.
Shoutem Pricing
Shoutem offers 2 different pricing plans. There's the Builder Platform and Shoutem Pro - what are their differences?
Builder Platform: Build your app with the Shoutem builder. It has 3 pricing tiers:
- Android: $59/mo
- Standard: $99/mo
- Professional: $179/mo
Shoutem Pro: Hire Shoutem experts to help you set up and design your app with the Shoutem builder. It has 3 pricing tiers:
- Essential Package: $1,499
- Premium Package: $2,499
- Growth Package: $699
The Android plan is the basic plan, exclusively an Android app publishing only plan which includes up to 1GB of cloud storage space and essential app features. The Standard plan includes everything in the basic plan, gives you up to 2GB of cloud storage space, and iOS app publishing support. If you want advanced features, integrations, and advanced extensions with up to 10GB of cloud storage space, then, the Professional plan is for you.
The Essential package is for you if you want Shoutem experts to design your app. The Premium package gets you more app designs and layouts and a dedicated account manager. Shoutem also offers the Growth package which is a plan which includes Growth experts who will provide app strategy and execution to ensure the best results for either app store.
Shoutem Pros & Cons
For a block-based app builder, Shoutem provides a decent toolkit for building simple apps. It has a series of customizable templates, widgets for different functionalities, several branding options, personalized layouts, and more.
As a templated-based app builder though, Shoutem suffers from the usual limitations. If you already have a site, and it has any degree of custom functionality or complexity - Shoutem will leave you disappointed. The reason is because you'll never be able to recreate your site in the apps. You won't be able to reuse your plugins, themes, or any third-party tools from your web store. This is because you'll be limited by whatever blocks, integrations, and Shopify API data Shoutem uses in their platform. At best, you'll end up with a weak imitation of your web store.
This might be OK for small, simple stores, but for serious eCommerce brands there are better options.
Now we've had an overview of the tool, its pricing, and its pros and cons. It's time to move on and start looking at some Shoutem alternatives, starting with our own site-to-app platform, MobiLoud.
Shoutem Alternative #1: MobiLoud
MobiLoud powers thousands of top apps, and allows you to convert your site into native eCommerce apps in just days, for a fraction of the cost of custom development.
Our eCommerce app platform integrates with any CMS - whether it's Shopify, WooCommerce, PrestaShop or any other - and let you reuse every plugin, feature and functionality from your main web store.
MobiLoud is the best way to convert your web store into native eCommerce apps for iOS and Android, as well as the best alternative to Shoutem.
There are several key reasons why:
- No templates, no blocks, no APIs - we don't restrict you to our pre-built front-ends, we allow you to convert your web store completely, and to reuse all your existing plugins, themes, and tech stack.
- Keep what works - you already built your ideal site for the web, tweaking it endlessly for conversions and sales. With MobiLoud you can translate that directly into m-commerce native apps, without needing to reinvent the wheel. You already did the hard part, we handle the rest!
- Easy Management - many app builder platforms like Shoutem gives you an extra CMS to manage, adding work for you and your team. Since MobiLoud apps sync with your web store in real time, this work is eliminated, you just need to keep managing and updating your store as usual, and if you want to change something specifically for the apps, use our easy no-code UI.
- Done for you - there's no need for you to fiddle, drag-and-drop, or waste time trying to set the apps up. You just need to tell us any special requirements, add some key information, and our team handle all technical aspects of the app build including submissions to Google Play and the AppStore.
MobiLoud Pricing
We have two standard pricing tiers:
- Startup - For fast launching and validation: $170/month
- Growth - Perfect for more established businesses: $382/month
We also have custom, corporate plan for more demanding projects. Read more about our pricing here.
The difference between MobiLoud and Shoutem is clear.
Unlike Shoutem, MobiLoud can integrate everything from your site and blend it with a great native app UX. You can build professional, unique eCommerce apps in days that would be impossible to create with a block-based templated solution like Shoutem.
Want to skip the rest and get your questions answered by one of our team?
Book a demo!
Now we've blown our own trumpet, here are a few other Shoutem alternatives that you're likely to see around the web.
Shoutem Alternative #2: Apptile
Apptile is a user-friendly app builder platform that utilizes "tiles" or blocks, allowing users to build eCommerce apps for iOS and Android. With generally positive reviews, Apptile also offers a well-curated selection of integrations and features. However, its block-based nature will make it difficult to go beyond a basic, "cookie cutter" app that doesn't match the complexity of your web store. Apptile integrates with ~15 of Shopify's key plugins, but with Shopify boasting thousands of plugins and tools, most will have to be abandoned.
Apptile Pricing
Apptile provides three plans:
- Core - basic features - free with a 5% success fee
- Plus - enhanced features - $600/mo
- Enterprise - premium features - $1200/mo
The more costly plans remove success fees and add advanced benefits.
