I'm an engineer and I just "no-coded" for the first time... Why haven't I done this before?
I've been coding for more than 10 years and I've never given no code website builders that much of a chance. To be honest, I think it's probably my ego... ok, it's definitely my ego.
I've fallen under the perception that "no-coding" was sort of the cheap way out and that it would be inferior to rolling up my own sleeves and throwing together my own website myself with good ol' Bootstrap / React and and old fashioned elbow grease.
Boy was I wrong. Using one of those website builders out there, I was able to throw together a landing page for my product in probably 1/10th of the time. I was able to show it off to people almost the same day and immediately start collecting feedback. I wouldn't have gotten anywhere close to this speed of execution if I had done it manually. It's insane.
The reason why I'm writing this post is to encourage all of you guys out there who aren't engineers and are using these "no code" tools yourself. It's come a long way since wysiwyg builders of the past. They're REALLY GOOD and this engineer approved. 5 thumbs up!
Website for reference: https://www.getinside.app/
Used webflow.
Absolutely. I feel as productive developing with no-code as 1 senior dev's and 2 juniors, writing code manually. And even so, I'm faster. I think no-code has the potential to single handily boost solo entrepreneur success rates.
Every time I try no-code, then I look at the pricing after, I am like... who would pay for this...
Woah, the website really looks great!
I'm also currently using Retool to no-code (or, actually in this case low-code) the admin panel for Testkit and it really is better than I would've thought!
"Webflow is a helluva drug"
Even if no-code isn't a long term solution for your product, what I've found is that most of the solutions that exist today teach you how to think like an engineer. You still need to know when to run workflows, store and carry over data etc. Really beneficial if you're not a technical person.
Great post, nice MVP of the startup. Would love to know more about how you're getting the site up and running. Marketplaces are really tricky to set up, especially when the product is valuable like private shares
No-code is appealing to me if there's a good "escape hatch". If there's no escape hatch or crappy ones, I'm just sure sooner or later I will hit a wall. I used SquareSpace for a quick MVP, but to really extend it you need to write crazy Javascript that's way more complex than just writing a regular app. It was still a reasonable starting point to validate , but I'd prefer something I could more naturally extend instead of needing a rewrite.
My analogy is something like MS Paint vs Photoshop. Certainly for very simple stuff, MS Paint is easier. But for complex stuff, doing it in MS Paint is far more difficult than Photoshop.
No-code often looks like it makes the easy , easy, and the hard, incredibly hard if not impossible.
My impression is Webflow is more naturally extensible but I'd be curious to learn more about that topic. Can you "eject" to a regular React app at any point, or something similar?
The text appearing effect takes a bit time to load while scrolling on my phone. I had to scroll up to see what came.
Thanks for the feedback!
Any recommended no code platforms?
Sometimes I used to feel no code basically makes one feel incompetent but with time I realize sometime it's all about getting something done and making the customer happy.
This is how I felt when I tried out TestProject for automated testing. The GUI was so much better and faster than manually writing tests. I'll never go back.
At the end of the day, the key to better productivity and better results is the use of better tools. We've got to be ready to drop our old ways if we want to work at the cutting edge.
damn im trying to switch from elementor PRO to webflow and I keep seing this websites. I might have to do something about it ;)
pd: 'wsome landing and app idea man
Haha, I liked that.
I love the saying that goes "no-code is great for coders, code is great for no-coders" and I totally agree with this.
What's your favorite tool?
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Isn't this what airtable sort of do? I am not sure.
On the similar topic, I think excel/office 365 has built in api. We don't use it but now I am wonder why not.