Democratic candidates have also used consumer-facing apps to promote their political campaigns and advocacy. But the main election apps currently used on the left — such as MiniVAN, built by NGP VAN, a leading technology provider to Democrats — are geared more narrowly for campaign volunteers engaging in door-to-door canvassing, an activity where they can woo and record details on individual voters. Many are not designed to create lasting social communities.

This year, Democratic campaigns are also embracing peer-to-peer text messaging, a technology that may engage younger voters more than stand-alone candidate apps do. Not to be outdone, uCampaign recently started its own peer-to-peer texting platform, RumbleUp, for conservative campaigns.

Mr. Peters, a Catholic blogger and former web developer, said he hadn’t set out to become the go-to app maker for conservatives. In 2012, he was working as a conservative activist in Washington and grew frustrated with the success of the Obama campaign’s digital outreach efforts.

The Obama campaign had a smartphone app that supporters could use to follow campaign news, volunteer, canvas voters and promote campaign messages on social media. Mitt Romney, the Republican challenger, had an app whose central feature was a photo filter allowing supporters to take selfies with the slogan “I’m with Mitt.” Mr. Peters was not impressed.

“It did not do the one thing I wanted it to do,” he said, which was to “help win the election for Mitt Romney by asking me to donate money to them, to post things to social media, to invite my friends and family to register to vote — to do all of the things, basically, that the Obama app did.”