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230 billion mobile apps have been downloaded in 2021, while education ranked as the third most popular category in the app store marketplace. Mobile apps enable us to access exceptional services instantly and without any hassle, anywhere, anytime. That’s why they have become an integral part of every business, due to their accessibility and ease of use, adding valuable points to an enhanced user experience.
What about the online training? Mobile learning is the new black since it allows companies to speed-up employee onboarding, increase workforce performance and retention, and keep employees engaged with their training materials, wherever they are.
Though it may sound easy and fun to use apps, have you ever considered creating your own app? Coding is not everyone’s cup of tea, so building a mobile app for your online academy sounds to require a huge amount of time and technical expertise. But what if you could launch a mobile app with zero development effort?
Well, no more wishing! In this post, you will learn about the best no-code learning management system app builders to develop the next-generation mobile app for your online academy. First, let’s discover the latest industry trends in the no-code movement.
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👨‍💻 The No-Code Movement
Some of the most powerful things in life are the most simple ones: a cliché phrase but an undeniable truth on its own. But what does that have to do with the no-code movement?
First things first: The term “no-code movement” is pretty new in our everyday vocabulary. In its simplest definition, the No-Code Movement refers to app development without a line of code.
🤔 How have we come that far?
Developers traditionally used No-code tools to prototype their ideas and move quickly to MVP (Minimum Viable Product). Today, though, these tools are more user-friendly and don’t require you to be a developer to use them. Thus, you don’t need to worry about coding if you plan on making an app!
🧑‍🤝‍🧑 The future of no-code empowers more people
The real power of no-code is not a new way to build apps. Instead, it creates a fundamental shift in who can create an app. Coding has a steep learning curve and the No-Code movement aims to remove the technical coding barrier completely so that anyone can build technology.
🚀 Entrepreneurship accelerated
The world is faster-paced than ever before, and businesses need to respond to that with fast launches and even quicker changes. No-code app builders will make it easier than ever to launch your enterprise’s branded app in a few days completely solo and level up the game.
🎨 No Coding = More Time for Creativity
No-code technology can turn imagination into reality. According to most analysts and researchers, the era of no-code revolutionizes how businesses work and spares them more time to think!
📉 Lower deployment costs
Unlike hiring an entire development team, no-code app-building platforms offer transparent pricing, often on a subscription basis, making them vastly more affordable.
đź’ˇ Going beyond business
The no-code movement will make it easier than ever for community groups, nonprofits, and NGOs to build purpose-built learning apps for their causes. Outside of organizations, individuals can also build no-code apps to manage their community.
🌎 World-class levels of play
A no-code platform allows previously unheard-of ideas to find an audience. Even if founders only use these platforms for their MVPs, these tools are a great jumping-off point to creating a successful business without hiring a technical team.
🛠️ How Does No-Code Development Work?
Instead of using a command-line interface, a no-code app builder interface lets you drag and drop pre-coded elements exactly where you want them, and the code follows suit. You’re not doing coding, but you’re just giving the directions of the details; the pieces have already been built behind the scenes.
What happens is that on the backend, the no-code tool transforms your simplified input into “real” code, sort of like an interpreter. Although you may not speak Python, HTML, C++, or whatever programming language your program requires, your interpreter does.
Last but not least, it’s testing & deploy time (or deploy & test). Whichever direction, get feedback on how your app is being used and what edits you have to make before sharing it with the public.
No-Code VS. Low-Code
When you think of building a mobile app from scratch, you probably imagine the need for writing endless lines of code, testing them, tweaking them, then trying again. For many years, that’s exactly what software development was.
But no-code & low-code development has changed everything.
No-code and low-code app builders are both strong options that will help you innovate faster and at a lower cost than traditional programming would. But what do these two terms mean, and what’s the difference? Well, buckle up because here is everything you need to know:
What is no-code?
Rather than being hand-coded, no-code development allows non-technical people to leverage visual editors with drag-and-drop tools to build applications in real-time. No-code builders will have slightly less functionality and customizability because they provide tools to quickly organize information rather than unique input code.
What is low-code?
Low-code app builders are between no-code and manual coding. Hiring developers to do custom coding or handle specific use cases might be necessary. Overall, you can develop software with minimal programming.
