Applications, whether on your laptop, tablet, or mobile device, are tools for getting things done. Most of the needs of today’s small to midsize organizations are met by commercial apps (SMBs). The majority, but not all. Whether you run a large corporation or a five-person basement operation, you’ll come upon a deal or a procedure that can’t be solved with off-the-shelf, third-party software at some point. That’s when you’ll have to deal with the multi-headed hydra of custom, in-house development projects.
The easier it is to build and deploy workable apps to fulfill a given activity or solve a specific problem on a team or across your business, the more quickly you can respond to any unexpected demand. Businesses have begun to Low code Alternatives – Compare Wavemaker Vs Mendix vs OutSystems vs Powerapps to low-code development platforms in an effort to make the app-creation process easier on the IT department while also making it more accessible to common business customers.
This new class of app-building tools allows businesses of all sizesāfrom small businesses to major corporationsāto swiftly design, build, customize, and launch business apps with little to no coding. Although the feature set and customization capabilities vary for every tool, the essential purpose remains the same. Users can use low-code development platforms to create a working app that can be downloaded, opened, and used in hours or less using a combination of drag-and-drop user interfaces (UIs), form builders, and visual process modeling.
What Is Low-Code App Development, and How Does It Work?
Although the term “low-code app development” didn’t exist until recently, the notion isn’t new. The “power user” or “citizen developer” has long been a concept in companies and SMBs, referring to business users who recognize an opportunity to improve a process and take it upon themselves to create their own programs. To do so, they frequently use technologies like Microsoft Excel’s Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) programming. Low-code tools broaden that mindset beyond just the most tech-savvy employees to any employee who identifies a business problem or process that a simple app may improve and address and decides to build it themselves.
Traditional developers and IT are on the other side of the equation, and these low-code platforms are supposed to speed up software delivery by swiftly constructing apps for specific business use cases. Wavemaker allows developers to work from existing templates and drag prebuilt elements, forms, and objects together to get a particular department or team the simple working app they need with a lot less hassle than coding an app from scratch that is made up of common features and components. As a result, low-code platforms are built to service both categories of users at the same time.
This is a difficult task because the platforms must cater to two distinct groups of users with vastly different skillsets and preferences. Low code application development platform for enterprises, Isvs, and Banks must have a dead-simple UI that allows users to construct an app step by step in understandable terms, with plenty of guidance along the way. Simultaneously, the tools must make IT’s development process easier while also providing more tech-savvy users with a variety of customization options, as well as the opportunity to integrate third-party services, extra data sources, and add layers of security and compliance. That’s a lot for a single platform to handle while still maintaining a cohesive experience.