Heisenware

What Heisenware is

Heisenware is a low-code platform for building and running industrial software. The company's own one-sentence description is "a low-code platform for technical teams to build and run production-grade industrial software visually, from machine connectivity to the finished app, all in one place." Its readers are automation engineers, OT specialists and system integrators: the FAQ says it is "built for automation engineers, OT specialists, and integrators who understand their machines and data." The site is offered in English and German. It names no headquarters and no founding year, so neither appears here.

The pitch starts from a complaint most plant engineers will recognize. Engineers, the company says, "lose too many hours hunting for maintained Node-RED nodes, writing middleware, and setting up infrastructure." Heisenware sets a single standard against that "fragmented DIY stack" of fragile scripts, server configuration and undocumented architectures, and says it is "a single, documented standard that anyone on your team can maintain."

What you build and how

The site describes the workflow in three steps: Connect, Build and Deploy.

Connect is the data layer. The company lists native connectivity for industrial protocols, databases, IT systems and APIs, with out-of-the-box drivers for OPC UA, Siemens S7, SQL and Zebra RFID hardware, paired with lightweight Edge Agents. The stated aim is to tap into isolated shopfloor networks with no integration scripts and no firewall reconfiguration. A use case page also names PLCs, MES and the MQTT protocol for machine data acquisition, "old or new" machines alike.

Build is the editor. You assemble responsive interfaces and backend logic together in a single drag-and-drop environment, "with no split between frontend and backend." Because the app is a shared visual standard, the company says any engineer on the team can understand, change and support it. You are not locked into boxes either: the FAQ says you can "drop into code whenever you want more control." The FAQ also compares the product to Node-RED. If you know flow-based programming you will "feel right at home," and the difference, per the company, is that Heisenware is a fully integrated full-stack platform with a native responsive UI builder, integrated databases and user access management. A separate blog post on building Progressive Web Apps adds that the App Builder previews how an app will look on smartphones, tablets and PCs, and that you can produce a version at any stage of development for user testing.

Deploy is publishing. Apps launch "to any factory tablet, smartphone, or desktop in one click," generated automatically as PWAs with built-in user management, on a secure URL, with no manual server setup. The blog post explains the practical upside of that model: a PWA is delivered as a website, so changes and new features appear when users reload, with no new version to download or install. It also lists the usual limits of PWAs, such as weaker background functions on iOS and no access to every hardware feature, which is worth reading if you were hoping for a native app.

The site names four use cases, each with its own page.

• Machine Data Acquisition turns raw machine data into shopfloor insight, connecting natively to PLCs, MES or protocols like OPC UA and MQTT.
• Production Dashboards bring every data source into one view, as real-time dashboards deployed to any screen "from a tablet to a big-screen Andon monitor."
• MPDV MIP Integration extends an existing MPDV MIP and HYDRA setup without custom development. The company says Heisenware is a validated MIP mApp that builds tailored dashboards and shopfloor apps on existing MIP data, embeddable inside HYDRA.
• RFID Tracking locates tools, equipment and materials, with apps for Zebra handhelds or fixed readers that show who has what and where it was left.

The PWA blog post works through one worked example: an overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) app that processes, stores and visualizes automatically captured machine data, starting with a single machine and growing from there. It is a useful picture of the intended scale of a first project.

On the people side, the company offers help for teams short on time: it can support a project directly or hand it to an experienced partner from its system integrator network. The result is described as a turnkey solution you can expand and maintain yourself later. The navigation also points to product documentation, case studies, a blog, an About page and a demo booking page.

The evidence from the pages

The site lists no prices. The FAQ says "You can start for free and build your first app without commitment," that "paid plans scale with what you run in production," and sends the reader to a pricing page for current plans. Nothing states a plan name, a price, a user limit or an app limit, so the free start is described only as a way to build a first app, with no stated limits.

Hosting and data are covered in the FAQ. By default, the company says, data is stored "GDPR-compliant in the EU via Hetzner Online Cloud." For strict data sovereignty or strict IT security guidelines, you can self-host the entire platform on-premise or in a private cloud using Docker, "including fully air-gapped setups with no internet connection." Self-hosting is stated outright, not left to a sales call.

The pages do not mention SOC 2, an ISO standard or HIPAA, so none of those can be assumed. They also give no customer count and no integration count. A "Trusted by engineers and developers at" strip appears on the homepage, but it names no customers in text. Two testimonials are named. An employee in IT Industrial Services at H. & J. Brüggen KG says that "in a very short time, we created a dashboard that displays production data in real-time," and that existing connectors let them visualize data "without extensive programming knowledge." The CEO of Elnic in Dresden GmbH says the team can now "design the exact apps my team needs in a fraction of the time" and that Heisenware let them "connect our on-prem systems directly to the shopfloor." Both are one-person quotes, not usage statistics.

Who it suits and who it does not

Heisenware suits a plant, an integrator or a manufacturing IT team that needs dashboards, data acquisition or tracking apps built on real machine protocols, and wants the finished app on tablets and monitors without running servers. System integrators get a repeatable standard they can hand to a client to maintain. Teams with strict data rules get the Docker and air-gapped option.

It is a narrow fit outside industry. A founder building a customer-facing product, a marketing team wanting a landing page, or an office team that needs a form and a spreadsheet will find nothing on these pages aimed at them. The company is direct that "a technical mindset helps": you do not need to be a developer, but you should understand the machines and data involved. Two caveats are worth carrying into a demo. Published pricing is absent, and the output is a PWA delivered through the browser, not a native app.