A report by IDC shows that more than 500 million applications will get developed by the year 2023.
When it comes to identifying tools bringing the most significant change in the IT industry, Low-code and no-code platforms heed the list. This cloud-based software made the IT world sit up and listen and changed the minds of the traditional providers overnight.
No-code and low-code platforms are created to help organizations improve productivity, increase customer and employee satisfaction, and reduce costs.
To provide the benefits of Visual Modeling, both no-code and low-code software development follow the principle of abstracting code. Here’s everything you’ll need to know about these platforms in-depth.
What’s a Low-code Platform?
A low-code software development platform/approach is used to build different applications and processes. A primary reason to choose a low-code development approach is that it requires little coding knowledge.
Here, you can employ different visual interfaces with only basic implementation logic instead of complex programming languages. Also, in a low-code development platform, you get a drag-and-drop option for easy go.
It becomes easy for beginners to build software for various processes or mobile applications with almost no advanced knowledge of software creation and competent coding skills.
Advantages of a Using a Low-code Platform
- It allows building applications swiftly for multiple platforms simultaneously and presents the working examples in days or even hours.
- You won’t have to wait for developers with technical skills to complete another lengthy project, which means you can get things get done faster and at a lower cost.
- It offers built-in and easy-to-customize data integration, powerful security processes, and cross-platform support.
- Low-code offers one-click deployment to send your application to production, making the launch day is stressless experience.
Disadvantages of a Low-Code Platform
Although a low-code platform offers numerous benefits, it is not without drawbacks. Most low-code platforms have a difficult learning curve that you won’t master quickly. Also, you’ll find it hard to change and implement high-performance, high-quality, scalability, and other non-functional needs in the platform.
What’s a No-Code Platform?
No code platform is the best place when you want to build your application with just drag and drop templates.
Compared to low-code platforms, the no-code platform has a leading edge and successfully transforms the market with high coverage. You don’t need prior coding experience to understand things listed on the no-code platform.
Advantages and Drawbacks of Using a No-code Platform
No-code platforms are best to develop simple applications that solve a department or a business problem. Anyone can build it as the learning curve is shallow, and it will allow the IT departments to focus on mission-critical projects. Also, you can create it instantly and won’t have to wait for three to six months to get the product delivered.
However, suppose you’re trying to build a no-code platform to solve complex solutions. In that case, you can face several issues like security and compliance issues integration problems, resulting in more resources to solve the arising problems, increasing the technical debt.
No-Code vs. Low-Code Platform: Listing out the Differences
No programming experience is required for No-code software, where when it comes to using low-code tools, users need prior technical knowledge. A developer can quickly adapt to both, but a beginner may get stuck to low-code platforms or tools.
| No Code | low-code | |
| Objective | Easy to use and manage | Speed of development |
| Primarily Serves | Users from the Business field | Developers |
| Customization | Pre-built templates and tools can be customized | Complete customization available |
| Coding Need | Zero coding required | Low coding required |
| Platform Lock-in | Platform lock sometimes occurs on the same platform | Movement between platforms is easy |
| Cost-Effective | Cost-effective for big IT teams with high requirements | Cost-effective only when the company has quality developers |
| Purpose | Helpful for business users with a self-service application or software needs | Professional developers use this as a NextGen RAD tool. |
What’s the Difference In Working on the Platforms?
Drag-and-drop functionality is the primary functionality you can use on No-code platforms as it’s a visual development environment.
Well, these tools are beneficial for users with a non-developers field to design and assemble applications without even focusing on how things work “under the hood.”
Users can build apps, integrate systems, automate business process management (BPM), automate workflow with no-code platform templates and element libraries.
But it’s not the same with low-code platforms because here, things are more complex than drag-and-drop, and only experienced developers or one with advanced technical knowledge can build and test complex apps.
The platform offers you various Visual Development tools and automated links to backend systems, web, APIs creation, database integration, or other web services.
Tracking the Evolution of No Code & low-code
Gartner predicts over 50% of medium to large businesses will adopt a low-code or no-code as one of their strategic app platforms. By 2024, low-code will become liable for more than 65% of app development activity.
It’s true enough to say these No-code/low-code platforms are like an era of advanced technology that evolved from Rapid Application Development (RAD) tools. Other famous tools that have facilitated no-code web development are:
- Lotus
- Excel
- Notes
- Microsoft Access
- Wix
- WordPress
- Squarespace
Where Can You Use No-Code Platforms?
No code platform or offered tools help create or deploy apps that require changes in use cases or frequent updates.
No-code is used across several mission-critical systems and lists use cases. A few examples include:
- HR Team: No code software can reduce the workload of a lengthy hiring process by automating the hiring process and making it simpler for the HR department. This will help manage new employee hires and provide a first-class experience to the internal customers.
- Finance: With the help of error-proof processes with custom integrations, the No code platform can help Finance professionals. This will make it easy to build a workflow for the procurement process without code.
- Customer Success Team: No code software can be used by the Customer Success Teams for easy onboarding. Also, it will be easy for them to provide a great customer experience when the team needs things on a large scale.
- IT: This is the most crucial sector which will benefit from no-code software and processes. For example, IT departments can use this software when there’s a need to collect information in a particular format, control IT service desk requests or connect with systems.
When Can You Use Low-Code Platforms?
Low-code platforms and their tools are undoubtedly the best choices for creating foundational business applications or applications with high complexity.
Apart from this, low-code use cases can benefit developers in many aspects. Some examples include:
- UI Design: This is among the best uses of low-code solutions. Designing application UI is now relatively more straightforward and automatic because low-code tools can generate interface code for any application you want.
- Platform Integration: Integrating business gets simple when you use low-code tools. It requires minimal coding and some custom configuration management.
- API Generation: This is again one of the highest use cases of low-code tools. You can use these tools with API generators to create APIs for any existing application code.
- High-Performance Apps: You can build high-performance applications using low-code platforms as it optimizes the main code and reduces it to a great extent.
Which to Pick: Low-code or No-code platform?
Both low-code and no-code platforms were built with the same idea in mind: accenting the speed of the digital revolution.
If you’re looking to build a simple application to quick fix a departmental or a simpler business problem, no-code is the way to go. No-code is also an excellent option for front-end development and use-cases.
But low-code is the better option since you can build responsive, user-friendly applications and avoid compliance and security issues. It is excellent for building mobile and web applications and portals that integrate data sources and other systems. You can use it to create any solution except for mission-critical systems and highly sophisticated applications that require multiple integrations from various external data sources and backends.
Is Low-Code No-Code the Next Software Evolution?
Business Wire states that the future is low-code or no-code with an anticipated growth rate of 44.4% by the year 2022 to $27.23 billion from $4.32 billion in 2017.
The highly accelerated adoption of low-code and no-code platforms is due to many reasons, from the pressure of providing digital solutions amidst the pandemic to the richest having access to high-tech tools. The rise of no-code and low-code platforms has enabled businesses of all sizes to advance with their resources.
Also Read: Top Low Code Tools For Programmers
