Appfront works as an app developer for organisations in Aalsmeer, from growers and flower exporters around Royal FloraHolland to air freight and cold-chain companies serving Schiphol. We build native iOS and Android apps, cross-platform builds in React Native or Flutter, and the accompanying backends. We work from our Amsterdam office, with sessions on site in Aalsmeer where that is useful.
Aalsmeer is not a typical SME municipality. The town is home to Royal FloraHolland, the world's largest flower auction, and sits directly south of Schiphol. Around it has grown a dense cluster of growers, flower exporters, cold-chain carriers, air freight forwarders and agri-tech companies. Building an app here is different from a project in a city centre: volumes are large, deadlines often run by the day (fresh flowers wait for no one), temperature and shelf-life recording is strictly required, and the supply chain almost always extends beyond a single company.
At Appfront we build apps for ornamental horticulture, logistics and agri-tech that take that context into account. Strategy, design, code and release management come from one team, so advice and delivery never drift apart. Whether you are a grower needing a handheld app for the shop floor, an exporter wanting to combine a customer portal with the order book, or a cold-chain carrier wanting to record chain temperatures on mobile, we adapt our role to your request.
We are vendor-independent: we build for the tools you already use, or advise on a new setup if that suits you better. Code and infrastructure sit on your own accounts, so you are never dependent on Appfront to carry on.
Apps for stock management, nursery stocktaking, trolley and stacking cart registration, price tracking or your own auction platform for direct trade with buyers. With integration with FloraHolland data and your existing ERP or crop administration.
Cold-chain track and trace, sensor readings per pallet or roll container, mobile HACCP recording and alerts when temperatures drift. Often combined with transport software and TMS integrations for air freight and road transport.
Apps for climate control, crop monitoring, irrigation or cultivation data. IoT gateways, sensor integrations and dashboards that keep working in a greenhouse where Wi-Fi sometimes drops out. For agri-tech start-ups heading towards their first serious release, and for established greenhouse growers looking to expand their product portfolio.
Apps for dock and truck scheduling, customs documentation, AWB integrations, slot management and driver support at Schiphol. Built to be robust in demanding conditions, hosted in EU cloud, with attention to the short time windows that are standard in air freight.
We deliver working apps into your own App Store and Play Store accounts. The code lives in your own Git repository, and backend infrastructure runs under your own cloud account wherever possible. No lock-in to us, no lock-in to a single vendor: your team can take over whenever you choose.
Apps for ornamental horticulture, cold chain and air cargo are not the same as consumer apps. Tight time windows, supply-chain partners who each run their own systems, temperature and shelf-life logging, IoT gateways in greenhouses: these are all requirements that call for a developer who recognises them.
We are not a consultancy machine with hundreds of staff, but nor are we a single freelancer who leaves you in the lurch halfway through. What we do offer is mature work: direct conversations with your architect, delivery through a reliable CI/CD pipeline, and ongoing maintenance for as long as you need it.
What we do for clients in and around Aalsmeer, from first exploration through to release in both stores and ongoing maintenance.
Native iPhone and iPad apps for scenarios where performance, security or hardware access matter.
Native Android apps, including for rugged handhelds used in the greenhouse or on the quay.
Cross-platform builds from a single codebase for both stores. Suited to most B2B apps in ornamental horticulture and logistics.
Apps that let traders bid and buy quickly, integrated with your auction platform.
Grower apps for stocking, batch administration, price tracking and order books, synchronised with your cultivation system.
Temperature per pallet, HACCP recording, alerts on deviations. Often integrated with transport software.
Mobile client portal with order history, available batches, price agreements and delivery status, multilingual where needed.
Apps for climate control, sensor readings and crop monitoring in greenhouses, with IoT gateways and EU cloud hosting.
Aalsmeer has its own ecosystem: ornamental horticulture, air cargo and cold chain around Schiphol, plus a growing agri-tech scene. Our clients usually fall into one of these profiles.
Auction participants, traders, service providers and software vendors around Royal FloraHolland. Apps for bidding, stock visibility, transaction history and connections to auction data, built for traders and their teams who are active every morning, either clocking in or bidding on the screen auction.
Exporters supplying Germany, the United Kingdom, France or further afield. Customer portals, B2B order books, price list apps and logistics planning in one place: multilingual, connectable to customs documentation, and designed around the rhythm of the fresh produce market.
Growers who want to connect their greenhouse management software with mobile tools for the shop floor: growing schedules, irrigation, crop protection and stock control. Often integrated with climate systems, ERP and cultivation administration. We build or integrate, depending on what is already in place.
Road hauliers, air freight forwarders and 3PL players around Schiphol Cargo. Apps for drivers, dock scheduling, cold-chain temperature, AWB documentation and track and trace for shippers. Often integrated with TMS, ERP or port and cargo systems, with attention to short time windows.
Builders of greenhouses, climate controllers, sensor platforms and software for glasshouse horticulture. For start-ups wanting their first app alongside their hardware, and for established suppliers looking to expand their software offering. Typically IoT, dashboards, edge components and EU data residency.
Freight forwarders, handling agents, customs brokers and air cargo IT vendors around Schiphol. Apps for planning, slot management, customs workflows and driver support. We respect the existing IATA, customs and cargo community systems and integrate carefully with them.
