FlowVella, the makers of an iPad and Mac app that rethinks PowerPoint for the mobile-first generation, has now brought its app to the iPhone. As with its tablet counterpart, FlowVella lets you create rich presentations using touches and gestures, while also adding multimedia like GIFs, videos, audio, as well as PDFs, words and images, as you could with more traditional desktop productivity software.
In addition, the app makes it easy to pull in content you have saved in the cloud, on services like Dropbox, Box, and others, or you can grab images from Google Image Search or videos from YouTube.
Another unique feature that differentiates FlowVella’s presentations from legacy productivity software is that its presentations are meant to be shared as URLs. That means, instead of sharing attachments over email, users can just send a link. This not only allows the presentations to be updated at any time, but it enables the tracking and analytics features FlowVella offers, too. Plus, users no longer have to worry with file sizes when sharing.
However, in the case that a physical file is required, FlowVella offers the ability to export a presentation to a PDF.
The larger idea with bringing the app to the iPhone is meeting customer demand, the company explains, citing a survey from work management platform Wrike, which stated that nearly half of professionals today work from their mobile devices more than 20 times per day. A second survey from Brainshark, meanwhile, said that 64 percent of salespeople prep presentations from their car, and 44 percent do so from a parking lot just before a meeting.
More importantly, FlowVella’s own user base has been asking for an iPhone version, founder and CEO Brent Brookler tells us – it has been the number one or number two request to date.
 
In other words, it makes sense to bring FlowVella’s software to the iPhone, as this is the device that’s always in hand.
“As the rapid adoption and growth of Apple’s larger phones over the last year and a half, there is a growing trend to build more powerful productivity tools and apps for the iPhone,” says Brookler.  “This space does not need to be owned by ‘big, faceless companies’ where innovation is slow and their interfaces are all adopted from desktop and mouse, where FlowVella is truly a touch and gesture based interface,” he explains.
In case you think FlowVella looks familiar, it could be because you remember the company by its previous name – Flowboard. The company had to rebrand back in 2014 after a trademark dispute found that its name was too similar to digital magazine app Flipboard. At the time, FlowVella also launched new pricing, dropping the iPad app to free, and reducing the cost of the app on Mac.
To some extent, the rebranding hurt the company’s momentum, Brookler admits. But the startup has achieved some notable wins since, too. For example, a Smithsonian traveling “Star Wars” exhibit uses FlowVella via iPad in an interactive kiosk as part of its display.

Today, the iPhone version of FlowVella continues to be a free download for users, but it offers a handful of membership tiers that users can upgrade to via in-app purchase, including Premium, Pro, and Teacher ($10/mo). Premium ($5/mo) allows users unlimited “flows,” as these presentations are called, plus unlimited screens, privacy options, analytics and more. Pro ($20/mo) offers sales and marketing professionals integration with CRM tools, and more advanced tracking and alerts, as well as group sharing. Students, meanwhile, can use FlowVella for free after an upgrade process, the company notes.
Brookler isn’t sure if iPhone users will take advantage of the new app to create presentations from scratch, or if it will be used more to make edits and changes. But he does believe that being on the iPhone will give the startup a better chance at enterprise adoption, as more companies offer employees iPhones than iPads.
To date, FlowVella has reached 300,000 registered users, of which around 2 percent are paid. And the Mac user base is more likely to upgrade, Brookler says.
FlowVella for iPhone is available on the iTunes App Store as a universal app.
The company will eventually roll out a web version to support the Windows ecosystem, and will add support for widescreen presentations.
