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Shoutem – A platform to build, publish, and manage React Native apps

114 points| anatolinicolae | 8 years ago |shoutem.github.io | reply

36 comments

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[+] ryannevius|8 years ago|reply
Just my two cents: I'm currently building an app on the Shoutem platform, and have been required to extend one of the Shoutem extensions to do so. I have been in direct communication with the Shoutem team throughout this proces, and have gotten to know the platform intimately.

A month into it, I can honestly say I can't recommend using the platform (yet). While the idea is an interesting one, it's bloated, buggy, slow, and doesn't offer much over optimizing a website for mobile devices. That said, the team behind the platform is great, and I'm confident they'll work out the kinks over the coming months to make it more user/developer friendly.

[+] bschwindHN|8 years ago|reply
> it's bloated, buggy, slow

But they said "Shoutem apps are slick and fast", how could this be???

[+] usaphp|8 years ago|reply
It’s weird that the app they decided to showcase [1] using their product - has one stars as majority of ratings with a main reason of it crashing all the time. If that’s the best what they could have shown, I wonder how bad it can get then

[1] - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/brides-wedding-genius-5-1/id...

[+] sampl|8 years ago|reply
All those comments seem to be 4-6 years old
[+] truetuna|8 years ago|reply
I've used Shoutem's standalone UI library[1] for my last project but haven't used their platform as a whole. During that time, I found it painful to get it working.

Their documentation[2] wasn't great. It was out of date (missing component attributes, icons etc.) and lacked good examples. Often I would have to dig into the source to figure out obscure errors. When I first starting using @shoutem/ui, I couldn't use the latest version of React Native because they locked themselves into an experimental feature[3] which even until now, seems like it hasn't properly resolved.

Again. I can't comment on their platform but I didn't have a good time using their UI library. Had I known this, I would have just gone with NativeBase[4].

[1] - https://github.com/shoutem/ui

[2] - https://shoutem.github.io/docs/ui-toolkit/components/typogra...

[3] - https://github.com/shoutem/ui/issues/241

[4] - https://nativebase.io/

[+] k__|8 years ago|reply
Looks good.

Currently I'm using Expo, which is rather nice, but I have to detach rather often, because of stuff like PDF annotations or binary file storage.

How does Shoutem compare to Expo?

[+] anatolinicolae|8 years ago|reply
Expo is used to run/preview a React Native app where Shoutem is both a CMS that you can use to manage your app's data and a UI library that you can use to build your app.
[+] TeeWEE|8 years ago|reply
While I like react and react native, i still think requireing to run a JS interpreter in order to run a native "like" app is still not good engineering practice. I'm betting on multi-platform-projects (MPP) with Kotlin and Kotlin-Native. Engineering wise much more sound, however the iOS and Android platform should have some more support for Reactive like UI's. Without needing JavaScript.
[+] gman83|8 years ago|reply
Flutter is a reactive framework that uses Dart, not JavaScript, if that's more to your liking.
[+] emersonrsantos|8 years ago|reply
Looks very interesting, however you risk being rejected on the Apple app store because of this guideline:

“4.2.2 Other than catalogs, apps shouldn’t primarily be marketing materials, advertisements, web clippings, content aggregators, or a collection of links”.

[+] spiderfarmer|8 years ago|reply
$149 / month is a bit too high for most apps.
[+] anatolinicolae|8 years ago|reply
Stick with building the app yourself only relying on their UI component collection which is free.
[+] amelius|8 years ago|reply
I'm not sure why I should have myself forced into another framework, when I could have just imported those components if I wanted them. Also, aren't many such components not available as open source already?
[+] anatolinicolae|8 years ago|reply
It's not a framework, the UI library has React Native components that help you build your app. You can use their Builder to integrate the CMS, but that's another thing.
[+] vitalychernobyl|8 years ago|reply
We tried working with it and this isn't really a thing - the support is non-existent, the documentation is lacking.

When contacted, they admitted that the only apps published using the Shoutem platform are ones that the company custom-built for some clients (their services are $10k+ a pop).

It sounds like this is just a marketing ploy and a way to get around Apple's new rules about app-builders.

[+] techaddict009|8 years ago|reply
Seems good. Is it free or how? If its not free can you add pricing page properly visible?

And also can you fix "40+ full-featured extensions" section css/jquery on hover its moving in speed I am unable to check all list.

[+] stemuk|8 years ago|reply
Looks pretty great, are there any demo apps available to play with?
[+] j45|8 years ago|reply
Has anyone used Shoutem and Appery? I am on a grandfathered plan of the latter but Shoutem looks quite interesting.
[+] jeffehobbs|8 years ago|reply
This is a great team. Hats off for this release and I can’t wait to play with it.
[+] oldboyFX|8 years ago|reply
Folks at Shoutem poured years of effort into building this platform and it definately shows. The product is really solid and I recommend taking a better look at it if you're planning to build a mobile app.