I'm sure we've all played with Legos at least once in our lives, what did you like most?
Personally, the possibility of creating while having fun, simply by joining blocks with different shapes and colors.
no code is very similar 🙂
TL;DR
no code is a movement that brings together all those tools or platforms that allow you to create software without using code, in this way you save time to concentrate on the most important things
no / low code?
- low-code requires code, even if little, to create software (closer to developers)
- no-code does not require code to create software, but in any case many platforms give the possibility of adding code if we need to add particular features that the platform does not yet offer (for non-technicians and developers)
when someone hears the word no code they may think of non-advanced and not very customizable programs (such as wix, wordpress or sqaurespace) but things are not like that...
Platforms
To date there are many no code platforms, in this photo we can see them grouped by categories
Website with ready theme
in this case you could use wix or squarespace, where you can purchase a theme and customize it as you want
Website with custom design
in this case you can use webflow (which I personally use and I think is the best to date)
Simple app to validate an idea
you can evaluate glide which already offers many features ready to use and is simple to configure
Complex app
in this case you can evaluate bubble (web app) or adalo (pwa and mobile app)
and each of these responds to a very specific problem for example.
some of the best no-code platforms:
- websites with cms Webflow
- Ecommerce with Shopify
- Web app with Bubble
- Mobile app with Thunkable or Adalo
- Voice app with Voiceflow
- simple One-page with Carrd
- newsletter with Substack
- AR/VR/3D in the browser with Scapic
- website from a Google Sheet with Sheet2Site
- dashboards and internal tools with Retool
What can be created
as with Lego we can create very simple constructions up to real cities
based on which platform we are going to use, we can create software
Simple
for example automations such as saving all emails from a specific sender in a Google Sheet with Zapier .
Medium
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create a web app with glide for example a simplified copy of Instagram or an app for restaurants
Complex
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Project created with webflow:
copy of twitter made with bubble:
Not Real Twitter
Just like Twitter but not real. Built using no-code in under a week.
and 3 startups created with bubble:
- Dividend Finance has raised more than $330m and processed over $1 billion in loans thanks to a platform created with bubble.
- Plato (YC W16, raised $3.3m) built its back office with Bubble.
- Comet (raised €13m) reached $800k with Bubble.
What time?
until recently it was not possible to develop highly customized products, it was necessary to use already existing templates and functions and to do more it was necessary to resort to code
today the tools at our disposal are much more advanced and allow us to create much more complex software such as creating a functioning and scalable copy of Facebook, Airbnb or Twitter
Gartner predicts that low-code (which includes no-code) platforms will account for 65% of all app development by 2024
Advantages
some of the problems of "classic" development are costs and time as Andrew Co-founder of Tiny says in this tweet
“I used to spend $25k-$100k building an app over 3–6 months. It was frustrating, expensive, and slow. Then I started using NoCode tools like Webflow, Bubble, Zapier, and Airtable. Suddenly I was able to build my app idea in days instead of months, at a fraction of the cost. Craziest of all, I could tweak and maintain it myself instead of hiring expensive devs.” —Andrew Wilkonson, Co-founder of Tiny
but thanks to no code we can:
Time
Dramatically reduce development time, creating 10x faster
Costs
if you have a limited budget and can't afford to hire developers, this is definitely the best route
Scalability
all no-code platforms allow you to increase capacity simply by switching to a larger subscription
Limits of No-code
as we have seen with no code we can develop apps similar to Facebook, Instagram, Airbnb or Uber, so if you want to develop something similar no code is perfect for you to validate your idea until you have collected enough to move on to development classic
for this reason, developers will always be there, in my opinion, thanks to these tools that make development more accessible, many more people will begin to understand the hard work behind software development and the reason for those prices and times
* This article is NOT sponsored. If you are considering buying a plan, use the affiliate link in the article to get a discount, e.g., 10% off any Xano plan.
