What limits have you run into building SaaS / marketplaces with no code tools?
Have you ever tried building a SaaS product or marketplace using a no-code platform?
If so, what limitations / annoyances (if any) did you run into? Did you ever find a solution?
Context:
I've spent the past year building Frontly. I have the lofty goal of becoming the most robust no-code platform for building SaaS / Marketplace web apps. I'm trying to crowdsource ideas for what roadblocks people commonly run into so we can hopefully build solutions for them :)
I used Wix and experimented with Bubble. Wix isn't really a no-code solution IMO, I had to learn some basic coding to get the marketplace feature working. One thing I hated about Wix is that the coding feature (Velo) is separate from Wix support, so if I ran into roadblocks, I didn't know who to get support from. I would say for a no-code product, it is so crucial to have good customer support, tutorials, guides, etc.
Bubble seemed better but I agree w/ comments below -- was still complicated and a learning curve. I haven't tried Webflow yet but have heard good things about it.
It would be nice if no code solutions were as easy as Shopify or Squarespace for e-commerce. I'm glad they exist, but they still don't feel "easy" yet.
Yeah, I agree. The term 'no code' is thrown around very loosely in 2 ways:
Wix I think is stretching it by trying to offer marketplace-style features. For that stuff ideally you'd be using a full-on 'app builder' and not more of a 'website builder' like Wix.
At least, that's kind of how I break down these platforms in my mind. 'apps' vs 'websites'.
Webflow is somewhere in between, where you can do more complex stuff but I think still requires plugins and other external tools to accomplish real SaaS / marketplace-style stuff.
Thank you for sharing!
Looks super interesting @patrickjkelly5
I've built custom apps and marketplaces and only really dipped my toe in no-code options. The main issue I've found in my tests of some of the current options is the outputted UX/UI generally feels very amateur and the customisation is super limited.
Yeah, that makes sense. Beyond the functionality, I imagine that the UX/UI is where a lot of no-code would fall short.
We've built a fairly simple row/column system based on CSS Flex for layouts, but we've tried to keep styling fairly simple to start.
This is good data, thank you for sharing!
I used bubble and I found the following hard:
Most things are possible but it’s slower than just coding an app unless it’s very simple
Very interesting feedback! Thanks for sharing.
Yeah, I can see how typical app builders might not have the flexibility / simplicity to make these easily accomplished.
When you're talking about server memory, do you mean like a 'session data' where the data persists for the user's session, or storing things in cookies / local browser storage?
No, I mean data stored in memory on the server, not the client. A timer in a game or productivity app is an example of where you’d want the source of truth to be on the server but probably not in the database.
Oh, got it! Thank you for clarifying. That makes sense.
I found that when I first tried apps like Webflow or Bubble, they felt really overcomplicated. Like, there is probably a better way to organize the data into a hierarchy of importance so that you are only presented the options that matter once you know you need them. I'm trying to keep this in mind while building our platform, but it's definitely a challenge. Simplicity vs functionality is a perpetual balance.