Why Kintone

Why choose Kintone?

Reason 1

Customized business apps for every role & industry

How many companies use Kintone?

Kintone Customers by Industry as of December 2023

Reason 2

No coding or special skills required to use

No special skills or programming knowledge are required to use Kintone. Whatever your department, position, or level of IT skills–if you can use a mouse, you can jump straight in and start building your perfect software solution using Kintone.

Reason 3

Drag-and-drop your way to custom apps in a flash

Setting up custom business software typically comes with a high price tag and a long wait.

With Kintone, not only can you build business apps to track your data and workflows without any coding, it also takes a fraction of the time of traditional software development. Start building with drag-and-drop, by importing a spreadsheet, or by customizing a template from Kintone’s library of sample apps.

Reason 4

Flexibility and scalability to handle any type of business

1,000+ new apps built and deployed every day!

Kintone’s customizability lets you create custom business apps to track an almost endless variety of data, tasks and workflows. You can easily make edits and improvements with just a few clicks so that your apps are always optimized for your team’s needs.

Plug-ins and Integrations

You can expand the functionality of Kintone with plug-ins and extensions or using JavaScript/CSS files and API integration.

Reason 5

Industry-wide recognition

  • Recognized as Top 50 IT Management Products for 2023 Best Software Awards

  • Kintone has been recognized by Capterra for 2023 Best Value product

  • Software Advice recognizes Kintone as a top three FrontRunners product in 2023

  • Top Rated 2022 award for one of the most trusted and reliable products

Quick comparison of
Kintone vs. other options

See how Kintone stacks up against commonly used alternatives like spreadsheets, pre-built software solutions, and traditional custom software development.

Kintone

Spreadsheets

Off-the-shelf
software

Traditional
custom software
development

Functionality

Does the system have the bare minimum of functions or a sophisticated variety of functions for different types of roles and departments?

One platform with a wide variety of functions—with database apps to replace your spreadsheets, built-in collaboration features to replace email and chat, and extensions to integrate your other systems, Kintone can be your home base for all the aspects of your work.

While spreadsheets on a basic level are flexible and easy to use for a variety of purposes, they’re not ideal for collaboration. The result is often a tangled web of error-ridden spreadsheets sent back and forth via email and chat.

Off-the-shelf, specialized software comes with the benefit of pre-assembly. These software solutions often offer highly-developed features for a specific use case but provide limited customizability for other functions.

If you’re building a custom software tool from scratch, the system can be adapted to your exact needs and specifications.

Expandability

Are you able to expand usage of the system later on without the added costs of having to create a new one or start from scratch?

Kintone’s library of apps comes with more than 100 ready-to-use templates for a variety of tasks, roles, and departments. In addition, through plug-ins, JavaScript/CSS, and API integration, you can connect Kintone with external systems to expand the native functionality of Kintone.

Many pre-built software tools are specialized for a single function or department and don’t offer the customizability to expand usage to other use cases. Patching together multiple tools to get work done causes its own set of problems, including data and communication silos.

A custom software tool can be adapted to suit additional functions as needed.

User Friendliness

Is the system easy to use for people across different levels of technical skill?

With Kintone you can build out clear and easy-to-follow workflows for all of your team’s data, tasks, and processes. Kintone empowers people of all technical levels to customize the business apps they need to manage every workflow, no coding required.

With Kintone you can build out clear and easy-to-follow workflows for all of your team’s data, tasks, and processes. Kintone empowers people of all technical levels to customize the business apps they need to manage every workflow, no coding required.

Spreadsheets, while easy to customize, aren’t ideal for collaboration. Whether it’s version control, security issues, or just keeping track of all the files, spreadsheets typically cause a few key problems for team data sharing.

Many specialized software tools come with their own learning curves. If your team is using several different tools to get their work done, not only do those subscription fees add up, it can take a lot more time to learn how all the bells and whistles work—if you even need them.

While a custom software build means you can create things exactly the way you’d like, the team developing the tool often aren’t the end users. This means that getting the tool built just right might take a few iterations.

Speed and Cost of Build

Can you get the system up and running quickly with minimal costs?

No coding skills or technical knowledge are required to use Kintone, and you can build your own business app in as little as a few minutes, a few hours, or a few days. On average, our customers are able to set up an entire workspace of apps within one to three months.

Off-the-shelf software can be quick to launch since the tools are already built out, but some come with initial implementation costs.

Building a software system from scratch can cost considerable time and money. On average, building an app through traditional software development methods takes seven to nine months from concept to deployment.

Speed and Cost of Changes

Is it easy and cost-effective to make updates as your needs and processes change?

Updating your Kintone apps is just as quick as building them—you can make changes with just a few clicks using Kintone’s drag-and-drop interface.

Pre-packaged software is typically difficult to customize or change, which means your team may need to adapt the way you work to fit the limitations of the system.

Even if you’re just making slight changes to your custom built system, making updates requires additional time and money. Maintaining the system and keeping things running smoothly can also add additional costs.

Functionality

Does the system have the bare minimum of functions or a sophisticated variety of functions for different types of roles and departments?

Kintone

Spreadsheets

Off-the-shelf
software

Traditional
custom software development

Expandability

If you want to do more things during operation, you can reduce the management cost by adding functions to the system you are currently using rather than introducing a new system.

Kintone

Spreadsheets

Off-the-shelf
software

Traditional
custom software development

User Friendliness

In the case of a system used by a team, whether it is easy to use for people of various ages and people in the field who use it every day is one of the important points of operation and penetration.

Kintone

Spreadsheets

Off-the-shelf
software

Traditional
custom software development

Speed and Cost of Build

If you can quickly reflect the business improvements you have come up with in the system, your business will not be delayed.

Kintone

Spreadsheets

Off-the-shelf
software

Traditional
custom software development

Speed and Cost of Changes

If the system can be changed flexibly and quickly according to the work that changes over time, there will be no gap with the needs of the site.

Kintone

Spreadsheets

Off-the-shelf
software

Traditional
custom software development