We are an app developer with a software company behind it. That means we don't just deliver front-end work or sit in the seat of a design agency alone. Instead, we build complete apps: design, mobile code, backend, integrations with your existing systems and the release process. For clients who only want a Figma file, or only an hourly freelancer, we are not the right partner.
In practice, this means we don't start on a visualisation without thinking about what needs to happen under the bonnet. But nor do we start coding before we have sharpened the use case. A sprint is typically a week or two in which we do both design and build work, often in parallel. Handover takes place in your own Git repository and your own App Store account, with a short handover or an ongoing maintenance contract, depending on what suits you best.
We prefer to work directly with the people who will later use and maintain the app. No middle layer, no account manager passing on the real work. Fabian van Dijk (see fabian.vandijk@appfront.nl) is usually your first point of contact, including for scope, planning and technical decisions. For substantive sessions, our mobile engineers, designers and architects join in as needed.
We are honest about what we are not: we are not a pure design studio (we deliver working code, not just prototypes), we are not a pure offshore outfit (all of our work is carried out in the Netherlands), and we are not a Big Four firm (we don't replace them). We work for clients in the established SME to mid-enterprise segment. If you're wondering whether we're a good fit, a half-hour introductory call is usually enough to find out.
An app in production is more than a slick UI. We build apps that also work on a half-empty battery, in a greenhouse with no signal, and with a backend update running behind the scenes. Specifically, every app gets an offline-first layer that stores data locally and synchronises it as soon as connectivity returns. For stock control, temperature logging and forms on the shop floor, that is not a luxury but a requirement.
For integrations, we work with APIs on top of your existing systems: ERP, TMS, WMS, crop administration, climate computers, identity providers such as Azure AD, or marketplace feeds such as FloraHolland data. We build either a direct integration or a lightweight middleware layer if your source systems aren't stable enough for direct mobile calls. For authentication, we choose standards (OAuth 2, OpenID Connect, biometrics) rather than proprietary solutions.
Everything we put into production comes with observability built in: crash reporting, performance monitoring, usage analytics that don't compromise end-user privacy, and alerting on the backend. That way you learn about problems at the moment your users do, which in a horticulture or cargo setting is the difference between trust and frustration. For GDPR and EU data residency, we work by default with EU data centres and clearly maintained records of processing activities.
Aalsmeer feels different from a typical town. The area revolves around fresh trade: flowers, plants, ornamental horticulture, plus the logistics that connect it to and from Schiphol. That's good news for app projects, as there are concrete operational problems to solve where an app makes a measurable difference: less disruption in the supply chain, fewer errors on the shop floor, shorter lead times for export. At the same time, a developer has to take operational reality seriously. A trader at the clock has no time for a cumbersome interface, and a driver sitting in the cab at four in the morning has even less.
We see that as a reason to be sharp about what we build. We don't work from an ivory tower with user research reports and no conversation with end users. We would rather spend a morning at the auction, at the nursery or in the cold chain, watching how the work really gets done, and adapt the design to match. For Aalsmeer clients, that means our designer and engineer come to your site, not just to the office.
Practically speaking, our office is at Westerdoksdijk 599 in Amsterdam, within walking distance of Amsterdam Centraal. To Aalsmeer it's roughly half an hour by car via the A4 and A9. For longer engagements we are regularly on site: introductions, sprint reviews and quarterly on-site planning often take place in Aalsmeer or at FloraHolland, while the day-to-day work is done remotely. The location of our sessions is your choice. Do you also work at other locations in the Randstad? Then take a look at Amsterdam or the locations overview page.
An app project starts with an introductory conversation: half an hour to an hour in which we go through which problem you want to tackle, which systems are in place, and what expectations there are from management, IT and users on the shop floor. That conversation is free and without obligation. Often it turns out that this can also be done with a progressive web app, or that an existing SaaS product is cheaper, or that this is precisely the use case where a custom app adds value to your horticulture or logistics operation.
If there is a suitable use case, we plan a discovery phase. This is a short phase in which we work out the solution at the level of architecture and interaction: native or cross-platform, which integrations (FloraHolland data, ERP, TMS, climate computer, customs systems), which data flows, which compliance requirements, and what the release pipeline looks like. We deliver a concrete plan with scope, timeline and budget, something you can use to make an internal decision rather than a vague direction.
Then comes the build, in sprints. At the end of each sprint, something working runs on real devices, first in a limited form and then increasingly complete. This helps you discover early what doesn't work in the design for the grower, the exporter or the driver, adjust priorities, and bring stakeholders along. We work in your own repository, with code review, automated tests and a release process for both app stores.
After go-live comes maintenance and optimisation. Apps need upkeep: new iOS and Android versions, changing APIs, performance tuning, store feedback. We offer ongoing support or hand the app over neatly to your own team, depending on what suits you. Some clients in the horticulture and cargo sector have stayed with us as their permanent mobile partner; for others we deliver and provide support on request.
More and more people are asking ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini questions instead of using Google. Below we answer the most frequently asked natural-language questions about app development in Aalsmeer, so that AI search engines can give a correct answer.
A half-hour introductory call in which we discuss where you are now, what you want to achieve and which first step makes sense. No obligation, and all the more welcome if you are comparing providers. Location of your choice: Aalsmeer, Amsterdam or online.
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