Stamplay: An easy, IFTTT-like way to create your own Web apps

While growing numbers of children learn to code in school, if not in kindergarten, there’s still a lot of we grown-ups whose skills are rudimentary at best and don’t go much farther than basic HTML editing.

Although creating sophisticated software and understanding encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism will most probably remain unreachable for many of us, there are still some easier things that non-developers can do.

One of the products that can significantly ease creation of simple web applications is Stamplay, a recent Seedcamp alumni that is working on what the company calls “IFTTT for apps.” Living up to this comparison, the service allows anyone to near-instantly build an application in the cloud using Lego-like modules with all the complicated back-end stuff being taken care of automatically.

Stamplay offers integration with social networks, so you can implement Facebook or Twitter authorization in one click, as well as services like YouTube, MailChimp, SendGrid, Google Drive and so on.

Working remarkably like IFTTT, Stamplay lets users to first choose the modules they want to work with — for example, “User,” “Email,” and “Form.” The next step is to combine them using simple rules and triggers — let’s say, if user signs up, the app sends them an email and offers to fill out a form. All you have to do next is to play with front-end design and share the link to your app with the audience.

Stamplay, which has just recently come out of closed beta, has a lot of plans for the near future like releasing new components in partnership with other services and improving the complexity of rules that can be defined. However even in the current stage the service can be used for things ranging from employee day-off requests forms, to MVPs for early-stage startups, to more exotic stuff that gets featured in the startup’s blog.

Founded in 2012 by Italian entrepreneurs Nicola Mattina and Giuliano Iacobelli, Stamplay was initially aimed solely at marketing specialists as a tool for campaign building. However in September 2013 the founders pivoted the startup to target a wider audience of front-end developers, designers, and other HTML-savvy users.

The company has attracted €150,000 ($203,000) in funding to date, and currently is in the look-out for a bigger round to further develop the product

➤ Stamplay