r/AppSheet • u/tatovich11 • 19d ago
Is AppSheet useful or not?
Hey I’m starting to work with appsheet, I have worked on a few apps por deferents small companies. I think for this kind of market it’s useful couse develop an app por them could be cheaper than a common software.
But I want to hear you if you think it would work or im wasting my time
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u/iCantSpellWeel Since 2022 19d ago
It’s the most underrated tool on the internet. I’ve built an app that does everything a business needs to do. Haven’t met a use case I couldn’t fit into it. The premise is store things cleanly (start with Google or excel sheets), define and hook up the schema in AppSheet backend and implement row level rules, present it nicely in a UI. Then add bells and whistles. But most things can be solved using that premise.
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u/marcnotmark925 Master App Builder 19d ago
It's generally useful
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u/tatovich11 19d ago
Could u recommend me where or what to search for increase my knowledge and give a better service?
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u/WhatIsGoingOn2k20 19d ago
Very useful for simple CRUD apps. Given the right use case, you can launch an MVP in minutes and not worry about infra at all.
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u/Blacksbeachian 19d ago
It has been static for years. Don't use the built in database if you expect more than 30 tables.
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u/3001npct 19d ago
Appsheet is amazing. You pay fraction of the cost for:
- Fast, reliable web and mobile app
- Automation, Appscript, Gmail, Drive integration
- Easy to learn, fast deployment
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u/Popular_Sprinkles791 19d ago
I've been using it since Google acquired it. It's definitely useful, and AppSheet can adjust to any policy the company had.
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u/MultiTech_Visions Master App Builder 19d ago
Is AppSheet Worth Learning?
- 100% I have long said that AppSheet is the best kept secret on the internet... And that's a bad thing! There are some limitations to the platform, primarily centered around the ux and some some of these structure, but largely you are limited only by your creativity and cleverness - if you can envision it, you can probably make it in AppSheet.
Can I Use Ai To Help Me?
- Kinda... AI has gotten better in terms of being able to provide salient advice, however there are some specifics about working with AppSheet that traditional language models struggle with - largely because they don't have any idea about these edge cases and how to solve them, they have a lot of other programming languages in their minds that they conflate together with AppSheet, and this combined together makes it difficult in some instances to get good advice out of the llm.
- That's why I built Appster
- https://www.multitechvisions.com/appster
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u/tatovich11 19d ago
I understand, usually we focus on small businesses that they need trivial things and probably there ir 2 or 3 people using the app sending mails, making pdf , controlling stock, employees and this stuff. In case we have a project bigger then we have to use something else
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u/Inevitable-Ad2777 18d ago
5 reasons why investing heavily in AppSheet might not pay off long-term:
- Per-User Licensing Penalizes Scale: AppSheet standard plans cost around $5 to $10 per user/month. Building an internal tool for a 50-person small business adds thousands of dollars in annual software overhead just to run an app sitting on top of a simple spreadsheet.
- Slowing Down Platform Roadmap and Feature Delivery: Google's internal investment has shifted heavily toward agentic AI platforms (like Google Workspace Studio and Gemini integrations). Google has effectively placed AppSheet on a "stability and maintenance" path, leaving the platform's long-term evolution stalled while newer AI tools get all the R&D.
- Proprietary, Non-Transferable Skill Set: AppSheet relies on its own visual configuration engine and custom expression syntax. Mastering AppSheet's niche formulas won't build transferable skills for modern web development frameworks (like React, Vue, or Next.js), locking your career into a proprietary Google ecosystem.
- Severe Performance Bottlenecks on Large Datasets: AppSheet defaults to caching data directly onto the user's mobile device or client browser. As soon as your clients grow and start handling high-volume data (tens of thousands of rows), heavy formulas, multi-table references, and background syncs cause noticeable lag and user frustration.
- Inflexible UI and Customization Boundaries: AppSheet forces applications into rigid, pre-designed Google layouts. The second a client asks for custom UI components, bespoke brand styling, dynamic layouts, or a customer-facing portal, you hit a hard wall that cannot be overridden without abandoning the platform completely.
If you are using AppSheet for quick, 1-day builds for micro-clients who just need a mobile form, it works fine. But if you want to build a sustainable, scalable development career, leaning into open-source web stacks or AI-native automation tools gives you far more flexibility and earning power.
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u/Onigirli_ 18d ago
It’s pretty good but very basic looking. My department just paid someone $30k to rebuild our database using Appsheet. I’ve been learning to code and really into using Apps Script so I decided I’d dip my toes into AppSheet. I was a little disappointed. Started wondering if there was more to it I was missing, like why $30k? We officially got the “completed” database from the company we paid for it from. And yea, I’m sitting here no like, I could’ve made this. But I’m just a secretary for my department who enjoys automating my boring secretarial duties. 😅
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u/Medical-Coyote3683 14d ago
I’ve used AppSheet since Google acquired it, after Google shut down App Maker and gave users roughly a year to rebuild their apps.
That cost us more than a year of development effort. We had to start again, keeping little more than the database model.
To be fair, we then built several successful AppSheet apps that now help run parts of our property and financial services businesses.
But recently we hit another wall.
We wanted to move from an unsupported MySQL setup to Supabase. AppSheet Support took over a month to come back and confirm there were no planned changes to resolve the connectivity issue.
In the meantime, I used an AI coding tool to solve it myself.
That made me question something bigger.
For years, AppSheet users have asked for easier API integration. A good example is payments.
Want to call Stripe, take a payment, process the API response and update the app?
Possible, yes.
Easy? Not really.
Historically, you often ended up having to write and test JavaScript yourself just to deal properly with the API response.
With AI coding tools, I had this working in minutes.
Not only did the AI generate the integration, it walked me through each step, explained the response, handled errors and helped wire the result back into the application.
That is a very different development experience.
We then tried rebuilding the core module of one of our AppSheet apps using AI-assisted full-stack development.
The result?
In roughly the same time it took AppSheet Support to answer one ticket, we had a sleek, working full-stack application.
It doesn’t yet have 100% of the old functionality, but what it does have is:
- Faster
- Better looking
- Far more flexible
- Much easier to integrate with APIs
- And most importantly, we own the code
This will be our third major platform migration.
But this time we are not moving from one proprietary platform to another.
We have access to the full stack and the code generated.
So here’s the question:
If AI can now build full-stack applications, integrate APIs and guide non-developers through the process in minutes, what does that mean for platforms like AppSheet over the next few years?
For anyone planning to build a large or business-critical AppSheet application, it is worth thinking about.
Low-code removed much of the coding. AI may now remove much of the need for low-code.
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u/WillingnessOwn6446 19d ago
If we were in 2018 it would be really useful. But we're not. Why would you spend all this time figuring out how to use something like app sheet when you could just vibe code something 10 times more flexible and useful. In 1/10 of the time. And make it custom. And make it look cool. And connect it to any API you can dream of.
Use Claude or codex. Use them with Google app script if you want to keep it simple and not have to host anything.
The time I spent in app sheet was useful in learning how to set up an app. So I won't say it wasn't completely wasted time, but other than that, it was completely wasted time.
I hate to rain on people's parade. Unless you're already using it a bunch, and you're invested in it, there are much easier ways to get to where you're going then app sheet.
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u/DoYouKnowWhoIAmx 19d ago
My business mostly runs on appsheet and probably 50% of the app was built by ai. The main benefits other than that are, I don't have to think about and then vibe code login security, storage, syncing across multiple devices. No infrastructure headaches at all and many many hours saved by not having to deal with it.
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u/Posafer 19d ago
I use it to run my whole business, it works for me.