2019, what a year…
Every day, over ten million people from around the world use an app created with Kodular. Two years ago, I would’ve never imagined becoming VP of Engineering of one of the biggest online app development platforms, which some websites compare to coding languages like Swift from Apple.
We started Kodular in 2017, not really realising how difficult the venture would be. Our motivation behind starting this project was that we wanted features that weren’t present in App Inventor or its distributions at the time. Our mission was to listen to the community and what they wanted, to provide the most professional and complete platform to build mobile apps.
Throughout the past couple of years, there have been many obstacles in our way, but we continue fighting our way through them so that you can continue to see the Kodular you know and love.
2019 has been our busiest year so far. We are now a registered company in the USA, we have joined hands with AppyBuilder and we have been working on Kodular everyday to keep it running and to keep providing you with new & exciting features. We now have over 280,000 users with a combined 640,000 projects!
Google has made the past year difficult for us. Due to many users creating earning apps and apps with inappropriate content, Google suspended our AdMob account, meaning we had no source of income to keep our servers running. We tried to get back to how we were in 2018, but then we realised we had to look forward and forget about the past.
“Thanks” to Google, we are now stronger: we have partnered with companies like Unity and StartApp to provide one of the best services in the world: Kodular Creator.
Company
Due to the astonishing popularity of Kodular, we knew that we needed to make it “official”. Kodular is being used more by more than just hobbyists, there are users creating apps for business use, designing apps for clients, and it is even getting taught in schools around the world. Because of this, we knew that we couldn’t continue running Kodular as a hobby, we needed to be professional and as announced in Kodular Eagle update we are now a registered company in the USA!
This allowed us to provide an even better service, thanks to the extremely beneficial environment for businesses in the United States.
Kodular + AppyBuilder
In August, we announced that we would be joining hands with AppyBuilder. At first, we weren’t sure of how to properly work together but after a few weeks of negotiations, we came to an agreement which suited us all.
Hossein is one of the most experienced App Inventor contributors, and there is no one else like him. All the work he has been doing so far is incredible. We are so glad to have him on our team, working side-by-side!
And this is only the beginning. I am sure the future will be very bright for us together!
These were just a few of the salient points of this year. Because there is a lot of missing work that cannot be written here (well, it could be, but nobody wants to read the Bible at Medium).
This year, we went from less than 450,000 daily users in apps in January to more than 10,000,000 in early december! Yes, every single day there are more than 10M people using apps made with Kodular. I don’t think many platforms can showcase such progression.
But we have to thank all of you: the community. Because if you were not there, using our platform, helping others in the forums, we would not be where we are now. Thanks to our moderators for keeping the community a safe place, thanks to our ProKoders for providing such valuable internal feedback, and thank you for using Kodular.
And thanks to the MIT App Inventor team, without who Kodular would not be where we are now.
What many people may not realise is that we also contribute to the MIT App Inventor project as it seems unfair to use their platform without giving them anything in return. We attend regular dev meetups with MIT where we share insights as to what we are both working on, giving feedback to each other for upcoming steps.
The 2020s
I am not going to say “let’s welcome the new decade”, to not enter the debate if decades start at 00 or 01, so…
Let’s welcome the 2020s!
A new year is about to begin (in some countries it has already started though), and it will bring lots of new changes to Kodular. The next update is going to be Kodular Eagle 1.4B, and as a New Year gift, the update time is…
3rd January 2020 @ 16:00 CET / 10:00 EST
However, you probably already guessed that from our spoiler
We know some of our users have encountered server issues when logging in, so we have addressed them. This new update does not only affect Kodular Creator (to be honest, it is the service with the smaller upgrade), but also to other secret services that will be unveiled in due course. They will provide a more reliable platform, with stronger security and much more powerful.
And, as an add-on to this information, yes, you will be able to remove commission from your apps!
I may be writing this post, but all of us believe what has been written here. After these two years working together, each of us became an essential part of the platform; we became a family.
And that’s all, I will not annoy you more. Enjoy the holidays with your family, and be ready for January 3rd!
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
@Kodular Staff
Conor Shipp
Diego Barreiro
Hossein Amerkashi
Michael Rüdiger
Pavitra Golchha
Sander Jochems
Sivagiri Visakan
Vishwas Adiga
