Every company in Silicon Valley wants to become a platform for other companies to build cool stuff on top of. It is the easiest way to attract customers. Coghead—the DIY, Web-based, business-app builder—is no different. Today it is publicly launching its charter affiliates program, whereby software developers can create their own enterprise apps using Coghead and then resell them to their customers. (The program has been in private beta since Coghead launched in October, 2006). Coghead hosts the apps and gives developers a 15 percent discount on its regular $49/month subscription fee (for five users). They build a custom application for software product managers or flower-shop owners or whomever, charge a markup, and get to keep the difference. Coghead takes care of the back-end management and billing as well.
It is the exact same business model as Salesforce.com’s AppExchange. (Meanwhile, Salesforce is already moving into Coghead’s custom-application territory with Force.com, which it launched in September). Coghead faces other competition from Zoho Creator, Dabble DB, WyaWorks, and LongJump. The online database/app creation market is getting crowded, and there is only room for one or two platforms. Salesforce is already one of them. If Coghead can make it easier to develop Web apps for the enterprise than anyone else and attract a following, it’s got a shot at that coveted platform status. We’ll be keeping an eye on its progress.
Has anyone used Coghead? How does it compare to the competition? Please let us know in comments.
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So much crunch base, so much name dropping. Random video. Can’t…. separate the text from the media…
And the animated ads? flash loads? or whatever (on the right hand side?) make the already-long page hard to scroll vertically… needs some redesign.. at least increase the pageviews
I’v used coghead. I was in the beta.. its like ruby on rails with a GUI
just the typical database apps. build a user interface , link to the database, data goes in, data comes out. Nothing to see here folks move along.
I build a business on coghead then coghead goes bust - guess what happens to my business?
Coghead and DabbleDB are important parts of what business people need. Right now the barriers for a business person to get a solution built are way too high. “Developers” are still pretty rare and still think they can demand a premium for their time. They always end up re-inventing the wheel by building all the ‘plumbing’ over and over again for each customer.
Even within large corporations where the business person has lots of resources - there is a huge amount of energy spent on keeping things status quo as far as solution building is concerned and internal IT departments spend their time specing and overbuilding - making every initiative take 8 months and “cost” tens of thousands.
How many million$ have been redirected from within failed internal solutions to Salesforce. All these teams were building the same project over and over - a basic CRM. And all the companies that thought their business was too unique to use an off-the-shelf CRM were wrong.
Yes, developers are an important part of some companies - but only for pure software companies like Google , Facebook, Microsoft, etc. Most other businesses are just wasting their time and loading their business up with risk by trying to build their own software. What most businesses really need are tools like Coghead, DabbleDB and the upcoming relaunched JotSpot. These tools offer 90%+ of the functionality needed at a fraction of the price and with much less risk than trying to be their own software company.
Now if these companies would stop fighting each other to be ‘The’ platform and start working on how to interact with each other - they might survive the war when Microsoft and Google release their arsenals.
Gliffy can be the UI designer
DabbleDB can be the database subsystem
Coghead can be the logic building tool
Work together guys before its too late.
Oh and somebody please just buy DabbleDB already so that they can build out the rest of their suite and I can really start using it -
Until I can tie these things into existing SQL databases, I can’t really do much with them.
But I do want to thank all these companies for opening up the possibilities and giving me hope that good tools for building are coming down the pipe.
I have a question: If you create an app on Coghead, can you take the code with you and publish your app elsewhere?
#6 Nick, that is the problem: If Coghead fails, your application is gone!
We use salesforce.com plus some (for some users) client-side automation (Excel VBA mainly) with iMacros Enterprise and the Greasemonkey/iMacros Firefox add-ons. Works great!
> “Developers” are still pretty rare and still think they can demand a
> premium for their time.
So what, are developers supposed to pay you for their time?
Where is QuickBase from Intuit (www.quickbase.com) in this list? It is a mature SaaS platform in this space, in market longer than any of these. It is good enough to be used by over half the Fortune 100 companies and many thousands of others. We run our company on QuickBase and collaborate in the Forums w/ many similar companies (thus the advocacy).
We’ve looked at most of the other platforms, and as noted below, you often need to use more than one of them to do what QuickBase does all by itself. QuickBase also has an API and certified partner program that pays, and has a good developer support group for those who don’t want to DIY.
