After talking to many people in the no-code community, and hearing from our own development team, here's what it mostly seems to come down to:
👉 UI/UX flexibility with drag-and-drop and theming options
👉 Easy access to external databases/authentication with API
👉 Good collection of widgets and components already in place + the versatility to add other or create your own components later
👉 Easy authentication (for example OAuth2 as a drop in)
👉 Security
👉 Speed
Anything that's missing? Let me know in the comments below.
I've tried to use a few, I can tell you what catches my eyes by order:
Pricing module - the first filter as they differ a lot and cut the type is use cases/user types.
What's the focus of the platform - they all try to sell a dream you can build anything but within hours to days you discover what they actually save you time building as it's core platform and what is mostly words.
Docs of different types, vids, samples, guilds, walkthrough - if this is to save time, it should be easy to get to something working or see how it is to be built within hours.
UX
Integrations/extention/extendability
Customisation/personalisation..
You're probably right about comms. Words like 'everybody' , 'for anything' , 'fast' are used too easy and don't communicate from the start what a service actually stands for.
As for tutorials and guides, agree, there should be easy documentation in all kinds of formats.