No-code platforms are here to stay.

In this article I discuss the reasons why you should not be ignoring no-code platforms, describe the pros and cons, and share how I used no-code platforms to solve real-world challenges!

One can't help but notice the prominence of no-code platforms. It seems like there is one launched every day. And, there are almost as many opinions about no-code too, ranging from “this is the solution to everything” to “I can’t take this seriously”. I, therefore, thought I might add just another opinion.

Before getting into the details, it is worth looking back in time as no-code is not an entirely new concept. Coding has been around since 1840 with the creation of the first algorithm by Ada Lovelace. The first hint of no-code was in 1981, with the publication of “Application Development Without Programmers” by J. Martin. You can check it out on Amazon, but I warn you, it’s not highly rated.

So what?

Probably the biggest no-code tool that everyone will know is Microsoft Excel, which has spawned an unquantifiable number of cottage industry solutions since 1985. Fast forward to 2003 and the launch of WordPress (written in PHP) that put website development in the hands of everybody. Today an estimated 75 million websites run on WordPress, more than 30 per cent of all websites. This scale has created a massive industry of plug-ins, customisations, themes, and products like WooCommerce. All worth around $10 billion (say compared to Google Cloud Platform revenues of $13 billion in 2020). This is significant and presents an awesome opportunity for creators and indie developers.

No-code tools are not serious solutions and will never last

Large vendors are also seeing the opportunity to get a share of the market. Microsoft has Power Apps, Google has AppSheet, and Amazon has Honeycode, all focused on application development. Microsoft and Google are also taking on the likes of Notion with Loop and Google documents respectively.

Whats in it for me?

Having set the scene, we can now ask ourselves, why has no-code become so popular?

I know how to code so this doesn't apply to me

• No-code platforms provide a very low barrier to entry. Most are SaaS solutions and depending on what you are building, you can get something up and running very quickly
• Most no-code platforms are inexpensive to get started and provide various price points to suit your needs. This means that you have no overheads (e.g. getting a full application stack up and running)
• No code. The clue is in the name and if you can navigate Microsoft Excel, you’ll be able to navigate most no-code platforms
• Because of the points already mentioned, it is quick to get results.

So, it sounds too good to be true? We’ll there are some drawbacks, let’s consider the obvious ones:

• There is sometimes a limited capability to customise beyond the standard. For example in WordPress, one can add custom CSS but in a product like Glide, one cannot change the width of a dropdown field.
• Whilst some platforms may provide the ability to scale to all that you need, there will be a point at which it becomes more cost-effective to move to a PaaS platform like Microsoft Azure
• There is a perception that no-code solutions are not credible and cannot scale
• Some no-code tools can have a bit of a learning curve, regardless of your technology experience.
• Whilst not needing to write any code, other tasks can be quite time consuming, for example, building a UI on Bubble.
• Although (and because) the barrier to entry is low, this doesn't mean that developers will build a high-quality product

How do I start my no-code journey?

Regardless of the tools available, we still need skilled software developers

To address the above concerns, my advice is:

• Spend some time looking at the various no-code platforms to understand which are the negotiable and non-negotiable features it should provide. For example, is the width of a dropdown menu (cosmetics only) more important than getting an MVP in front of users to test your idea?
• Planning is important but don’t get hung up on a question like “how will the platform handle 10,000 users?”. Chances are (sorry) that you will not go to 10,000 users overnight and this will therefore not be an issue. Use a no-code platform to take those initial steps, get your first users, then iterate from there
• Users (generally) don’t care what platform you have built your product on. All they care about is having something that will solve their problem
• Given the best tools in the world, you still need to know how to use these properly. Aside from the functional product skills, you will still need to understand how businesses and business processes work, solve problems, design data structures, and user interfaces, design a robust solution, and test and deploy your solutions properly

No-code applications in the wild

I appreciate this has been quite a bit of theory, so let's get hands-on and look at some real-world use cases.

Building a Landing Page and Validating an Idea
I have now built several landing pages using Carrd. Once the copy for my landing page was complete (there is an example of a skill that is needed, regardless of the technology being used) it took less than 30 minutes to build the page, include a sign-up form, link the sign-up form to my email automation solution (Mailerlite), integrate to Google Analytics, and publish the page. I also included a feature request form using Tally Forms, to collate feedback from interested users.

Building a Customer Feedback Form
This was simply done using Tally Forms. It took minutes to design the form, including some conditional logic. In this case, I ask the user if they would be willing to provide a product testimonial and if the answer is yes, they are asked for an email address. Customer responses are recorded on Tally and also automatically recorded on a Google Sheet.

Building an Information Product
I wanted to build a toolkit for project managers and business change managers and had several requirements:
I didn’t want to code anything
I wanted to provide more than just templates to my users
I wanted the toolkit to be easily extendable, by both me and my users
I wanted my content to be interactive by including video, images, hyperlinks, and business logic
It should be easy to distribute the toolkit

I settled on Notion and whilst the content took some time to produce, creating the product itself was very quick. I built a landing page, again using Carrd, listed the product on Gumroad, and that was it.

Building a Custom Integration
One of my online courses is hosted on Thinkific (I initially built my own platform for this using WordPress and OptimizePress but it was a massive waste of effort - this might be a post in itself!). Each time a user signs up for my course, I want to add them to an email list (Thinkific can handle email marketing, but the feature is costly). Unfortunately, Thinkific does not provide integration to Mailerlite. Enter Zapier. It took around 30 minutes to build and test an integration. Now, whenever a new user signs up for my course, they are automatically added to a specific list in Mailerlite.

Building a Back Office Solution
My side hustles generate revenue by selling several products, distributed via a number of channels. Tracking all of this in a Google Sheet got a little messy so I decided to build a tracking system using Airtable. Airtable is essentially a relational database but presented as a spreadsheet. I got a nice model setup, including currency conversion and then built a dashboard on top to highlight my best performing product/channel combination, best month, etc.

Tap me up for more!

As you can see there are a ton of use cases for which you can use a no-code solution. In addition to the examples I have listed here, you can build fully-fledged SaaS products, widgets, add-ins, and other innovative solutions.

We’ve not had time to dive into any amount of depth on specific no-code platforms, but if you would like to know more, just drop a comment, letting me know what you would like me to cover next.Whether it is a no-code product review or a how-to that you need, just comment!