Launching an app business in 2026 presents an exciting opportunity, but the path from idea to profitable product remains daunting for most entrepreneurs. Traditional app development demands either expensive developer teams or months of learning to code—barriers that stop countless promising business ideas before they ever reach customers. The challenge isn't just building the app itself; it's getting it into the hands of users across both iOS and Android platforms without draining your budget or timeline.
That's where Adalo comes in. Adalo is a no-code app builder for database-driven web apps and native iOS and Android apps—one version across all three platforms. AI-assisted building and streamlined publishing enable launch to the Apple App Store and Google Play in days rather than months. This means entrepreneurs can focus on validating their business model and acquiring customers instead of wrestling with technical hurdles that traditionally kept app development reserved for those with deep pockets or programming expertise.
Why Adalo Is the Smart Choice for Starting Your App Business
Starting an app business in 2026 doesn't require a computer science degree or a massive development budget. Adalo is a no-code app builder for database-driven web apps and native iOS and Android apps—one version across all three platforms, published to the Apple App Store and Google Play. This means you can take your business idea from concept to launch without writing a single line of code, reaching customers wherever they prefer to download apps.
Having your app available on both major app stores is essential for any successful app business. With Adalo, you can also leverage built-in features like push notifications to keep users engaged and coming back—a critical factor for building a sustainable revenue stream. Whether you're a solo entrepreneur or building a startup team, Adalo gives you the tools to compete with established players in your market.
Starting an app business in 2026 doesn't require a computer science degree or a massive development budget. Adalo is an AI-powered app builder for database-driven web apps and native iOS and Android apps—one version across all three platforms, published to the Apple App Store and Google Play. This means you can take your business idea from concept to launch without writing a single line of code, reaching customers wherever they prefer to download apps.
Having your app available on both major app stores is essential for any successful app business. With Adalo, you can also leverage built-in features like push notifications to keep users engaged and coming back—a critical factor for building a sustainable revenue stream. Whether you're a solo entrepreneur or building a startup team, Adalo gives you the tools to compete with established players in your market.
In this article, we'll walk you through our process and provide guidance on establishing your own app business.
Determine Your App's Niche
While you most likely have a clear idea of what you want your app to accomplish, it's important to get your ideas down. Write out your plan on a piece of paper. Define your app's precise functions and features. Writing down your app's features and sketching out its look and feel will give you a better idea of how your app will appear.
After you finish writing out and visualizing your app, search the Google Play Store and Apple App Store for apps that you'll be competing with. Download a few of them, and if they offer cheap basic versions, consider signing up for a month or two. Take notes on how these apps work to get a good feel for their user experience.
Now it's time to determine where your competitors fall short. How many integrations does each app have, and do they have enough? For instance, is the booking app you're looking at integrated with Google, or does it have other integrations that guarantee all users will receive a notification that they made an appointment?
Try to find gaps in other apps' functionalities. If you successfully address these shortcomings with your app, you may gain a major competitive edge over your rivals, and a greater number of people might choose your app instead.
Determine Your App's Target Market
After you decide how your app can perform better than your competitors, you'll need to find your app's target market or the people who will most likely use your app. For instance, if you are building an app for job-seekers, students in their final year of college will make up a large part of your target market.
Finding your target market is crucial, as they will be your app's primary consumers. Here are two ways to kick-start the search for your target market:
- Join groups on Facebook that are centered around functions your app can perform. If you are building an app for restaurants, join different restaurant and food groups on Facebook. Contribute to conversations, and make yourself known in each group. When you launch your app, notify the people you meet in these groups.
- Create a LinkedIn profile, and find professionals in the industry that your app will serve, then make connections with them and get to know them. Let them know that you are developing an app to assist them. Try to get their opinions on how your app can help improve their work. The people you network with can even help you test your app after it's been built. Searching for your target market is a long game. It will take time to establish connections on LinkedIn, and there are thousands of Facebook groups to search through too. Devote an hour or two each day to filtering and finding connections.
Choose An App Builder
A quick Google search will reveal a staggering number of options that make finding the best app builder difficult. Don't worry, we've found the best app builders to start your app business, so you don't have to. We ensured each app builder included these two important features:
- Ease of Use: Each one of the app builders features a responsive and easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface. You won't need any technical or coding skills to build an app with the app builders on our list.
- Template Selection: Your app builder will need to provide you with the proper aesthetics and structural features for building your app. So, the app builders we selected all provide a huge number of templates and other features to choose from, letting you find a color and structural combination that suits your brand.
Here are our top three app builders for starting your own app business:
Adalo
Adalo is the most intuitive app builder on our list. It's designed for entrepreneurs like you to immediately start using after they sign up, so you won't have to watch or read any tutorials to get started. The visual builder has been described as "easy as PowerPoint," making it accessible to complete beginners while still powerful enough for complex applications.
