Show HN: VoltBuilder, a Modern Replacement for PhoneGap
volt.build
volt.build
When I started looking around (and complaining quite publicly) what I found was alternatives that were pricey and, quite frankly, came with too many of their own issues and that was the last thing I wanted. When the Voltbuilder crew said they were going to put a native CLI in the cloud I was all in!
Moving from PGB to Voltbuilder required little effort. I had to create a json file that defined the project and add a certificates directory (because Voltbuilder doesn't store certificates you upload them each time). Other than that there were no modifications to the project at all.
From the first build onward, everything has worked perfectly. The issues that I have come across have all turned out to be issues caused by errant or out of date plugins. I now have my main app in both stores and my secondary app is in development.
Support in the voltbuilder forums is really good and there are some smart people around (some managing 20+ apps) that really know their way around if you get stuck.
I saw a comment from @sphuff about the pricing and, as far as I know, final pricing is still up in the air but once a week or so the staff at Voltbuilder send all the testers an email and check in to make sure we're all happy and to ask us our opinions. I think we've all voice opinions about the price.
Early in the COVID crisis, I was running out of work and looking for a new project. I saw Adobe was abandoning PhoneGap, a tool used by thousands to convert web apps to Android and iOS native apps. (I’ve been a PhoneGap user for 10 years, so I knew I’d miss it)
I spent a weekend going through the Android, iOS and Cordova documentation to see if it would be possible to replicate what PhoneGap does and give myself and all those users some hope. Reading hundreds of messages on StackOverflow helped me figure out some stuff that is really, seriously not documented anywhere.
By Monday, I had something like a POC working. I checked with my long term collaborators, James and Tomo. They were similarly underworked, so we decided to go ahead with the other 98% of the job to make a working product.
Technologies used include Python, Node, Jekyll, Auth0, Stripe, Cordova, Xcode, Android SDK, Express, Helmet, JWT, Flask, Boto3 and more.
VoltBuilder now has a website, a build engine, queuing and billing. We’ve built the server infrastructure to spin up multiple builds at the same time and are starting to test that.
It’s deployed in beta production. About 50 beta testers have thrown thousands of jobs at it. We’re focusing on building a community to get our first users and gather as much feedback as possible. Pricing is still up in the air, but the pricing page shows where we are heading.
Thank you for reading this far. I would love to get your feedback on VoltBuilder and to answer questions.