Meet the developers behind the app that can save you cash every day

The Windows Phone Store is stocked with tons of exciting apps, but many of us are faced with the tough choice of deciding which ones to buy without blowing our budgets.

Sound familiar? Luckily, the developers of myAppFree can help make things a bit easier. Meet Riccardo Fuzzi and Massimo Caroli of Mr. APPs, the developers behind the super app that can get you the apps you want while also saving you a pretty penny.

Released in December 2012, myAppFree is the first app discovery network for Windows Phone. The way that is works is simple: each day, a premium app that would normally have a price tag attached is featured and becomes available for free download for the next 24 hours. But the savings don’t end there, with an additional section featuring a selection of great apps available at discounted prices. The devs tell us “Finding a paid app to give for free to our users is hard work, that’s why we deal with developers every day to convince them that making an ‘App of the Day’ promotion is one of the best marketing strategy they could do to increase their downloads.”

We had a chat with Riccardo and Massimo to find out more about myAppFree, how it works, and their thoughts on developing for Windows Phone. Read on to find out what they had to say, and get ready to save a bit of your hard-earned cash while still enjoying all of those fantastic apps that you may have been missing out on in the past.

First of all, can you tell us a bit about yourselves?

My name is Riccardo Fuzzi, a mobile developer since 2012, and I’m the founder of myAppFree.

And I’m Massimo Caroli, student at University of Bologna in Italy and also the cofounder of myAppFree.

We started this project in October 2012 and after 2 months of development and testing, we released myAppFree on 5 December 2012.

I’ve worked mostly on web backend and UI/UX while Riccardo focused on core development.

What inspired you to create myAppFree?

We got inspired by similar services on iOS or Android. Nothing was on the market for Windows Phone and we thought that WP users also deserved an “App of the Day” concept.

Also, as developers we found it very hard to promote your own application if you are indie dev. That’s why we’ve been helping developers from all around the world since 2012 to market their products (we’ve worked with more than 2000 developers!)

What do you think of Windows Phone as a platform for developing apps?

It’s the best platform for developing apps. Microsoft did an awesome job giving developers all the tools they need to create an app, from Visual Studio (that’s now with CE, and it’s free!) to the integration with Unity. Also .NET platform (C#+XAML) is a great environment for developing.

The Microsoft Store is not as big as other app stores, but it’s growing faster than any other store in the world. Also the number of users is increasing. I think with Windows 10 the Windows Store will have a considerable growth.

MyAppFree is a great place to discover new apps. How do you choose which apps are featured?

Thank you. We have a team that is in contact with thousands of developers every day. Not every developer accepts to put his app for free with the “App of the Day” concept, so finding one app per day is a hard work. We also try to keep the quality as high as possible, testing all the apps that will be promoted in myAppFree one by one.

Have there been any exciting changes to myAppFree recently?

MyAppFree is near an important milestone: the client for Windows 8.1. MyAppFree for Windows 8.1 was released on April 8th and will bring more deals to our users, not only phone apps but also apps that can run on your tablet or desktop computer.

This is the logical change in expectation of what Windows 10 will bring for Universal App. We are really excited for this new release because we will reach a lot of new users that doesn’t have a Windows Phone as their mobile device.

And finally, can you recommend a few top apps that everyone should try?

Sure, one is OneMusic, a perfect music player for Windows Phone, that was “App of the Day” on December 10, 2014.

A game I love is Violett, which was free on October 15, 2014.

Also I like reading e-books and the best e-reader on Windows is Bookviser Reader, available in a free version and a pro version.

Are you ready to save some cash? Let us know what you think in the comments below, and be sure to give myAppFree a try if you haven’t already. After all, money doesn’t grow on trees and there are so many wonderful apps out there just waiting to be downloaded.