Here are the most significant differences between no-code and low-code development:
So what are the no-code app builders? We’ll take a moment to explore them.
📲 What is a No-Code Mobile App Builder?
As implied by its name, a no-code app builder allows users to build mobile apps without writing a line of code. A simple visual editor allows anyone to create fully-functional applications. This was initially developed for team members without coding experience who were part of product creation.
Later on, this opens up a new world for non-tech savvy users, as no-code development platforms help anyone make fully functional apps using straightforward visual editors (what you see is what you get) that offer pre-coded elements like text boxes, image boxes, buttons, templates, etc.
âť“ Why to use No-Code Mobile App Development Tools
The answer is right in their name: you don’t need coding knowledge to get your work done! It allows you to build powerful mobile apps like the social media apps IG and Facebook. This statement implicitly implies the low barrier to entry, which is one of the most enticing reasons to use no-code software development.
Here are some other benefits of the no-code approach:
1Go to Market Faster
Just think of this: You could hit growth targets, expand into new markets, or bring to life this mega project of your dreams more quickly if you can build the app your company (or your team) needed to succeed.
2Save Money
In traditional application programming, custom builds are expensive, along with the time it takes a professional developer to implement. It is estimated that no-code app builders can reduce costs by up to 74%.
3Collaborate Better
Bored to work in silos? No-code app development crafts the groundwork for common goals and language between technical and non-technical teammates, so disjointed teams are together again.
4Testing Made Easy
You’ll have a secret weapon not only to build but also to test out the design elements in your app with the “click and edit” feature. As every design change is dynamically shown, you can see it in real-time. They also offer demo prototype apps that turn you into a real tester via your own device.
5Constant Growth
In every industry, companies are seeking ways to remain agile and adapt. This is where no-code app builders come in. Besides being a fast solution, no-code app builders also grow in capabilities every day. This means that, over time, you gain a competitive advantage without worrying about it.
6Increased ROI
Make more impact in less time: this is the “moto” behind no-code app builders. As an entrepreneur, you know that this is the objective of every business owner, to see meaningful results with less input & in less time.
đź“š Best No-code App Builders for mLearning
The coding industry is dominated by no-code and low-code development platforms. Can you guess why? The answer to this is simple: building an app from scratch comes with several challenges and bottlenecks due to technical expertise.
No-code LMS app building platforms for elearning level up the playing field for everyone. According to Gartner, by 2024, 65% of applications will be developed on no-code platforms. The no-code revolution is here to stay and it includes LMS software as well!
Let’s discover some of the most popular no-code LMS app builders in the elearning industry for you to try out. I’ll be highlighting what each of them is best for, their features, and pricing plans.
1Our Top Choice | LearnWorlds Mobile App Builder
LearnWorlds is a leading mobile learning platform for creating, managing, and selling online courses. The company recently launched the most powerful no-code mobile app builder in the online learning industry, enabling you to launch your online courses with your own branded, native mobile app for iOS & Android.
The Mobile App Builder comes packed with awesome features to boost your business, reach more audiences, meet your learners on the go, and enhance your customers’ engagement. Let’s explore them together:
🎨 A Simple, Intuitive & 100% White-label Visual Editor
You can fully customize the look & feel of your academy’s app to fit with your branding. Tweak the click & edit visual editor to choose colors, app themes, backgrounds, texts, splash & onboarding screens…plus much more! Set your app name & your app logo to suit your purpose, needs, or brand requirements.
đź”” Targeted Push Notifications
This engagement booster will keep your learners motivated and bring them back to your academy. Set up push notifications to target specific groups of learners, teams, or divisions, then tailor your messages according to their needs.
🛍️ Your Own App Store Account
Your learners will search for your brand, company, and app in the app store marketplace. Through the App Store or Google Play Store, learners can easily download your apps directly from your development account.
🙅‍♀️ No App Maintenance needed
The app is yours, but the LearnWorlds team takes care of everything (aka backups, firewalls, updates, etc.) to ensure it runs smoothly.
⏱️ Real-time testing
Live test your app within the dashboard or download our demo prototyping app before submitting it to the app stores.
