QuickBase Developer Program – We announce our new Platform as a Service (PaaS) in beta today

Today we have announced a new developer program and toolkit for Adobe Flex in  beta.  This is huge news for us, and I want to take a moment and talk about what it is that we are doing.
The QuickBase Development Program is our Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering, that allows independent software developers to build their own custom solutions on top of QuickBase using Adobe Flex.
We really think it’s the best, easiest way for a developer to build their own Software as a Service business. Why?

• It’s an extremely fast development platform. Our customers know how fast it is to build QuickBase applications with sophisticated functionality. Flex is a great front-end for QuickBase; it runs on almost any browser, any operating system, and allows for rich, expressive user experiences.
• The QuickBase platform pre-solves a lot of the drudgework with creating a new offering. Every web app needs – login authentication, user and role permissioning, database access, reports,  an open API, etc.
• Our pricing model. We charge developers based on the resources they use.  Our goal is to keep the pricing low enough to enable developers to release products that can be competitive in the market, and not have to charge a lot per user just to cover their expenses.
• Developers can set their own price, but we take care of the billing. This is actually a huge pain in the neck for developers. Handling financial transactions securely and well can be a time sink for a small organization, especially if they see some success… We already know how to do this, and take away this pain. We’ll bill and collect from your customers, subtract the resource usage, and pay the difference.
• Integration with QuickBooks data – The architecture takes care of QuickBooks integration to these new applications, synching of customers, vendors and employees.
• Access to millions of potential customers.  One difficulty of any new release is to get access to customers. These new applications will be listed on the Intuit Solutions Marketplace, which reaches millions of small businesses looking for QuickBooks add-ons.

We are not charging for the developer program; no fee to join; no fee to list an application with us when it’s ready. We really want the program to be for everyone who has a dream, and some ability to code (or to find someone who can code). Space is limited for our beta, though, and we are taking requests now. Check out our developer program page for more information.

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