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• No code. Pros & Cons

The development of websites and applications needs money and time investment. If you’re limited in your resources and don’t know how to code, the No-code option may be relevant for you. Writing code is no longer needed. But is everything as nice as it sounds?

To start with, let’s discover what is no-code? As you probably know, every digital product consists of code. User sees only the wrapper while surfing the net, but every web page or application is created with code. The no-code is a development without code writing. It is also called zero-code, because it works like a constructor: user drags elements on the screen and places them wherever he or she likes.

Along with no-code the low-code term goes with. The low-code - type of programming when the main part of the product is built with ready blocks, but you may write some code for specific functions. Low-code is considered to be more flexible in implementing new functions as it is not limited with ready-to-use blocks libraries.

So, we’ve broken down a huge amount of information and determined the advantages and disadvantages of using low-code and no-code technologies.

Perhaps, we would start from the positive points of using no-code and low-code solutions.>

• Speed. No-code is fast. And it is so fast that you may start your website within only a few hours.
• Accessibility. You don’t need to have engineering education or coding knowledge to start using such tools. They are that simple school children can use them too. Just drag and drop appropriate blocks and see the result in a second.
• Singleplayer. You don’t need a whole team to develop your project. During the development you may also be focused on the features you’ve defined as key.
• Money-saving. You don’t have to compromise on the output once you adapt no-code.

Every point above is crucial while starting a new business. But still no-code technologies can fail to live up to expectations. When evaluating a no- or low-code platform, it is important to keep in mind the following risks.

• Customization. And that is the main disadvantage. You may feel a lack of flexibility and customization while using no-code. These platforms perform by locking blocks of code into visual components that users can manipulate with. But the volume of manipulations is strictly limited, so only simple cases may be developed using no-code.
• Security. There can be a way to avoid built-in security as users are building apps amongst different apps without any oversight or protocols around access.
• Scalability. Almost every company that gains success needs scalability in their application. Most of these fast and cost-effective no-code platforms are not easily scalable. It is a lie that every platform doesn’t have such features, but if they have, it comes with an extra charge.
• Cost. One of the disadvantages sounds the same as the advantage of using no-code. It's true that no-code platforms have monthly-paid access, it is also true that the monthly fee is not as big as hiring a team of developers. But if we compare the results we may discover that the no-code result may not work as you’ve expected. Also you will spend much time getting used to the platform. Perhaps you will hire the developer to speed up the process but since that time it is more expensive than hiring developers in the first place.

Is the no-code so bad that it may not be useful in any cases? No, for sure. No-code is a great solution for ordinary business like online shopping, barber-shops, gyms and so on. It also may be useful in marketing campaigns if you are creating a sales funnel. But when your vision and business sphere comes across the ‘template line’, you will need to hire developers and stop thinking about no-code at all.

Author: Andrey Krupchinsky