Research done by Marielle
Creating a straightforward app typically takes around two to four months. Complex ones can take a year or more.
However, here’s a secret: you can actually slash that timeline by leveraging the power of low-code platforms!
If you want to crush it in the mobile app industry, time to market is a key factor to think about. And with more and more smartphone users every year, speed is your best friend.
If you want to crush it in the mobile app industry, time to market is a key factor to think about. And with more and more smartphone users every year, speed is your secret weapon! Let’s take Spain, for instance. The forecast of smartphone users in Spain is expected to keep rising from 2023 to 2028, adding 2.7 million users or a 6.23% increase.
Taking advantage of low-code development tools will definitely give you the competitive edge to bring your dream app to life. So, this blog will provide you with the basics of low-code application development platforms and how they can revolutionize your app creation process!
What is a Low-Code?
Low-code is a game-changing software development approach. It empowers developers to create applications with minimal hand coding and business users with no coding skills to create their own apps.
With low-code or no-code development platforms, you’ll dive into a world of visual language and drag-and-drop interface, making development faster, more efficient, and fun!
Low-code platforms refer to types of development platforms that require minimal coding knowledge and skills. Using these platforms helps businesses unleash their creativity and rapidly create, deploy, and maintain powerful apps! It is likely to include more integration with technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and the Internet of Things (IoT), making these complex technologies more accessible to non-technical users.
Some of the common features of a low-code platform include:
- Streamlining workflows
- Modernizing legacy applications
- Automating data integration
- Supporting data visualizations
- Delivering customer experiences
- Building mobile applications
Low-code Development vs. Traditional Development Process
If you have been in the game long enough, then you know how traditional development processes can be tedious. The hours, days or even weeks spent on coding and debugging an app are not only time-consuming but also resource-intensive.
On the other hand, low-code development is like taking the express lane compared to the traditional development process. Instead of starting from scratch and writing a ton of code, low-code development gives you a shortcut.
Apart from speed, here are some other key differences between traditional development and low-code development:
Traditional Development Process
- Requires advanced coding skills
- Time-consuming and resource-intensive
- Higher chances of errors and bugs
- Limited customization options
Low-code Development Process
- Minimal or no coding skills required
- Fast and efficient development process
- Reduced chances of errors and bugs
- Highly customizable with drag-and-drop widgets
| Low-Code Development | Traditional Development |
| Rapid development | Code control and customization |
| Functions around a pre-developed low-code platform | Designed, built, & optimized from scratch |
| Cost saving | Deployment options |
| Code/modules reuse | Quality |
10 Benefits of Using Low-Code Development Platforms
Whether you’re a large enterprise or a startup, low-code application development platforms offer tons of advantages. As long as you know the basics, you’ll be able to create apps quickly and cost-effectively.
Here are the 10 benefits of low-code platforms:
1. Speed
Undeniably, coding takes a long time to do. Building it from the ground up can take months, while a low-code platform can drastically reduce the time to market. Low-code platforms provide a visual development environment with drag-and-drop components, pre-built templates, and reusable modules. This allows developers to assemble and configure applications, reducing coding time significantly quickly.
2. Increased agility
Organizations can swiftly pivot to new solutions that adapt to market changes much faster. That’s doable not just because of the speed of development but also because development teams can quickly showcase a working prototype. From there, they can gather business feedback rapidly and make adjustments instead of going back and forth until they nail it.
3. Enhance developer productivity
By automating repetitive tasks and simplifying software development, low-code boosts developer productivity and empowers organizations to achieve more with fewer resources. Advanced low-code tools come with a host of features, such as database integration, workflow automation, secure integrations, and more. Your developers can integrate this into your existing IT infrastructure to save time.
4. Communication and collaboration
Empowering the members of your development team is another key benefit of low-code platforms. Team collaboration is simplified through the centralized visual development environment and access to a cloud repository. By bringing together experts from different domains, organizations can maximize their diverse knowledge and skills to deliver new applications in cross-functional projects.
5. Flexibility and scalability
As demands and business needs evolve, the ability to deploy new apps and enhance existing apps becomes crucial. By leveraging a cloud-based low-code platform, organizations gain the advantage of flexibility, continuous delivery support, and on-demand scalability at both run-time and dev-time. This powerful combination empowers businesses to adapt swiftly to changing requirements and seize new opportunities in the digital landscape.
6. Better customer experience
A single low-code development platform accelerates the delivery of high-quality apps. It enables organizations to develop applications and swiftly enhance customer journeys. Also, it facilitates easy product adaptation and modification based on user feedback and data.
7. Automate more in less time
Automation in low-code platforms greatly simplifies the testing and debugging process, providing developers with powerful no-code tools to ensure software quality. With features like automated unit testing and comprehensive error-handling mechanisms, developers can easily identify and fix issues. By automating these critical tasks, developers can focus more on building innovative business apps and delivering value to end-users.
8. Reduce maintenance burden
Teams can benefit greatly from the reusability of components and modules in low-code development. Reusable components eliminate the need to start every project from scratch or write extensive lines of code. As a result, adapting and modifying applications in response to competition, economics, disruption, or new opportunities become a seamless and efficient process.