Adalo's agnostic builder lets you publish the same app to the web, native iOS, and native Android, all without writing a line of code or rebuilding. If your plan is mass distribution through the app stores' vast marketplaces, then this is a great option versus many of the vibe-coding builders out there today. Over 3 million apps have been created on Adalo, processing 20 million+ data requests daily with 99%+ uptime.
If you have any questions about implementing a special feature, post a question on the Adalo Forum. Thousands of people have used Adalo to make millions of apps, so you'll most likely find some guidance in this forum.
How Adalo Can Help Build Your App
- After you publish your app, you can make it available to your clients in the Apple App Store or Google Play Store for free download. Potential clients will love this convenience. Your app can also be published as a website with just a click.
- Adalo allows for the most creative freedom out of all the app builders on our list. If you choose Adalo, you'll also have access to a large template library to help you get started and countless color combinations, allowing you to tailor your app to your exact taste. The canvas can display up to 400 screens at once, giving you complete visibility into your app's structure.
- The free version that Adalo offers comes packed with features and several integrations that will let you build out your app during its test phase—so you can cobble together your app without paying for it. After you build up your base version, you can easily upgrade.
- Magic Start generates complete app foundations from descriptions. Tell it you need a booking app for a dog grooming business, and it creates your database structure, screens, and user flows automatically—what used to take days of planning happens in minutes. Magic Add then lets you add features by simply describing what you want.
Pricing
Adalo's pricing starts at $36/month with unlimited usage and app store publishing. All paid plans include unlimited database records and unlimited updates to published apps—no surprise charges or usage-based billing.
Bubble
Bubble has been around for over a decade, and its users have designed over three million apps to date. It's got the biggest template selection on our list, so it should be pretty easy for you to find something that works for you and your app.
You'll find Bubble's long list of integrations useful as well. Bubble has over 6,000 of them, giving you the power to specialize your app to perform many different functions.
One thing to keep in mind with Bubble is that it only specializes in web apps. If you want a mobile app specifically, you'll need to rely on their mobile wrapper solution, which converts your Bubble web app into an iOS or Android app. This wrapper approach means that one app version doesn't automatically update web, Android, and iOS apps deployed to their respective app stores—you'll need to manage updates separately.
How Bubble Can Help Build Your App
- Bubble's integrations and features might seem a little complex, so you can learn how to use each one by reading and watching tutorials from the Bubble Academy. Bubble has been building its academy for over a decade.
- If you're designing an app that has sensitive user information, Bubble is a great choice. It integrates high-level encryption and privacy controls, so you won't have to worry about storing sensitive information. This makes Bubble a possible choice for medical services or legal apps.
- Bubble's features will allow you to scale your app with significant customization. However, this flexibility often results in slower applications that can suffer under increased load. Claims of millions of MAU are typically only achievable with hired expert help to optimize performance.
Pricing
Bubble's web and mobile wrapper offering starts at $59/month with usage-based charges through Workload Units, limits on app re-publishing, and database record restrictions. The calculations for Workload Units can be unclear, making it difficult to predict monthly costs. To really get the most out of Bubble's integrations, you'll need their Professional plan at $129/month.
GoodBarber
GoodBarber is an app builder that caters to people who want to market and sell their apps. Their templates make it easy for you to implement all the features you'll need to make your app highly competitive and functional. If you're looking to create many different types of apps for a variety of businesses, give GoodBarber a go.
How GoodBarber Can Help Build Your App
- When you sign up for GoodBarber's reseller program, you can make as many apps as you want and then sell them in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.
- The drag-and-drop interface that GoodBarber uses probably has the easiest learning curve. This will let you build out your app very quickly.
- GoodBarber caters to many, many industries by offering over 500 functionalities. You can integrate push notifications, live chat functions, and databases to catalog paid content. If you choose GoodBarber, you'll most likely find a way to easily monetize your app.
Pricing
GoodBarber pricing for content apps starts at $30/month; for E-commerce Stores, pricing begins at $40/month.
Quick Comparison
| Feature | Adalo | Bubble | GoodBarber |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starting Price | $36/month | $59/month | $30/month |
| Native iOS/Android | Yes | Wrapper only | Yes |
| Database Records | Unlimited (paid plans) | Limited by Workload Units | Varies by plan |
| Usage-Based Charges | None | Yes (Workload Units) | Varies |
| AI-Assisted Building | Magic Start, Magic Add | Limited | No |
| Single Codebase Publishing | Web, iOS, Android | Web only (wrapper for mobile) | Web, iOS, Android |
Other Platforms to Consider
Beyond our top three picks, you might encounter other app builders in your research. Here's what you should know about some popular alternatives:
FlutterFlow is a "low-code" rather than "no-code" platform designed for technical users. Users need to manage and set up their own separate database, which requires significant learning complexity—especially when looking for scale, as anything less than optimal setup can create problems. Pricing starts at $70/month per user for easy app store publishing, but that still doesn't include a database, which you'll need to source, set up, and pay for separately.
