Published a Gmail add-on đź’Ś
by CorentinIt's the most instructive software development and validation process that I have made so far.
If you are looking for publishing a Gmail add-on, be prepared! It took us nearly half a year, with countless back and forth with the documentation and the Google teams.
PS: I personally want to thank you, Nicolas, from the Google Team which helped us a lot in the process. Nicolas, if you read this, thank you a thousand times.
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Thank you for sharing. What were the biggest barriers? Getting things approved with the Google team? Also, if you were to start over would you recommend for others to go the add-on route or the chrome extension route? Thank you
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Thanks for asking!
TLDR; It’s way easier to start with a Chrome extension and validate the market!
# Biggest barriers
## Development side
First, you have to learn how to actually build a Gmail add-on. It might seems stupid, but building a Gmail add-on was something totally different from what I have experienced before.The UI uses a Card system [1], which is totally different from other Gsuite add-ons and brings a lot of constraints. You can’t run JS on the frontend. And backend side, you haven’t much freedom as well.
Once you know a bit more, you’ll see that it’s even more limited than you had imagined. I highly recommend to start with an MVP (with a capital M), then see how you can improve the add-on after being validated.
Then, when you know what to do and how to do it, you start the validation process.
## Validation side
The Gmail Add-ons advisor team shared with us a Google Doc to frame the whole validation process. Here starts the back and forth.
They are very meticulous. They will test everything, several times. And give you feedbacks on every single part of the add-on. For instance, we had two buttons doing the same action at different place of the UI (footer + menu) they told us to keep only one.
Gmail add-ons also have a particular authentication flow, which you have to implement in case your add-on fetch external data (user profile, etc.). When I had to follow the auth-flow, I honestly felt I was in the middle of a desert! The documentation was terrible. Nothing on Stackoverflow. I performed Google queries with no hits…
But at the end, feedbacks from the Gmail Team are mostly common sense.
# Gmail add-ons vs. Chrome extensions
They are two completely different platforms. A Chrome extension has almost no limits, which is part of why they are so common and easy to develop. While Gmail add-ons have so much constraints.
Chrome extensions run: âś… HTML, âś… CSS, âś… JS
Gmail add-ons: 🚫 HTML, 🚫 CSS, ❎ JS (backend-only)As a quick example, we end up using images to add simple buttons to the UI, just because we couldn’t change the border and the background of an html button. And we did so like all popular add-ons
Also, Gmail add-ons have a very strong validation process. While you can publish a Chrome extension in less than an hour (from 0 to 1).
So, in my opinion, you should think about a Chrome extension first. Then see how a Gmail add-on can be part of the process. Otherwise, you will spend countless hours in a development process, which might end up being refused by the Gmail team (or worst not have users at all).
[1] https://developers.google.com/gsuite/add-ons/concepts/cards
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Thank you for such an in-depth answer. This should be a blog post by itself. I'm wishing the best of luck for you and your product :)
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I would be very interested to know the answer to this.
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Congrats! I absolutely love your logo.
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Thank you so much. It’s custom made by @Cuireuncroco
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Congratulations Corentin on your achievement!! Looks interesting.
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Congrats on the launch! It's a competitive niche so I'm glad you are finding customers. I have recently learned how to make chrome extensions so it is definitely different than making a web app.
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Great product! Looks straight forward and without much friction.
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Congrats on publishing! I'll check it out.
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Just curious since I have heard this mentioned by a couple people on the podcast now.
Will this change affect you at all: https://download.cnet.com/news/google-may-charge-thousands-to-audit-third-party-gmail-apps/
