2024 in a nutshell
What an incredible year 2024 has been, so there’s no better time to do our first year in review!
Together, we’ve made remarkable progress in both our product and community. These achievements wouldn’t have been possible without the unwavering support of our amazing customers and community.
Thank you for choosing to build with Squirrel365. Your feedback and collaboration with our product and engineering teams have been invaluable, driving continuous improvement and innovation.
We’re excited to share our successes with you—from groundbreaking new integrations to the growth of our community and learning resources. Here’s to another year of innovation and collaboration!
Word is getting out
The number of people building apps with Squirrel grew by over 30% in 2024
An incredible 8,714 new apps were published
And published content got over 18 million views. That’s an app, created using Squirrel365, being viewed somewhere in the world every 1.75 seconds
Engaging our community
Throughout the year, the Squirrel365 team hosted webinars and posted articles and blogs sharing product updates, use case insights, and how-to’s with our growing community.
The Squirrel365 team use the platform to keep you informed of product updates and news, hints and tips etc. But far more importantly over 63% of the content in 2024 was generated by people like you. The number of members in our online community has grown by 53% in 2024, meaning a much bigger pool of like-minded Squirrel enthusiasts sharing their knowledge and experiences.
If you haven’t joined the community yet, what are you waiting for? Visit the community and log in with your Squirrel365 credentials.
Game changing features
We introduced a tonne of new features in our Winter and Summer releases as we continue to make app building accessible to more than just developers.
Automate PDF and PPTX document generation
In 2024 a primary use case emerged. You told us you were using Squirrel365 to build value calculators. With Squirrel365’s spreadsheet logic engine, it’s the perfect fit for bespoke/custom calculators using what-if style analysis interactive inputs and outputs. We created the PDF/PPTX generator to turn those ROI and pricing calculators into invaluable tools that can automate the creation of PDF documents, PowerPoint slides or Excel Workbooks. Think auto creation of business cases or quotations tailored to the user/prospect/customer.
OAuth for google sheets and Excel Online
A key milestone in democratising app creation is providing the ability to securely source data from online sources that we all have access to. By adding authenticated connectivity to Google Sheets and Excel, we made it possible to browse Google Drive, or One Drive to select a spreadsheet to be used as a live data source for your app.
Not only that but because we’re talking directly to the Google Sheet or Excel document, we can now update and insert rows too! Turn your project into an application with write-back capabilities, no database needed!
Progressive Web Applications (PWA)
PWA’s have been around for a while. Last year saw an increase in their popularity mainly due to app developers growing tired of the high percentages taken when selling apps via app stores. PWA’s allow you to visit a website or web app and install it as application on your device. This felt like a natural fit for Squirrel365 apps so we added this as an option for subscribers to the Builder plan. Customise your app with a name and an icon and you have something that looks and feels like a native app on mobile devices.
Custom code and more
Throughout 2024 we saw an increased demand for complex/highly customised apps. We often solved challenges with custom code to get an app to look a certain way, or do more than is available with standard components. What started as a quick fix for some of our consulting projects made it into the core product to allow the use of use Custom CSS and Javascript.
We also added support for Google Tag Manager so that you can add even more custom code (via tags) to your apps. Need to track conversions, get enhanced analytics, add cookie compliance? Our GTM feature, allows you to do just that!
Where we went…
IBIS
2024 saw the second ever customer influence session conducted at the IBIS Conference. It provided an opportunity to reflect on the features and enhancements that were directly influenced by regular Squirrel users. By the end of 2024 we had managed to deliver 12 out of the 17 top voted enhancements. As always talking to customers proved invaluable and revealed insights that we simply cannot get from data and product analytics alone.
Company catch-ups at The Wave, Bristol
As a 100% remote company it’s nice when we come together.
This year we started meeting at The Wave for company catch ups and workshops. It’s an inland surfing lake that has meeting rooms to hire and a cool café to work from. More recently, we extended this to ‘work together Fridays’. It’s completely optional and gives people a chance to just turn up and work with others. We’ve even had a few customers join us. If you are ever in the Bristol area just let us know as it’s great to work, chat and innovate together over a coffee.
Looking ahead to 2025
A lot of work has happened already, in preparation for our next release. This will include a soft launch of our designer in the browser experience, making it easier for people to get started without having to install anything. For those of us that prefer to use a client tool, the current desktop designer isn’t going anywhere. It’s essentially the same code base so we can ensure feature parity (as much as possible) between the two experiences.
Some of the other cool features to look forward to:
- Image library
- Autosave (cloud saved files and versioning
- Layout containers to support responsive design
- Custom fonts
- And we’ve turned a few of our add-on functions into native functions, making them part of the core product, and improving the experience.
To everyone who has been part of our journey so far — customers, partners, and team members – Congratulations on all the achievements of 2024. We can’t wait to work together to make an even more remarkable 2025.