🤑 One Click & One-Off Payments
Offer a seamless buying process via Apple & Google. No payment gateways & complex integrations are needed.
đź’Ż One Dashboard, countless possibilities
Create and manage your courses from your academy’s dashboard and keep your curriculum consistent across multiple devices.
📲 Exclusive Mobile Content
Do you want to differentiate the content of your learning app from your web academy? You can do that! Keep your “heavier stuff” of your course library for the desktop, and create bite-sized, microlearning content for your app.
🎥 Interactive Video for Microlearning
Blended, byte-sized, or microlearning on the go: LearnWorlds has you covered! You can add questions, titles, pointers, overlay images, links, and a lot more interactions to your videos without post-production to make them more vivid and engaging.
🎓 Ultimate Learning Experience
Your learners will benefit from a flexible and powerful study process through a customizable, beautiful course player.
👤 Advanced User progress
Monitor your learners’ progress with detailed analytics on each course, exam, assignment, and combine search queries for data-driven decisions.
âś… Assessments for every need
Make sure your learning outcomes are compatible with multiple types and formats of quizzes, tests, and assignments! Easily track, monitor, and report your students’ successful results.
🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Vibrant Learning Community
Spark authentic connections and give your learners a discussion forum to exchange ideas and tips share their experiences and advice within a community of practice.
⚔️ Advanced Native Technology
Enable a superior learning experience in a wide range of mobile devices without limits!
If you wonder what native technology is and what other options are available in the market, we’ve got you covered. Here we go:
📲 All Apps Are Not The Same
PWA vs Native Apps and how to choose between them
What is a Native App?
Put simply, native mobile app development involves building apps for particular mobile operating systems, and users access them from dedicated app stores (such as the App Store or Google Play). To achieve this, there are selected technologies and programming languages developers use. For example, if you’re looking to build an iOS app, you’ll need to learn Objective-C or Swift.
What is a Progressive Web App?
While native apps are written to run on mobile devices, Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) run inside a web browser. PWAs are web apps that use service workers, manifests, and other web-platform features with progressive enhancement to give users an experience on par with native apps.
🤓 Native or PWAs?
1. Native Apps Perform Better
Native apps are fast and responsive because they are created and optimized for a specific platform. As users navigate a native mobile app, the contents and visual elements load quickly.
2. Native Apps Are More Secure
Web apps rely on different browsers and underlying technologies such as JavaScript, HTML (HTML5), and CSS. Developing a native mobile app is a great way to guarantee your users reliable data protection.
3. Native Apps Are More Interactive & Intuitive
Native mobile apps run much smoother regarding user input and output. Since these apps inherit their devices’ OS interface, they appear and feel like part of the device. Thus, the flow of the app is more natural since each platform has its own UI standards.
👉 What you want to know
LearnWorlds Mobile App Builder is exclusive for schools with a subscription to the Learning Center and Higher plans and comes with a starting price of $169/month.
We take mobile education a step further and allow you to tap into the benefits of mobile learning for your online school, regardless of your industry. Go mobile today and elevate your online learning academy with LearnWorlds.
Join the mobile learning revolution
2Docebo | Mobile App Publisher
Docebo is a learning and development platform that creates, delivers, and contextualizes training initiatives’ business impact. Along with its other features, the platform also offers a mobile app builder tool to create digital, personalized learning experiences on the go.
The no-code app builder has been crafted based on the app structure of the Docebo Go. Learn mobile learning app. The Docebo’s Mobile App Publisher functionality is a useful product that allows you to create a branded version of the Go.Learn mobile apps and publish them on the app stores for Google and Apple.
The branding functionality allows you to customize:
✔️ App’s name
✔️ App images
✔️ App Store Page for Apple’s App Store (iOS) & Google Play Store (Android). According to your company’s design guidelines, you can autonomously manage your activity in the app stores.
✔️ Push Notifications are supported if you want to enable this feature, but it is not natively integrated into the platform to offer an all-in-one solution.
Let’s check the limitations of this offering:
❌ If you want to have push notifications, your branded app needs a project in Google Firebase (this is also required for iOS apps). The platform admin has to generate a project in Firebase to send push notifications. To set up push notification campaigns, you have to log in to your Google Firebase account, your academy’s external environment.
