Capability |
Alpha Anywhere |
Quick Base |
Fast Onboarding to the Platform [+] Show / Hide Details |
It takes a beginner about 90 minutes to build a sophisticated mobile CRUD app in Alpha Anywhere by following a tutorial. The learning curve for web apps is similar. Developers in Alpha Anywhere typically become competent (and confident) in 2-4 weeks. |
Quick Base has a similar learning curve, but because it has less capabilities, one is more likely to hit its limits fairly quickly. |
Support for Citizen Developers and Professional Developers [+] Show / Hide Details |
Alpha Anywhere fully supports no-code citizen development by allowing users to create true mobile apps and web apps themselves through a simple declarative approach that includes hundreds of powerful pre-built actions for creating queries, workflows, reports, analytics and data capture. Professional Developers will find Alpha Anywhere has all of the tools that they would expect in a professional platform for building and deploying enterprise class apps. Professional Developers can take advantage of the speed of Alpha's declarative approach and the power of client and server side events whereby they can insert low code pre-built actions blocks as well as being able to code in JavaScript on the client and Node.js and .net languages on the server to ensure that they never run out of power. |
Quick Base allows citizen developers to build relatively simple applications with no-code, but does not have the rich enterprise capaibilities that professional developers expect. |
Flexible Deployment Options [+] Show / Hide Detailst |
Alpha Anywhere can be deployed in-house or in the Alpha Cloud hosted on Amazon AWS. The Alpha Cloud is built ontop of Amazon AWS to provide very high levels of reliability, scalability and performance with options of hosting in 16 data centers located world wide The Alpha Cloud is built on top of Amazon AWS and delivers a highly scalelable, reliable and high performance outcome with the option of having hosting take place in 16 different data centers located globally The Alpha Cloud is built on Amazon AWS and takes advantage of all the flexibility, reliability, performance and scalability of AWS The Alpha Cloud is build on Amazon AWS and it is designed for global enterprise level scalability, reliability and throughput |
Quick Base can only be run on the Quick Base cloud which is a non-standard proprierty system built by Quick Base. It does not offer the features and performance of the Alpha Cloud. |
Speed of Developing/Updating Apps [+] Show / Hide Details |
Alpha Anywhere includes a local version of its server that runs on the developer’s machine and can instantly show changes, just by clicking the refresh button. |
With Quick Base, updates must go to the cloud and come back to the desktop. This introduces delays |
Ease of Data Integration [+] Show / Hide Details |
Alpha Anywhere provides many tools for working with REST services, JSON Data, XML and SOAP services . Plus it lets you quickly change data sources when you switch from development to deployment. Alpha Anywhere includes native SQL drivers for all popular SQL backends (SQL Server, MySQL, MariaDB, and many others). Alpha Anywhere uses connection strings that allow access to thousands of tables at once. For Web services, Alpha Anywhere supports the oData standard to allow developers to inspect and connect to external data structures. Alpha has reporting and BI capabilites and also makes it easy to work with 3rd party BI and reporting tools. |
Quick Base integration tools are limited because the product was designed primarily as a line of business tool. |
Workflow Capability [+] Show / Hide Details |
Alpha Anywhere offers robust, enterprise-grade workflow capabilities and business logic. |
Quick Base does not have enterprise-grade workflow capability.
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Offline mobile Capability [+] Show / Hide Details |
Alpha Anywhere has a robust offline capability built-in, with data synchronization and intelligent conflict resolution included. Citizen developers can implement this fundtionality without code. |
Quick Base does not support offline mobile operation. |
Rich, Active Ecosystem |
Alpha Anywhere offers a portfolio of Professional Services offerings, including our highly popular mentoring program. Alpha Software has a rich partner network with experienced Alpha Developers around the world, including the Middle East. There are also over 17,000 developers actively contributing to the Alpha Anywhere User Forum. |
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Built-in Client- and Server-Side Enterprise Analytics and Reporting [+] Show / Hide Details |
Alpha Anywhere includes server side charting and a powerful (similar to Crystal Reports,) banded report writer for server-side reporting. Client-side templating reports and charts can also be generated and viewed offline on a mobile device. |
Quick Base's reporting and analytics are more limited |
Audio and Video Files on Mobile Devices [+] Show / Hide Details |
Alpha Anywhere allows video images and sound files to be stored in either local storage or in the mobile device's file system, even when offline. Media files can be transferred directly between the device and Amazon S3 without going through an application server. |
Quick Base does not have Amazon S3 integration and does not have special functionality for dealing with large media files. |
Built-in Mobile Optimized Forms Builder [+] Show / Hide Details |
Alpha Anywhere includes mobile optimized form technology. Mobile forms offers rapid data capture into forms with features like: larger buttons or swipe capablities for one-handed input; customized keyboards for numbers-only and other types of data fields, digital ink, |
Quick Base does not offer custom keyboards, image annotation, or other mobile optimized controls. |
One Button Deployment to the Cloud [+] Show / Hide Details |
Alpha Anywhere offers one-button deployment to the cloud, running in 13 data centers globally with autoscaling, load balancing and redundancy.