I have spent a little bit of time with Dabble, Wya, LongJump, and CogHead trying to pull together something beyond basic spreadsheets. Coming from a background of no development experience beyond a little Excel VBA, I didn’t find any of them particularly intuitive. I was able to make some pretty impressive VBA spreadsheets in a weekend with no experience, for example, but didn’t make headway to an actual usable product with any of these packages. However, LongJump and CogHead were at least closer to being useful, and the customer service and user interface for both were far ahead of Dabble and Wya.
Scott, Quickbase is the first thing I looked at, but the price puts it in a pretty different space from these others, if I recall.
Haven’t looked at Salesforce’s solution.
>I build a business on coghead then coghead goes bust - guess what happens to my business?
You better have a backup plan if you don’t want your business to go bust as well.
As for DabbleDB, I looked at it and it was the most complicated thing ever. Totally needless complexity.
Re; #8 Anon:
No, they do not need to pay anyone for their time - but they are going to have to offer a lot more value for their time in the coming years and will likely be using tools like these instead of Rails and PHP. What I am referring to is the coming wave of thousands of developers losing their jobs when these tools become easy enough to use and and get incorporated into what Google and Microsoft launch to be their equivalent of ‘Access-as-a-Service’.
I know this is a technology blog and statements like these might not be welcome here but the programmers of today are the same as the work-pace-timers of the Henry Ford era and the in-house payroll people who are now all gone. Today, all Payroll specialist work for ADP and companies like McDonald’s and Walmart use technology to track production instead of other people. In all these cases people were filling in the role between business people and technology. As technology matures, these roles will be centralized at specialty companies like ADP, Google and SAP and more of this work gets outsource away from most businesses.
What I was alluding to, is that programmers are a necessary evil because so many systems are silos with no easy way to exchange data from one to another. This is what most programmers spend their life doing reporting from other systems.
What Salesforce is doing with their new option to let Salesforce solutions exchange data in pre-defined ways is going to single-handedly cause hundreds if not thousands of programmers to lose their jobs who spent their time getting data between SAP and a CRM .
There will be programmers and they will be paid well for a long time but more and more they will work for a shrinking set of central companies - who will then use the increasing supply of talent to get more for their money. I think Google already pays less than most companies for the same talent because so many people want to work there.
This space is very interesting as it has been one that many companies have tried to enter and have failed. But I think the difference now is that there is a whole new generation that have grown up getting ring-tones on their phones by following complex instructions found online , publishing their own youtube videos and ‘blogging’ on their Facebooks. When this generation starts taking over businesses they are going to have the knowhow to understand structured wikis and data-models and will have the ability to build their own UIs from building blocks - not to mention able to understand a basic query language. This new generation of business people will become the new eco-system that will grow around Salesforce et al. and accelerate the DIY revolution that we are seeing in all areas of technology.
Coghead took too much VC money.
The problem with Coghead. There is no refund if the company goes deadpool. I believe Coghead’s business model could turn developers’ career suicide & development hell. What’s wrong with this company?
You can’t keep it once you make out hardworking product. So, why waste your time & hardworking money built application that belongs to them?
Are you make any money by selling Coghead stuff?
Little or lot of money. Are you self-made millionare creating coghead apps? I don’t think so. You are in Techcrunch. You should keep your life simple. Get cheap domain name and write your own internet apps. Don’t take easy way out with coghead.
Listen Mike’s advice… Look at Edgeio…
I think Coghead should turn around and refund $49 monthly fee. They should create money flowing for developers. Why would take developers idea, give them slave labor money?
Coghead developers = Indonesia kids works in factory. This is what I think. People should think this shit clear. You an adult. You are not child working Coghead factory. So, Tell me what is Coghead’s philosophy?
I recommend AGAINST edgeio.
http://www.uncov.com/2007/12/7.....lexception
Here comes the deadpool!
To Beth’s comment, QuickBase starts at $249/mo. for tools, hosting space, access to lots of pre-built apps, and up to 10 named users. So maybe more expensive to start, but you can get to complete solutions very quickly without the difficulties attributed to the other platforms.
