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With Amazon’s new product Honeycode, users can build applications for up to 20 users for free without writing any code.
On Wednesday (24 June), Amazon Web Services (AWS) executive Jeff Barr announced the launch of Honeycode, a new product that enables users to build web and mobile apps without writing code.
Honeycode has officially launched in beta, giving users the ability to build mobile and web apps through a spreadsheet model. The tool enables developers to build applications for up to 20 users for free. Beyond that, developers have to pay per user and for the storage that their applications take up.
“If you or your teammates are already familiar with spreadsheets and formulas, you’ll be happy to hear that just about everything you know about sheets, tables, values and formulas still applies,” Barr wrote.
“Amazon Honeycode includes templates for some common applications that you and other members of your team can use right away.”
Speaking to TechCrunch, AWS vice-president Larry Augustin explained that Amazon wanted to “extend the power of AWS to more and more users”. Augustin said that the company realised that there was “more demand for some kind of custom application than there are available developers to solve it”.
“Our goal with Honeycode was to enable the people in the line of business, the business analysts, project managers, programme managers who are right here in the midst, to easily create a custom application that can solve some of the problems for them without the need to write any code,” he added.
Honeycode features
The platform includes templates for common applications, such as simple to-do lists, customer trackers, simple surveys, inventory management, content trackers, time-off reporting, event management, team task trackers and field service agents, among others.
“You can customise these apps at any time and the changes will be deployed immediately,” Barr said. “You can also start with an empty table, or by importing some existing data in CSV form. The applications that you build in Honeycode can make use of a rich palette of user interface objects including lists, buttons and input fields.”
Barr walked through all the ins-and-outs of Honeycode on the AWS blog and also shared the Honeycode forum, where users can ask questions and find tutorials and other resources to get to grips with the technology.
One of Honeycode’s first customers is business communication platform Slack. Earlier this month, the company announced a major partnership with Amazon to improve communications offerings.
Brad Armstrong, vice-president of business and corporate development at Slack, commented: “We’re excited about the opportunity that Amazon Honeycode creates for teams to build apps to drive and adapt to today’s ever-changing business landscape.
“We see Amazon Honeycode as a great complement and extension to Slack and are excited about the opportunity to work together to create ways for our joint customers to work more efficiently to do more with their data than ever before.”
