When are No-Code solutions the right ones?
If you are a business owner or entrepreneur, you may have heard the term “no-code.” If you are non-technical, the concept is appealing: the ability to build online tools, whether customer facing or internal without having to actually do any coding. No more finding a developer, waiting for something to be built, and paying a lot of money for well designed and constructed software.
As a software consultancy, you might expect our perspective to be rather negative on no-code solutions, but it’s actually not. We like the idea that more people can deploy software solutions more quickly without needing to acquire coding knowledge. The most important thing to remember about any system, however, is context.
So, rather than telling you that no-code is bad, and working with Steadfast is good, we wanted to talk through some of the instances when a no-code solution may be the right one for you, and when it’s time for you to spend the money to build something custom.
First, we need to provide some context about what “no-code” means.
No-code solutions are NOT custom software solutions built without code. Instead, no-code actually refers to platforms that allow you to mix and match widgets and other software tools and services in order to create solutions that work for your business.
Perhaps the best example of no-code solutions are website builders like Squarespace or Wix. These tools use pre-built software to allow you to create custom websites and landing pages without the need to ever touch the html. This provides flexibility and speed for non-technical business owners, marketers, and professionals. In the end, however, you’re using pre-built tools, so the amount of customization is going to be limited.
No-code solutions have gotten more complex as time has gone by. Ecommerce is an area where the no-code solution set is fairly deep. Shopify not only provides quite a few built in tools to customize your online store, they also provide a marketplace full of third party widgets which can be deployed quickly and easily into your store with no coding required. Suddenly you have a full featured online outlet without ever writing a line of code.
Similar solutions exist for the backend as well. While there are certainly any number of saas tools available to make certain processes easier, there are also more flexible no-code solutions allowing you to mix and match widgets that do certain business functions. So instead of being locked into the paradigm of a particular saas system, you have some flexibility to customize.
The key to all of these is that while there is some customization, you’re still constrained to the capabilities of the pre-built tools you are deploying. Yes, this will be more flexible than your average saas platform, but eventually you may run up against the limits of what these systems can do.
So, given the advantages in price, speed, and set up, when is no-code the right way to go?
When the need is fairly simple.
You may not really need a complex appointment scheduler. What we mean by this is: if your business is one where the technology involved is only going to require a couple of tasks (take appointments and send customers email reminders for example), no-code solutions are likely the way to go.
No-code solutions are built to be able to do simple things well. They are able to create experiences that are well designed and fairly stable because of their simplicity. You can get a great user experience building a Squarespace site and integrating their appointment scheduling.
It’s when the system becomes more complex where no-code begins to break down. Even well understood problems may not suit no-code solutions. If a system is intended to handle a number of different tasks, each with a different user base (e.g. taking orders from clients, sending those orders to fulfillment staff, sending invoice information to accounting, and scheduling installation), no-code solutions may begin to break down. The truth is, the more complex your business, the more custom solutions are going to prove their worth.
When this is the first version.
No-code really shines in the minimum viable product stage. As an entrepreneur, one of the most important things you need to accomplish is proving the concept. In this case, speed and simplicity matters.
While we’re not the biggest fans of “fake it ‘til you make it,” there is a way to “fake it” that gets you where you need to be. Creating no-code versions of an early product in order to get feedback, iterate on problems and solutions, and determine what to build can be a great pathway.
The important thing is to go in with the right expectations. Your no-code solution is a means to an end, not the end itself. While you gather feedback and iterate, you should also be thinking about how to get the next version built so that it can scale and iterate into areas where your no-code solution cannot.
When design matters more than functionality.
Custom software solutions are about function. While form is absolutely important, function is key. Ultimately, your custom software should solve a problem or a number of problems. How it looks should enhance the solutions it provides. This is why custom software may not be as pretty as the no-code version, but will almost certainly be more robust, and have more opportunity to iterate and grow over time.
If you are in an industry where form matters most, and functionality can be lower on the priority list, creating beautiful no-code solutions can be the way to go. There are only a few areas where this really makes sense, and like with our other instances, it is likely that you are going to reach a point where no code just isn’t enough any more.
In general, no-code can be a great choice for you and your business if used for the right problems in the right context. As things become more complex, iteration becomes more important, and your customers multiply, custom software is almost always going to emerge as the right, if more expensive, solution.