2011
AppInstitute founded
AppInstitute was founded in Nottingham's Creative Quarter with a simple goal: let any business build its own mobile app without writing code.
A product of AppInstitute
About AppBuild.diy
AppBuild.diy is the cutting-edge app building platform from AppInstitute, a business that has been building and shipping mobile apps since 2011.
15+ years in the app market
Customers in 138 countries
70,000+ apps built
Our story
AppInstitute was founded in 2011 and based in Nottingham's Creative Quarter. Over more than a decade we have helped over 140,000 businesses build mobile apps, with customers and partners across 138 countries on six continents.
Dubbed the "WordPress for mobile apps", AppInstitute started as a cloud-based SaaS platform that let businesses with little or no technical knowledge create their own app. Through years of real customer feedback, store submissions and partnerships, we learned exactly where the hard parts of building and publishing an app live.
AppBuild.diy is the next generation of that work. It brings together everything we learned from the first wave of no-code app building and fuses it with modern development methods: AI and vibe coding, ready-made industry templates, and fully bespoke projects wrapped for the App Store and Google Play. The result is a single platform that meets builders wherever they are.
Whether you self-build with templates, use an AI tool like Claude, Lovable or Cursor, or wrap an existing vibe-coded project for the stores, AppBuild.diy handles the parts that stay the same every time: the native shell, the SDK, push notifications, in-app purchases, store submission and the app-store expertise that comes from 15 years of doing this.
15 years in the making
2014
First app platform
Our first-generation cloud app builder reached tens of thousands of small businesses, the start of a 70,000+ app milestone for the company.
2017
Progressive Web Apps
We added Progressive Web Apps so customers could publish instantly across mobile and tablet, the early groundwork for our modern deployment model.
Today
AppBuild.diy
A cutting-edge rebuild that fuses no-code templates, AI and vibe coding, and native store submission into one platform built on everything we learned.
What we stand for
The principles that have carried from the first app platform to AppBuild.diy today.
Customer first
From self-build to hire-a-pro to reseller, every route exists to get a real working app into the hands of a business owner.
Global by design
Customers and partners in 138 countries across six continents build on the same platform and the same store-ready tooling.
Modern by choice
We meet builders where they are, no-code templates, AI tools like Claude and Lovable, or fully bespoke vibe-coded projects wrapped for the stores.
Built on experience
15 years and counting of shipping, submitting and supporting real apps means the hard parts of app stores are part of the product, not a surprise.
Part of the AppInstitute family
AppBuild.diy is developed and supported by the AppInstitute team. You can read more about our history, leadership and customer stories on the AppInstitute website.