Using SwebApps.com, I quickly threw together and launched an iPhone App for Nonprofit Tech 2.0 in the fall of 2009. Once it was available in iTunes, I quickly moved on to other tasks and quite honesty, paid no attention to it for almost a year.

Then when searching for “nonprofit” Apps in iTunes last month, I was surprised to see that the Nonprofit Tech 2.0 App had been downloaded almost 1,000 times and came up rather high in iTunes “nonprofit” search results. The App is nothing fancy. How we look back and chuckle at our dial-up Internet days is similar I think to how we’ll look back at these first generation do-it-yourself iPhone Apps. Nonetheless, tools like SwebApps make it easy and affordable for nonprofits to launch very basic iPhone Apps. Sweb Apps defers set-up fees for the basic version of their iPhone Apps for nonprofits and all you are required to pay is $29 a month to host the App.

I first wrote about SwebApps in October of 2009 [HOW TO: Launch an iPhone App for Your Nonprofit for $29 a Month]. Since then, a few changes to be aware of:

1) They offer a newly designed set of buttons for you to select from, but you can also create and upload your own own buttons like the “Camp Tecumseh” App (see right).
2) The Dashboard is new and improved and much easier to use.
3) The Mobile Web has exploded over the last 12 months, so more than ever it is very important that your organization have a mobile website that you can link to inside of your iPhone App!
4) Android has surpassed iPhone in sales, and Blackberry has a larger marketshare than iPhones, but as this fun and colorful iconographic demonstrates, 99.4% of all smartphone App downloads in 2009 were iPhone Apps.
5) SwebApps are compatible for download on iPads which weren’t even on the market 12 months ago. Mobile technology changes and evolves at hyperspeed these days!

Related Links:
Webinar: How Nonprofits Can Successfully Utilize Group Texting, Mobile Websites, and Smartphone Apps
Mobile Marketing Best Practices for Nonprofit Organizations
HOW TO: Launch an iPhone App for $29 a Month
HOW TO: Launch a Mobile Website for $8 a Month