Shoutem Alternative #3: Shopney
Shopney offers a drag-and-drop app builder for Shopify eCommerce stores, notable for its robust integrations, themes, and features. It serves well if you want a simple app that reflects your product catalogue. Yet, as a template-based builder, it can't entirely convert your site into iOS and Android apps or fully incorporate your plugins, themes, and features. This will pose constraints for complex and unique businesses, as it requires your store to conform to their pre-set templates.
Shopney Pricing
Shopney has four plans:
- Silver - basic features with flexible design - $99/mo
- Gold - basic features with flexible design with 20 elements - $199/mo
- Platinum - advanced features and unlimited design elements - $499/mo
- Enterprise - premium features and functionalities and a dedicated success manager - starting from $999/mo
Shoutem Alternative #4: Plobal Apps
Plobal is yet another Shopify-focused app builder, providing a straightforward drag-and-drop interface for app creation. It's a decent system with lots of integrations but comes with restrictions. Notably, you can't use your web store's features, themes, and plugins again. As usual you're limited to their pre-built integrations, and if they don't have what you need - it's hard luck...
Plobal Apps Pricing
Plobal Apps has three plans:
- Growth - basic features with 4 standard integrations - $199/mo
- Essential - enhanced features with 7 standard integrations - $499/mo
- Enterprise - premium features and unlimited advanced integrations - starts at $1199/mo
The more costly the plan is, the more customizability and benefits you get.
Shoutem Alternative #5: Tapcart
Tapcart provides a specialized app building solution for Shopify, offering businesses the ability to create mobile apps without coding knowledge. Its features, such as push notifications and in-app messaging, cater to the needs of small and medium-sized eCommerce businesses.
Tapcart Pricing
Tapcart has three plans:
- Core - 15 blocks, basic features, and basic integrations - $200/mo
- Ultimate - unlimited blocks, advanced features, and integrations - $400/mo
- Enterprise - unlimited custom blocks, dedicated customer success manager, and premium integrations - $1K/mo
The more costly the plan is, the better app features and benefits you get.
Let's Build Your eCommerce Apps
We've looked at a few Shoutem alternatives, and given you some key information about each.
As we've seen, many of these tools share the same fatal flaws. On the one hand - their reliance on blocks, themes, templates, and pre-built widgets does allow you to build and launch (some kind of) eCommerce app fast, affordably and easily compared to custom development. On the other, this same reliance puts you and your brand in a straightjacket.
It means that you will only ever approximate your web store, and you'll be forever at the mercy of whatever pre-built features they have as well as whatever data they can fetch via API (which can change). The apps will be a branded shell with some of your data pulled in and not much more.
While this is OK for simple stores is basic and small product ranges and features, this will almost always be a deal breaker for serious eCommerce brands. You probably have a finely-tuned tech stack, along with all the plugins, third-party integrations, and custom features you need to drive sales and revenue optimally. To discard all this hard work for cookie-cutter apps with your logo on will rarely make strategic sense.
That's why, although we're biased of course, we believe MobiLoud is not only the best Shoutem alternative but a superior alternative to every eCommerce mobile app builder on the market.
The first key reason: we allow you to reuse everything from your site in the apps.
If it already works well on the mobile web, it'll be even better as iOS and Android apps. It makes no sense to ditch that winning formula and those painstakingly chosen tools just to compromise with restrictive templates. That's too much of downgrade from what you've already built, and with MobiLoud - unnecessary. Keep what already works.
The second core reason: it's so simple to manage MobiLoud apps.
Platforms like Shoutem will often add hours per week to your workflow with effectively a new CMS to manage. In contrast - MobiLoud apps sync in real time with your site. There's no need to manually add new product lines, update pricing, or worry about keeping the apps up to date. The apps will reflect changes and updates to your site instantly.
This goes for any core changes you make to your site too. You can switch out plugins, pull off a major rebrand, or build whatever custom functionality you choose. It doesn't matter what it is - it'll work straight out of the box in the apps, which can grow with your brand into the future.
On top of this, our team handle any ongoing updates and maintenance needed as part of our service, along with all fiddly aspects of the app build and bringing them live to Google Play and the AppStore. We work with you to ensure your apps are a success, and we're only ever an email or phone call away.
MobiLoud allows you to combine the best of the web with the best of native apps. It's a winning formula, check out the success these eCommerce brands have had:
Over 1000 other businesses have used MobiLoud to build winning apps - and you can too.
Unlike with Shoutem, there's no risk. We don't do long-term contracts and we'll refund you if you're unhappy with the apps. If you're like most of our eCommerce customers - the apps will pay for themselves almost immediately.
It all starts with a call with one of our app experts, where we go over your exact requirements for the apps and answer your questions.
