Premises — property operations platform
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Why Premises4 min read

No app store, no install: why a web platform is the right shape for Philippine buildings

Every few weeks someone asks when the app is coming. It is not, and that is a decision rather than a delay.

By the end of this pageYou will know why there is no app, what you get instead, and how to put the workspace on a phone's home screen so it behaves like one.
On this pageThe people on a building's payrollWhat you lose without an appWhat you gainMake it feel like an app anyway
One address, every deviceAnimated
yourbusiness.premises.phone address, always currentOwner · laptopManager · tabletCleaner · old phoneGuard · shared phoneTenant · any browserWe ship a change → everyone has it on the next page load

The people on a building's payroll

An owner with a laptop. A manager with a tablet at reception. Two cleaners with phones that were mid-range four years ago. A guard using a handset the building owns. Thirty tenants with everything from the latest iPhone to a browser on a rented PC. An installed app has to work on all of those, be updated on all of those, and be found in two stores by people who have never typed a search into one.

A web address has none of those problems. It opens where a browser opens, which is everywhere, and it is current the moment the page loads.

What you lose without an app

Push notifications that arrive when the browser is closed. An icon in the store to point at. Offline use. Of these, only notifications matter for a building, and the platform sends them where people already look — email and WhatsApp — rather than asking for a new permission on a new app.

What you gain

  • Nothing to update. We fix it once; you have it on the next page.
  • Nothing to install. A new cleaner starts with the address and a PIN.
  • Nothing to approve. No store review between a fix and your screen.
  • One codebase. Every feature exists once, works the same everywhere, and is tested once.

Make it feel like an app anyway

Add the address to the home screen — Share, then Add to Home Screen on iPhone; menu, then Add to Home screen on Android. You get your logo as an icon, a full-screen window without the browser bar, and a session that stays signed in. Using Premises on every screen has the steps.

If that ever changes. A thin store app that simply wraps the website is possible and would cost nothing in features. It is on the roadmap as "when enough people ask", which so far they have not.

Related

Start here · 3 minOn every screenRead the article →Why Premises · 3 minFast on a 2019 phoneRead the article →Why Premises · 4 minOne database per customerRead the article →
←  One database per customerFast on a 2019 phone  →

Describes the platform as it is today. Something out of date? Tell us. · help 0.12.3