Compared with LearnWorlds: LearnWorlds Mobile App Builder offers a streamlined experience for the admin without any technical headaches involved. How? You just log in to your academy and go to the Push Notifications tab inside the Mobile App section (no need for Google Firebase set-up). You can set up your campaigns, segment your learners, and check your past campaigns’ performance quickly.
❌ No automated app maintenance
In other words, when your learning app needs to be updated with the latest version, you have to take care of it.
Compared with LearnWorlds: LearnWorlds Mobile App Builder looks after your own learning apps and takes care of everything (aka backups, firewalls, updates, etc.) to ensure it runs smoothly.
❌ In-App Purchases are not supported
Compared with LearnWorlds: LearnWorlds Mobile App Builder enables you to maximize your school’s growth via in-app purchases. You can charge one-off payments and choose what content your learners access for free or need to be charged for, make a seamless buying process, promote new products, sales events, and so much more.
👉 What you want to know
The possibility to customize the Mobile App through Mobile Pages is included in the platform subscription. No extra license is required.
Overall, Docebo is a powerful LMS platform with massive employee and partner training capabilities, although it lacks customization and features to compete with LearnWorlds.
3Bridge LMS
Bridge is a cloud-hosted talent development platform. It is an employee-centric solution whose main features bridge management with employees to nurture efficient growth. It is a comprehensive LMS software that enhances communication and monitoring and situates stakeholders in a conducive environment for co-development.
It offers a native LMS mobile app that makes online learning and performance management seamless wherever your employees are. Let’s deep dive into detail:
✔️ Meaningful one on ones in the palm of your employee’s hands
Empower managers to keep their teams aligned and have conversations that count through Bridge’s 1on1 agendas.
✔️ Foster connection between employees
Drive connection between employees by allowing them to search coworkers’ profiles, find mentors, and share interests right in the app.
✔️ Complete assigned learning
✔️ Live-trainings
✔️ Learning library
✔️ Company directory
✔️ Custom branding
You can customize your mobile learning app with your company’s logo and your favorite course font, and you can choose your desired theme color, select the navigation bar color, edit sign in and splash pages for a better user experience.
Elements where custom branding is not applied:
❌ App Store and Google Play listing appear as “Bridge: People Matter Most.”
That means that you can not have your own branding inside App Store Marketplace.
❌ App icon & app name appears as “Bridge” with the Bridge logo.
The app is not yours, as your customers will have to search for Bridge LMS, not your brand.
❌ Mobile app login screen
When your device is in high contrast mode (iOS) or high contrast has been turned on in the app settings (Android), custom brand colors are not applied to ensure that the required contrast ratio is met. The app turns into Bridge LMS brand colors to ensure a smooth performance.
Compared with LearnWorlds: LearnWorlds Mobile App Builder offers a 100% white-label solution to put your brand in front of your learner’s attention! It’s your own apps, with your own branding, in your own Apple’s App Store and Google Play Store developer accounts. In other words, your employees and your partners will search for your brand, not LearnWorlds, in the app marketplace. The app store pages can be customized according to your brand guidelines.
The LearnWorlds click & edit visual editor of Mobile App Builder allows you to upload your app icon and select your app name. Also, you can customize the look and feel of your app by choosing colors, app themes, splash & onboarding screens… plus more!
📲 Ready to Launch Your Mobile Learning App?
Mobile apps are transforming the eLearning industry and online learning, and you shouldn’t risk missing out. So, don’t waste your time and start using no-code tools today to turn your idea into a reality without any headaches. And remember, the future of coding is No-Code, so it’s time to jump in!
With the brand new LearnWorlds Mobile App Builder, the power of creating engaging mobile learning experiences is literally at your fingertips.
Go mobile today and unlock all the possibilities available to you by LearnWorlds.
Join the mobile learning revolution
Further reading you might find interesting
Jo Milonis
Jo is a passionate Product Marketing Manager on a mission to revolutionize the eLearning industry, bringing to the forefront the most powerful Online Course Mobile App Builder created by LearnWorlds. She has extensive experience in the tech SaaS industry, focusing for over 5 year on driving growth through digital channels. Her studies are mainly focused on Integrated Digital Marketing Communications.
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