9. Faster digital transformation
Low-code platforms are pivotal in digital transformation because they provide rapid application development. It promotes a collaborative and scalable development environment.
When businesses empower both developers and non-technical users to build mobile apps and integrate applications quickly, you will be closer to success. These platforms streamline processes, automate tasks, and enhance customer experiences, facilitating organizations’ transition to a digitally transformed ecosystem.
10. Decreased costs
Costs involving app development, maintenance, and updating are drastically reduced by using low-code platforms. Organizations no longer need to invest heavily in IT infrastructure and resources; rather, they can focus their budget on innovation and developing new business apps.
Note: A low-code platform also reduces the cost of ownership since developers use modular components that are easy to maintain and reuse.
5 Low-Code Platforms For To Build Your Mobile Apps
| Microsoft PowerApps | OutSystems | Appian | Mendix | KissFlow | |
| Free Trial | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Deployment | Cloud | Cloud, SaaS, Web | On-premise, SaaS | Private & Public Cloud, On-Premise | Cloud |
| Operating System | Windows, Mobile Web | Windows, Linux, Mac, Web-based, Android, iPhone-iPad, Windows Phone, Mobile Web App | Windows, Mac | Windows, Web-based, Linux | Windows, Mobile Web |
| Mobile Application | iOS, Android, Windows devices | Mobile Web, iOS, Android Native | Apple iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry, Mobile Web | Android, iOS, Windows Phone | iOS, Android devices |
| Suitable for large, complex applications? | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Code generation | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
Upon testing five low-code app development platforms, we will provide you with some insights into each of them:
Microsoft Power Apps
PowerApps has a bunch of templates to fit all your project needs and preferences. Connecting and importing data seamlessly makes integration effortless. It’s great at collecting data and streamlining workflows, especially in a Microsoft environment.
Plus, the user-friendly interface ensures smooth navigation and boosts productivity!
Appian
Appian, a renowned low-code app builder, can sometimes be perceived as less user-friendly due to the initial learning curve. However, once you navigate through the initial processes, you’ll have the opportunity to explore the vast capabilities of building your own applications. With Appian, you can unleash your creativity and bring your app ideas to life, empowering you to streamline processes and enhance productivity.
Outsystems
With its intuitive interface, Outsystems is incredibly easy to use when building a fully functional app within just 5 minutes. Plus, you have the option to download their user-friendly Service Studio tool, which simplifies the app development process even further.
Mendix
Mendix delivers a seamless and superb user experience, guaranteeing that every interaction is intuitive and user-friendly. Its responsive UI framework effortlessly adapts to various devices and screen sizes, ensuring a consistent and visually captivating experience across platforms. With Mendix, users can enjoy an exceptional and cohesive interface that caters to their needs effortlessly.
Kissflow
Kissflow is a powerful and user-friendly system for managing work and documents. It offers great results even for users with little to no programming knowledge. However, it would be beneficial to have more interaction capabilities with external parties and the ability to initiate processes and generate reports externally.
Limitations of Low-Code Platforms
Low-code application platforms are not a one-size-fits-all solution, however. It is important to keep in mind certain limitations of these platforms before diving into one or two:
Security risks
Security is of utmost importance to business users when developing enterprise apps. Low-code application development platforms may be vulnerable to security risks, such as data breaches, hacking, and malicious activities.
Complex apps require more customization
Developers may find it difficult to build complex apps, such as AI or machine learning (ML), using a low-code platform due to the lack of customization options. It is important to consider the project requirements before deciding on a platform.
Absence of a proprietary API(not having its own/proper API)
There may be low-code and no-code platforms that don’t have their own proprietary APIs, so developers will need to rely on third-party APIs for specific tasks. Additionally, since low-code platforms are cloud-based, they require an internet connection in order to function properly.
Conclusion
Is Low-Code the coding tool of the future? Probably, since in the foreseeable future, low-code development platforms will become highly useful to enterprises that want to build better and more modern business applications. They will also reduce complexities that prevent seamless outcomes.
Based on the different platforms that we’ve tried, we pick Mendix since they provide ease in UI design, have various deployment options, real-time model checking, and a responsive UI framework.
In the battle between low-code development and traditional development, there’s no winner. In our opinion, it really depends. With all the innovative functionalities and fast delivery, low-code platforms seem the best option. Nonetheless, traditional development has highly customizable options, scalability and adaptability, expanded functionality, and the ability to integrate with other systems more readily.
Need to Hire Professional Developers?
Although low-code app development offers impressive speed, there is no substitute for custom solutions crafted by skilled professionals.
If you’re looking for top-notch app developers to build or upgrade your apps, StarTechUP can help! Our experienced team of developers can build apps tailored to your needs and ensure they run smoothly on both iOS and Android platforms.
Furthermore, we provide comprehensive testing for all our projects, whether it’s for native mobile applications, web applications, or any other custom software. Our QA engineers will conduct extensive testing for the app before its launch.
Get in touch today and let’s get started building something amazing!
