What is Famous.co anyway? And how do I make Instant Apps & PWA’s?

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Practically Famous

6 min readDec 4, 2019

Black and white dog with disguise eyeglasses. Photo by Braydon Anderson on Unsplash — Photo by Braydon Anderson on Unsplash

Maybe like me, you have heard of this tool/app/thing called Famous.co (perhaps you haven’t), and you are thinking, what is it? What does it do? Is it a web design tool? Is it an app builder?

I was thinking the same thing so I thought I would use it for a bit and try and figure it out. Let’s go back, not all the way, just enough, a relevant jump-off point and see what Famous App is today.

Right now, two words — Instant Apps (read on for an explanation).

The most recent iteration of Famous came out of an idea (as far as I have read and understood from use) to enable designers to build beautiful, animated, app-like experiences with no code.

It aims to turn your Sketch (soon Adobe XD and Figma) designs into working web-hosted apps, not prototypes but fully working web-apps and not by slicing-and-dicing your design but just by importing the artwork file into the online tool.

That seems like a magical offering, something app developers dream of especially if you have been through workflows like Figma to Zepplin to Webflow (I say Webflow as that is what I use for the final dev) or other such design tools. Imagine if it was Figma to done in one pass! Well, that’s what it does right now with Sketch (with some limitations not many).

Famous.co simplifies the workflow from design to published app. — Fig 1. Famous App takes a Sketch file and creates a fully working web-app.

Sounds perfect right? That’s what I thought once I had used it for a while. There is a full back story (see the links at the end of this article if you want to delve deeper) to the company and a couple of tech-pivots, some ups and downs, some investment, some good stuff some not so good things. But the objective of what Famous.co is now is where my interest lies.

So what can it do? Good question lets answer that with a quick Q&A.

Hey Chris, how much does it cost to use?

Right now, it is FREE to use with unlimited projects. They have a ton of excellent starting points or samples to get your creative engines fired up. The only thing that costs (at time of writing) is if you want to download the source code to host elsewhere. At the time of writing that was $1 per download, which is literally peanuts.

Ok sounds fair but do I need Sketch to use Famous.co?

Nope, it has some simple tools and components that allow you to build some very cool imaginative layouts and animations and web experiences. However, if you do have Sketch, it might be easier to design all the screens there, import the file and then just use the Famous tools to add the interactions, videos and animations. However, Sketch is not required to use Famous.

That’s good but is it just for mobile web-apps?

No, you can build three different device types; mobile, tablet and desktop. For simplicity; mobile is from 301px to 540px, tablet is 541px to 1040px and desktop is 1041px and up.

Download my free Sketch file explainers here.

Device dimensions for Famous.co — Fig 2. Device sizes in Famous App

So I notice you said you can build desktop-sized apps so does that mean websites?

Yes and no. What I mean is that yes, you could build a desktop-sized website experience; however, you would need to plan it a little differently to a typical website.

The objective here is to create a web, tablet or mobile experience for a fantastic product landing page or marketing campaign or even a presentation. Having used the tool for a while, I would say the more direct the objective, the more useful Famous is for building what you need.

That’s not to say it’s limited just you may want to really drill down what you want your viewer to do? When they hit the site, what action do you want them to take? Focus on the direct objective rather than building an all singing and dancing traditional website.

Got it so will Famous.co import my website and turn it into an app?

No. You need to either build in Sketch and import the Sketch file or work within the Famous.co app and build out your screens there.

Can I add videos and video backgrounds?

Yes. You can add videos via upload (best to keep them under a few meg), embed Youtube videos or use an iframe link.

Does it have forms?

Kind of, as in it has a Typeform component and you could use an iframe to show a form hosted elsewhere.

Hmm? What about text does it have text tools?

Yes, the text tools are pretty good with a good selection of fonts supplied by Google fonts.

So what are its strong points?

Glad you asked. Its super simple to use. It has an excellent animation and transitions engine. The Famous.co team have built a tool that makes showcasing beautiful, crisp and engaging animations very easy and that (along with the Sketch import) is what makes this tool a pleasure to use.

Anything else I should know?

Yes, you can host instantly with Famous.co on their platform, track usage, add site redirects to push certain device type users elsewhere (to other domains and such). The service records versions of your designs as you build and publish to allow roll-backs if needed and instant deployment to the web.

Custom domain names?

Not yet (at the time of writing), but it’s undoubtedly on its way.

The roundup.

To conclude, Famous.co is the beginnings of a potentially fantastic tool that is useful today for building app-like mobile, tablet and desktop experiences for marketing campaigns, presentations and live demos that have clear user objectives. Think of it as instant apps or even Progressive Web Apps (PWA’s).

Examples of Famous.co templates and starter projects. — Fig 3. Examples of some of the amazing Famous templates.

The future for Famous.co.

Not sure but very hopeful and positive. I would love to think that this tool is going to go from strength to strength and become a go-to tool for many agencies, freelancers and marketers. So far, I have enjoyed the user experience, the team built templates and the active Slack channel.

However, as with all emerging tools, apps and services don’t bet the farm on it and always read the label (by which I mean terms, tutorials and updates) before creating production-ready apps and PWA’s. However, instant apps are definitely a thing, and it’s worth taking the time to see if this is a market you can expand into.

See Googles instant apps announcement here for more instant app reality.

One last thing, follow this publication as I have some handy tips, tricks and tutorials for Famous in the works as I type.

Thanks for reading.

Oh yeah here is the link to the tool in case you didn’t get it famous.co