the death of an application...

how to future proof your projects when apps die.

In April 2019, I created a video called Building and Deploying a Simple Web App with GitHub, Leaflet, and Unubo.

This video gave a quick implementation of an app called Unubo, since then the developers lanucned Unubo 2.0 and have since moved on to other projects (as best as I can tell).

This is not the first time I've experienced this. Wavium was a fantastic app for newsletters and community building that bridged the gap  between mailchimp and blog newsletters - they are also gone.

I did a review of Wavium and said that I did not believe that someone should build their entire brand on one platform or one application. But therein is the challenge and the choice of creators of all strides.

My top 5 suggestions to future proof your applications  

1. Do your homework. See what kind of track record your platform has. How long have they been around? Do they have plans for the future? Passion projects are great, but you can't rely on a passion project if you are building your brand.
2. Fight to remove the middle man. So many applications act as a middle man between you and your audience. Jenna Kutcher, one of my favorite marketing and branding experts warns about this constantly. If you can't remove the middle man, work to diversify your platforms so if instagram shuts down tomorrow, you still can connect with your audience.
3. plan an exit strategy. Make sure you document well as you develop your application. This way, if your api goes bust, you can isolate that area of your application and make a plan for the future.
4. free doesn't mean open source. Often the allure of free temps even the best of us. Open source projects generally have good track records. InkScape and Qgis come to mind as projects where users and developers alike collaborate to make their projects better.  
5. hack it yourself. This is perhaps the biggest lesson I've learned. When in doubt, make it yourself. Obviously I can't compete with Mailchimp or instagram, but their implementation of a process might not fit my needs. In those cases I've used other tools to create solutions that work for my situation.

You can choose to be cutting edge, go with the new app, invest and hope it works. If it goes away, you will lose all your work and potentially your audience. By thinking ahead you can save time and effort when an app dies.