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Quickbase does not offer one-button deployment to the cloud. |
Server-Based Pricing [+] Show / Hide Details |
Alpha Anywhere offers transparent pricing based on the number of application servers needed for deployment. As a result, development costs and ongoing costs (TCO) are easy to predict and go up more slowly as users are added |
Quick Base has user based pricing, so pricing immediately goes up as you add a new user. |
Quickbase competitor Alpha Anywhere speeds development for all users. It does the routine coding for experienced developers, and builds the apps for citizen developers. The software also has built-in genies that speed data integration, offline capability and security. But, Alpha Anywhere rapid mobile app development always gives developers the ability to add code, if needed. We call this "coding-optional."
Alpha Anywhere is the emerging standard for enterprises looking to help IT developers increase their pipeline while empowering business users to build sophisticated, web and mobile business apps fast.
Why does Alpha Anywhere consistently get perfect scores from customers?
When you're evaluating Quick Base, OutSystems, Alpha Software or other competitors, you'll hear a lot of good things, but you're not always getting the full story. Here are some questions you should ask to be sure you're geting all the facts.
When you hear: "We do offline."
Understand that all "offline" capabilities are not equal. Be sure to ask:
If the answer is "No," then it means your apps will likely have limitations that could impact the integrity of the data
When you hear: "We serve citizen developers."
You can't expect business users to code to build or deploy their apps. Be sure to ask:
If the answer is "Yes," then realisticly the product in question is not a fit for line of business citizen developers who for the most part cannot code
When you hear: "We build mobile apps"
Understand that responsive web apps do not offer a full native mobile experience in terms of performance, access to hardware and ability to be placed in an app store. Be sure to ask:
If the answer is "No," then you will really be using a web app that happens to run on a mobile device
"The platform has shown me how easy it can be to build enterprise-grade, mission-critical apps. My colleagues are telling me I deserve a 'Best Programmer Award,' but the real honor goes to Alpha Software."
"Alpha Anywhere ticked all the boxes. It offered numerous out-of-the-box advantages, of which offline-capability on mobile devices was the most significant --- most other platforms didn't have that capability built-in."
"If I had used a tool rather than Alpha Anywhere, it would have taken me twice as long to launch Fast Mirror, and possibly miss a market opportunity."
“Alpha Software has robust enterprise integration capabilities & rich client-side workflow & custom logic creation in its coding-optional development tool...”
– Gartner Magic Quadrant, Mobile Application Development Platforms, June 2016
The Alpha platform is the only unified mobile and web app development and deployment environment with distinct “no-code” and “low-code” components. Using the Alpha TransForm no-code product, business users and developers can take full advantage of all the capabilities of the smartphone to turn any form into a mobile app in minutes, and power users can add advanced app functionality with Alpha TransForm's built-in programming language. IT developers can use the Alpha Anywhere low-code environment to develop complex web or mobile business apps from scratch, integrate data with existing systems of record and workflows (including data collected via Alpha TransForm), and add additional security or authentication requirements to protect corporate data.
Alpha Software Corporation, based in Massachusetts, produces award-winning software that speeds mobile and web app development and deployment for business and IT. The core technology includes two components. Alpha Anywhere®, a full-stack low-code app development platform for building and deploying web and mobile apps. In just hours, Alpha TransForm® turns complex paper forms into powerful mobile forms that speed data collection.
Alpha Software is an InfoWorld Technology of the Year award winner, and scores near-perfect reviews from customers on crowdsourced review sites.
Customers rate Alpha Software highly for its speed of development, flexibility, offline apps, rich feature set and ability to scale predictably. For more information, visit https://www.alphasoftware.com/