Zoho announced this morning significant upgrades to Catalyst by Zoho, its development platform, and introduced Zoho Apptics, a new application analytics tool aimed at professional developers.

This announcement was made at its annual Zoholics conference in Austin, Texas.

Zoho’s latest developments represent a pivotal shift in how custom applications are built and analyzed, providing developers with more cohesive and comprehensive tools. Raju Vegesna, Chief Evangelist at Zoho, explained the company’s approach, saying, “Developers have been challenged by the need to assemble custom solutions from disparate tools. Our aim with these enhancements is to offer a complete, trusted toolkit that supports developers from the project start through to completion.”

Catalyst by Zoho, a platform that facilitates the rapid construction, testing, and deployment of full-stack, ready-for-market apps, now offers new features aimed at simplifying development processes. These include:

• Signals: A tool for managing events from various sources, routing them to appropriate handlers.
• NoSQL Database: A flexible database system that supports various data types and scales dynamically, accommodating growth as needed.
• Slate: A service for creating customized user interfaces using popular web frameworks.
• CI/CD Pipeline: A system that automates testing and deployment processes, reducing time to market.

Alongside enhancements to Catalyst, Zoho unveiled Zoho Apptics, an analytics platform designed to integrate seamlessly into existing development workflows. Apptics helps companies develop data-driven strategies by providing comprehensive analytics on app usage, performance, and user engagement. The platform offers a unique feature that allows direct interaction with users for ratings and updates and includes an integrated management system for app store reviews. Prioritizing privacy, Apptics ensures that user data is handled securely, with strict compliance to industry standards.

Zoho Apptics is now available globally, supporting multiple platforms including Android, iOS, macOS, and others, with plans to expand to web analytics. It offers a free tier and a professional tier, which starts at $62 per month when billed annually.

Zoho also reiterated its commitment to user privacy with its Zoho Privacy Pledge, emphasizing that the company operates without an ad-revenue model and maintains control over its data centers to ensure security and privacy.

These updates and new tools from Zoho are designed to streamline the development process for businesses of all sizes, fostering efficiency and innovation in application development.