Running a successful business today requires fast, nimble decision-making in the face of rapid technological change. Disruptions are changing the game at a pace faster than ever experienced before. To keep your business at the front of your industry, you need tools that eliminate technical debt and provide unprecedented levels of agility. Enter low-code platforms: comprehensive development frameworks that allow general users to build custom applications quickly and easily without coding expertise. But with so many options on the market, it can be difficult to decide which platform is best suited to your needs.
What is Low-Code?
Low-code platform allow businesses to create custom applications without the complexity of traditional coding. Essentially, (low-code) developers use a platform that is primarily visual. It combines pre-built components, WYSIWYG screen editors and drag and drop workflows to build software at accelerated pace. The growing popularity of low-code is largely due to its ability to save time while streamlining overall development processes. It also removes much of the typical technical debt that is generated by traditional methods. By reducing the time needed for traditional coding tasks, developers can focus on creating innovative solutions that push the boundaries of business operations.
How we selected the platforms
While we would like to say that we had a scientific approach to selection, this wasn’t the case at all. We simply opted for platforms that gave us the ability to use most features without making an upfront purchase. We also searched for platforms that appeared on the surface to meet our top priorities.
How we compared the platforms
The best low-code platform to build Lonocode around needed to be determined before we launched our business. As we evaluated the platforms, our top priorities were:
- A full stack development platform, not just a tool that was good at part of the stack, such as front-end development.
- A mature ecosystem, although we didn’t know if this was even possible given that low-code hype has been rather recent.
- Ability to deploy in the vendors cloud as well as an option for self-hosting.
- Not being confined to a web-based IDE (integrated development environment) for the purposes of being able to “code” offline.
- Excellent training materials and documentation.
While there were other priorities, we tried to keep an open mind that could be swayed by features and benefits we may not have considered. An example of this was mobile, as it wasn’t a starting priority, it became important as we learned more about the possibilities.
Other Priorities to Consider
While we had to limit our priorities, there are some others we’d likely add if doing this again and some you may want to consider before selecting your platform:
- Compliance. SOC 2 would be high on our list, but industry specific certifications should be considered depending on your business.
- Security. We would not do another evaluation without putting security high on our list. Fortunately, our chosen platform has first class security and a great track record.
- AI. The hype around AI was just beginning when we started comparing, and most people had probably never even heard of generative AI at that time. If you’d like to learn more about AI and low-code, be sure and contact us, as this is a core part of our business today.
And a Special Thank You
We want to give a shout out to Becky Bertram of Savvy Technical Solutions for helping us out with Microsoft Power Apps. She’s the best expert we knew on the subject and wouldn’t have been able to include Microsoft without her.