Salesforce was listed and I think QuickBase is much less expensive than getting to apps by force.com. Someone correct me if I’m wrong.
Hello All,
I have been seeing so many companies now offerring this, The one that intrigued me most is LongJump whose platform has been around for more than 4 years. I decided to use it because it gave me more confidence just from the fact that it is from an established CRM vendor not a new found venture funded firm that may bust before the dawn.
Mark
Re: #9 Scott
Scott I agree with you that QuickBase should be listed as well as several other companies when analyzing CogHead. I am a fairly new reader of TechCrunch. My biggest complaint against TechCrunch is that older established companies are rarely mentioned. The TechCrunch analysis of most new companies only compares them against other Web 2.0 companies and not older established companies. A simple Google search for “online database” yields several competitors in this space. I’d like to see TechCrunch reach beyond CrunchBase when referencing competitors. Coghead isn’t even in the game yet. Go to compete.com and plug in CogHead. 7,457 visitors for November. How can a company with 7,457 visitors be talked of in terms of being a player where only one or two companies will be left standing?
Alex, ah if life were only so simple. Things like compete.com are notoriously wrong. If someone could build an accurate way to assess someone else’s web traffic it would be game changing. Coghead has gotten an incredible amount of buzz. I imagine the TechCrunch traffic alone is more than 7,457.
But I do empathize with you and Scott. Techcrunch should be covering you guys.
Alex, I would agree w/ Ray.
Not sure if the data is any better, but according to Alexa Coghead’s traffic has been equal to or greater than Quickbase for much of the last year. I’ve used Quickbase, and it is certainly relevant in this discussion on web app platforms, but its an old product and does not seem to be getting much love these days.
Coghead is a cool concept, and looks to be an acquisition target if they can stay ahead of the crowd. I believe SAP is already an investor. Salesforce is clearly the gorilla in this space, which means its competitors are likely suitors.
It is good to see CogHead getting coverage here. Scott Wyatt (#9) raises the significant points about QuickBase that I was going to mention so no need to repeat. I would just emphasize that they have been at this DIY apps platform business before Salesforce and long before any others mentioned here. They have been successful at it and hence need to be mentioned in any competitive discussion or comparison. They have also had the equivalent of an “affiliate” program for as long.
While the coverage, although cursory, is good to see I disagree with the TechCrunch perspective on this space: “The online database/app creation market is getting crowded, and there is only room for one or two platforms”. More to the point, in previous posts Mike Arrington called Force.com “game-ending” for the rest of us.
If they are right and there is only room for one or two platforms, then the game is already over: QuickBase is already used by 50 of the Fortune 100 and Salesforce, built on top of their own Force.com platform, is already in use by 38,000+ businesses.
However, this is clearly not the case as there is proof of significant demand for a variety of DIY applications platforms that focus on specific areas. Look at Ning, a DIY apps platform designed specifically for building social networking apps – over 100,000 apps built and counting.
I think what we are seeing here in the broader scheme of things is that Self-Service Customization is gradually becoming a requirement across a variety of market segments in both consumer and business software. For more on Self-Service Customization see: http://blog.rollbase.com/2007/.....ation.html
Vendors that understand and embrace this with a particular market focus — such as Salesforce with CRM or Ning with Social apps – have the right approach to foster initial adoption. The trap to avoid is trying to be everything to everyone, and this is where I think we’ll see the winners differentiate themselves over time.
YadaShare is an easy alternative. Its simple and gets the job done. http://www.yadashare.com
I have been involved with solutions such as these since 1999 when QuickBase and a company out of Australia wwere the only players in the market. QuickBase clearly has a strong leg up as the critical factor for any company looking at software continues to be the issue of “Safety” of the provider. The smaller providers may have great technology but larger companies simply won’t put anything close to mission critical apps on a platform owned by smaller vendors. As a non-programmer I have put a number of for-profit and non-profit customers into QuickBase apps in at most a day of work. As to cost - the cost per user after the first 10 drops dramatically. The overall annual cost even at 10 users is less than most nonprofits for example pay for Raiser’s Edge maintenance. I have looked at SalesForce several times over hte years and found that a key issue is that fro an archiitectural point of view they remain a CRM solution trying to open the architecture to enable other apps while QuickBase is an open architecture that gives you significant flexibility in design,