The services every Orbulus app is built with
Every app Orbulus builds runs on the same short list of services. Here’s each one, what it does in your app, when it’s switched on, and what, if anything, you need to do.
The AI engineers don’t pick new services for each app. Every app starts from the same Orbulus starter, which already has the services below built in, and your wizard answers switch each one on or off. The only account you bring is your own payments account, and only if you take payments.
- Authorisation
- Registration and login, when users need to sign in
- Payments
- Payments into your own account, when customers pay
- Email
- Email from your app, when it sends email
- Data storage
- Your app’s data, when it stores any
- Contact form
- Visitors’ messages to your inbox, when a page invites them to get in touch
- Hosting
- A home on the web, for every app
- Monitoring
- Your app’s errors and performance, recorded as it runs, for every app except a simple site
- Code checks
- Security and code-quality scans on every change, for every app except a simple site
- Source control
- Your app’s code and the history of every change, for every app
- Messages to you
- Updates about your apps in Slack, when you connect it
Authorisation, for registration and login
Authorisation lets people register for your app, log in and keep a profile. It’s part of the starter Orbulus maintains, so the AI engineers build your features around it rather than writing their own. When your app emails a signed-in user, it takes their address from their account, never from something typed into a form.
If you answer no to “Do users need to sign in?”, your app is built without registration or login at all.
Payments
Your customers pay on a secure, hosted payment page, and the money goes into your own payments account, which you connect to Orbulus once. A one-off purchase gives the customer access for good. A monthly subscription gives access for as long as the subscription is active. You can also make only one kind of user pay. Orbulus takes its fee from each payment.
The wizard also offers “Users pay each other”. Payments between users aren’t built yet, so an app with that answer is built without payments for now.
Email
Email from your app, such as confirmations and notifications, goes out through an email service Orbulus runs, with a sender name for your app. There’s no email service for you to sign up to. If your app doesn’t send email, it’s built with email switched off.
Data storage
If your app stores data, such as accounts, bookings or anything your users save, it keeps it in a database Orbulus sets up for your app. A site that stores nothing has no database.
When a page invites visitors to get in touch, the AI engineers build a contact form that sends each message to Orbulus, which emails it to you with the visitor’s address as the reply-to. It works on every kind of app, including a simple site, and it doesn’t put your email address on the page.
Hosting
Every app lives at its own web address, and Orbulus sets up the hosting and deploys each new version for you. A simple site is served as fast static pages. An app with registration, payments, email or data gets a web front end with its own API behind it.
Monitoring
An app with more than simple pages records its errors and performance as it runs, so problems can be traced and fixed. A simple site has no server of its own, so there’s nothing to monitor.
Code checks
Every change to your app’s code is scanned for security problems and code quality before it’s merged. The scans report what they find; they don’t stop a change on their own. A simple site isn’t scanned.
Source control
Your app’s code is kept in a private repository, with a record of every change the AI engineers make. That history is what lets a change be built separately, tried on Test, and merged only when you approve it.
Messages to you
If you use Slack, connect it on the Platform page and Orbulus will message you there about your apps, as well as by email. You can disconnect it on the same page at any time.
What isn’t included
These are the services Orbulus builds in today. The wizard doesn’t offer connections to other services, such as a calendar, a CRM or a spreadsheet.