What Is Horizontal Application?

Horizontal applications are for people. If you've ever had to use a vertical application, you know what we're talking about. These are the kinds of applications designed to be used by one specific type of user and business. They have limited usability and utility within a narrow range of users. Let's take accounting software as an example: if you're a painter who wants to keep track of your paint inventory, you probably don't need an accounting app that provides reports on your sales and expenses. You don't even know what those things are! And if you did, they'd probably be very dull. So when it comes to horizontal versus vertical applications, there's only one thing we need to ask ourselves: "What kind of person am I? " Because no matter how much we want it to be accurate, there is no such thing as an application that will work for everyone—except maybe Microsoft Word (but even then ). Horizontal applications include enterprise, CRM, ERP, SaaS, and accounting software. These applications are designed for general use across many industries, company sizes, and user types. These applications offer large amounts of functionality, often more than what the average user needs, making them difficult to navigate. These applications are often incredibly complicated and challenging, especially for first-time users. These applications often have confusing UIs and require users to have advanced knowledge of their functions. Because of their wide use, these applications are often heavily scrutinized and criticized for their poor user experience. A horizontal application is a jack of all trades, a master of none. It's not the best at anything, but it's pretty great at everything. A horizontal application might be correct if you're looking for a tool that can do a little bit of everything—and you don't care if it doesn't do any one thing exceptionally well.