Glide is heavily format-focused and restricted to set templates. This makes it fast to build and publish with, but creates generic, simplistic apps with limited creative freedom. Pricing starts at $60/month for a custom domain, but it's still limited by app updates and data record rows that attract additional charges. Glide does not support Apple App Store or Google Play Store publishing.
Softr pricing starts from $167/month to publish a Progressive Web App, which is still restricted by records per app and records per datasource. Softr does not support Apple App Store and Google Play Store publishing or native iOS and Android app creation.
Next Steps
After choosing an app builder and then building your app, you'll need to test it and determine what you need to improve. Then, release your app to a small group of people. Get their feedback and make fixes. Finally, your app will be ready to launch to the public.
When you launch your app, continue to monitor its performance. If you release the app in stores, pay close attention to positive and negative reviews. Keep in mind that even the highest-performing apps get negative reviews. Address the issues that negative reviewers raise, using them as guidance for improvement.
Continuously improve your skills and your app by updating your app and adding new features. Once you master working with an app builder, you'll have the ability to create more apps for many different businesses. With Adalo's X-Ray feature, you can identify performance issues before they affect users—helping you maintain a quality experience as your user base grows.
The infrastructure behind your app matters as your business scales. Adalo's modular architecture, overhauled with the 3.0 release in late 2026, scales to serve apps with over 1 million monthly active users with no upper ceiling. This means you won't need to migrate to a different platform as your app business grows.
FAQ
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Why choose Adalo over other app building solutions? | Adalo is an AI-powered app builder that creates true native iOS and Android apps. Unlike web wrappers, it compiles to native code and publishes directly to both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store from a single codebase—the hardest part of launching an app handled automatically. Paid plans include unlimited database records and no usage-based charges. |
| What's the fastest way to build and publish an app to the App Store? | Adalo's drag-and-drop interface and AI-assisted building features like Magic Start let you go from idea to published app in days rather than months. Magic Start generates complete app foundations from a simple description, creating your database structure, screens, and user flows automatically. Adalo handles the complex App Store submission process so you can focus on your app's features. |
| Which is more affordable, Adalo or Bubble? | Adalo starts at $36/month with unlimited usage and no record limits on paid plans. Bubble starts at $59/month with usage-based Workload Unit charges and database record restrictions. Bubble's pricing can be unpredictable due to unclear Workload Unit calculations, while Adalo offers straightforward pricing with no surprise charges. |
| Which is faster to build with, Adalo or Bubble? | Adalo is generally faster for beginners thanks to its intuitive interface described as "easy as PowerPoint" and AI features like Magic Start that generate complete app foundations from descriptions. Bubble offers more customization but has a steeper learning curve and often requires expert help to optimize performance at scale. |
| Is Adalo better than Bubble for mobile apps? | Yes, for true native mobile apps. Adalo compiles to native iOS and Android code and publishes to both app stores from a single codebase. Bubble creates web apps that require a wrapper for mobile distribution, which can introduce performance challenges at scale and requires managing updates separately for each platform. |
| Can I try building my app before paying for a subscription? | Yes, Adalo offers a free version packed with features and several integrations that let you build out your app during its test phase. You can develop your base version without paying, then easily upgrade to a paid plan starting at $36/month when you're ready to publish and scale your app business. |
| How do I find my app's target market before launching? | Start by identifying who will most likely use your app based on its core functionality. Join relevant Facebook groups centered around your app's purpose and build connections on LinkedIn with professionals in your target industry. Devote an hour or two each day to networking, as these connections can help test your app and become your first users at launch. |
| What should I look for when researching competitor apps? | Download competing apps from the Google Play Store and Apple App Store, and if possible, sign up for their basic versions to understand their user experience. Focus on identifying gaps in functionality, such as missing integrations or features users need. Successfully addressing these shortcomings in your app can give you a major competitive edge in the market. |
| How long does it take to build an app business app? | With Adalo's AI-assisted building and drag-and-drop interface, you can go from concept to published app in days rather than months. Magic Start generates your database structure, screens, and user flows automatically from a description, dramatically reducing the planning and building time compared to traditional development. |
| What should I do after launching my app to ensure success? | Continue monitoring your app's performance by paying close attention to both positive and negative reviews in the app stores. Use negative feedback as guidance for improvement and address the issues reviewers raise. Adalo's X-Ray feature helps identify performance issues before they affect users, and you can continuously update your app with new features to keep users engaged. |
