Ask Bob for a dashboard and he builds you a page. Ask him for a tool your team fills in every day and he builds you an app. Both open from a link, both are hosted by HeyBob, and both take one message to ask for. They are not the same thing, and picking the right one saves you credits and a rebuild.
The short version: a page is something you look at. An app is something people work in.
A page: your numbers, kept current
A page is a live view of information Bob gathers for you. A pipeline board for the office TV. This week's calendar. Every open order and whether its parts arrive on time. It has its own address, so you can bookmark it, pin it in a channel or leave it up on a screen.
You ask for one the way you would ask a colleague:
- “Make me a page of this quarter’s revenue and pipeline for the office TV. Refresh it every weekday morning.”
- “Give sales a page that shows which orders are on time and which are waiting on a late supplier.”
- “A page of my calendar for the next seven days, kept current.”
Where the data comes from. The tools your team already connected to Bob, such as HubSpot, Google Sheets or your calendar. Connecting one takes a sentence (“connect HubSpot”) and a sign-in, and 3,200+ apps are available, so there are no keys to paste and no code to write. Bob reads what he needs and builds the page from it. It stays fresh on a schedule you choose, like every weekday at 7am. A page that reads straight from one connected tool can also refresh itself when someone opens it and the numbers are more than 15 minutes old. Every page shows when it was last updated, so nobody has to guess.
Who can see it. Everyone signed in to your workspace. If you want someone outside to see one page, like a client checking on a project, the page owner or an admin can turn on a public link. It shows that page and nothing else, nobody can change anything through it, and you can switch it off any time.
A page can take simple input, too. Add a form, like an equipment request or a commission request, and teammates can submit entries from the page. You see every entry in the HeyBob console and can download them as a spreadsheet, and Bob can read them and act on them.
What it costs. Building a page is one job for Bob, priced like any other. Keeping it costs nothing on its own: there is no hosting fee. Each scheduled refresh is a job, and a refresh when someone opens a page is 20 credits.
An app: a small tool your team works in
An app is a small web tool with its own saved data. People open it, add things, change things, and come back to find their work still there. An expense tracker. A time-off request board. A parts log the shop floor fills in.
- “Build us an expense tracker. People add expenses with a category, and the front page shows this month’s totals.”
- “Time off lives in DMs and a spreadsheet nobody updates. Build us a real tracker.”
Where it lives. Each app gets its own address, like expenses-4k7p.heybobapps.com, and its own separate storage. No other app, and no other company, shares it. Bob hosts it, so there is nothing to install or run. When nobody is using it, it goes to sleep and wakes up in a couple of seconds when someone opens it.
Who can use it. Your workspace members by default. You can narrow it to specific people in the console, or make it public. Bob asks you to confirm before he makes an app public, because public means anyone with the link.
Where its data comes from. From the people using it, and from the data you already have. Most app builders start you from an empty database and leave you to wire up your business tools. A Bob app can use the tools your team already connected to Bob from day one, reading them and writing to them if you allow it, through the connection of the person who asked for it. That person approves each tool before the app goes live. So build a shared app from an account whose data the whole team is allowed to see. An app can also run small jobs on a timer, as often as every 15 minutes.
What it costs. Building it is a job for Bob. Keeping it running is billed daily from your workspace credits: 30 credits a day, plus 10 for each hour it is awake, plus a little more if it stores over 1 GB. At the entry plan’s rate ($75 for 40,000 credits), an app people use for a few hours each workday comes to about 1,560 credits a month, about $3. One that is busy around the clock is about 8,100 credits, about $15. It comes out of the plan you already pay for, not a new subscription. Timed jobs add to that: one that runs every 15 minutes adds about 7,300 credits a month. If your workspace runs out of credits, its apps pause with all their data kept, and come back when credits do.
Which one to ask for
| Page | App | |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | Seeing numbers and status | Entering and changing records |
| Data comes from | Your connected tools, refreshed | The people using it, saved in the app |
| Input from people | A simple form, for workspace members | Full screens to add, edit and track |
| Who can open it | Your workspace, plus an optional read-only public link | Your workspace, specific people, or anyone with the link |
| Cost to keep | No hosting fee, you pay for refreshes | 30 credits a day, plus 10 per awake hour: about $3 a month for light use |
A quick test: if the information already lives in a tool you use, ask for a page. If the information only exists once people type it in, ask for an app.
The sales order board is a page: the orders are already in your ERP and the emails are already in Gmail, and sales just needs to see them. The time-off tracker is an app: nobody’s request exists until they enter it. When you are not sure, start with a page. It costs nothing to keep, and if your team outgrows it, Bob can build the app.
What they do not do yet
We would rather you hear the limits from us.
Pages
- A page shows its last refresh, not live data. It is as fresh as its schedule makes it.
- Forms are for your workspace. People viewing a page through its public link can read it, but cannot submit the form.
- A form holds up to 5,000 entries.
Apps
- An app does not know who is using it yet. So there are no per-person views, roles or approvals inside an app.
- Signing in to a private app goes through Slack today. Teams that use HeyBob without Slack can still build and use public apps.
- No file uploads, no email sent from an app, and no custom domains yet.
- Outsiders cannot create their own login. An app is open to your workspace, to people you pick, or to anyone with the link.
- Bob cannot read or edit an app’s data from your chat yet. He can build it, change it, and read its logs.
- A sleeping app takes a couple of seconds to wake up.
Try one
Send Bob a message that starts with “make me a page” or “build us an app,” and describe it the way you would to a colleague. He shows his work as he goes, and he asks before anything goes public.