No Code vs Low Code
Tags: webdev, beginners, lowcode
Published: 2022-05-21 14:19:57

## Why No-Code Solutions are Great

You can develop extremely fast using standards that have been stress tested thousands of times.  You don't need to be a programmer and usually you can just drag-and-drop functionality for your website.

## Why No-Code Solutions are Horrible

In order for the service provider to have their no-code functionality work they must keep it on their servers.  Most want to host your database also.  If you want any slight change or enhancement it just is not possible because if they make the enhancement for you it could break the websites of other no-code customers hosted on their servers.

Building your business with no-code is committing yourself to never want to do anything that hasn't been done before.  Committing to only doing what everyone else is doing exactly as they are doing it.

Have you had your website on a shared server before?  Most of the time that's fine.  However sometimes someone else's website has bad code  which ties up all resources on the server.  Or one of the other co-hosted websites has a DDOS attack which brings the server to a crawl  for everyone. Or good news - a website becomes trendy and super-popular and the onrush of visitors is more than the server can handle.

No-code solution providers should have good servers with full redundancy.  Redundant RAID hard drives, load-balanced web servers, load-balanced SQL servers, regular backups, redundant network cards, etc.  If any part of their server goes down you better hope their technical staff are good and available for emergencies.  Most likely they are... but if they are not there **is nothing you can do**.  You _do not_ have access to the server.  You _do not_ have access to the backups.

## Low-Code Imposters

If a company touts themselves as a low-code solution but they **require** you to host on their servers... they have all the problems of a no-code provider.  Do you have full FTP access?  Can you change the configuration on the web server?  Is your traffic affected by other traffic on the same server hitting the same database?

## The Low-Code Difference

When you are using a low-code solution you have all the code available to modify as-needed.  You host it on your own server.  You decide your load-balancing needs.  If there is a problem with your server, you can fix it.

If you want to build something in a way that has never been done before... you can do that.  Either by making your own pages and integrating them or by making core changes to the low-code library so it works exactly the way you want it to.

Nobody has ever had to throw away their low-code solution because they could not add a feature or functionality.

## Difference of Opinion

If you ask a new founder who doesn't code of course they will be inclined to use a no-code solution.  That might be fine for roughing-out an idea and making a MVP (minimum viable product).

If you ask a programmer they will almost always declare they do not want to work on a no-code solution.  That's because they **know** that eventually the founder is going to request something which seems reasonable and easy but is absolutely impossible to do on the no-code  platform.  At that point either you settle for not having the feature or you rewrite everything from scratch and throw away all you have done on the no-code platform.

Another important consideration is maintainability and ability to enhance the code.  If you look for a Bubble developer you will find hundreds if not thousands of them.  If you ask them to take over and enhance the code that a different Bubble coder wrote... good luck.  I've heard that most will say it is easier for them to start over from scratch.

## Summary

No-code solutions are amazing technology if you want to experiment and maybe build a MVP.  Just be aware that sooner or later you will probably have to migrate to a solution that is more robust and flexible.