In the last few years, more and more tools NoCode have appeared and taken off. Success stories based on Bubble, Webflow or Airtable and Make are becoming more and more frequent, the startup Prello being one of the most telling examples.
If Bubble is seen as the leader in web platform design, Airtable as the leader in ops and Make as the master of automation, when it comes to mobile applications, it is still difficult to point out a dominant editor, so we will offer you a small overview of the players present.
When talking about mobile applications NoCode, you will quickly be confronted with two terms, the acronym PWA and native.
For the average person, these terms are already a barrier. PWA stands for "Progressive Web App", in a way, it is a website optimized for mobile and encapsulated, giving it the appearance of a mobile application.
A native application will be specific to each mobile platform, iOS or Android, and will be any application you can download from the Apple or Google store.
And it is precisely this distinction that will determine, depending on your objective, which NoCode mobile tool to turn to.
With good reason, because the handling is very intuitive and the learning curve more progressive than some competitors, it is very easy to start creating your own application in a few minutes, and the magic of visual programming works.
Moreover, the editor offers a wide range of templates depending on the project you have in mind!
Beyond the visual aspect, the appeal of Glide was its easy integration with Google Sheet. This way, all your application's data resided in a single spreadsheet! Amazing.
Since then, integrations have diversified with Airtable, Excel and also their own data manager, Glide Tables.
If you can easily create your first mobile application with Glide, by training yourself, you will also be able to make it more complex while keeping an easy to use interface.
Nevertheless, keep in mind that Glide will not allow you to publish your creation on one of your favorite stores!
(Illustration of a Glide application allowing task management within a law firm)
An easy interface and powerful features made it a perfect candidate for starting out. It allowed to understand the logic of data management, as well as the integration with existing APIs.
Unfortunately, the product has not evolved much in the last few months, making us doubt the durability of the project, coupled with a lower performance than its competitors, despite a recent focus on them, which has had the impact of lowering the interest of investing time in this tool.
And yes, with Draftbit, you will be able to follow the usual flow of any mobile application: its design, its construction, its testing phase and its publication on the store!
When you log in to your Draftbit account, the interface is likely to confuse you, but don't let yourself be overwhelmed by this abundance of menus and choices. These are all possibilities that will allow you to customize your application down to the last detail!
Like most of its competitors, Draftbit provides you with a set of templates and graphic assets that will allow you to operate faster.
Nevertheless, Draftbit's great strength is in its versatility, because if your skills or motivation allow you to do so, you will be able to build complex navigations within your application, integrate it with a back-end LowCode such as Xano and even modify the source code behind the GUI.
If the power of Draftbit is undeniably attractive, especially the possibility to publish your native NoCode application on the AppStore or the Play Store, it has a cost, and therefore it is primarily intended for a professional audience far from the enlightened amateur.
From the very first minutes on the publisher's homepage, we are drawn in by a singular but inviting graphical approach and above all a set of functional promises suggesting that Bravo Studio may be the mobile development unicorn No-Code is looking for (the mythical animal, not the VC valuation of 1 billion ;) )
Indeed, Bravo allows you to create your mobile application visually, within a welcoming and intuitive development environment.
One of the strengths of Bravo is its strong bias for design, an unprecedented approach to my knowledge. You can design your application directly from Figma or Adobe XD and convert your interface directly into Bravo. Hard to do more efficient!
However, Bravo's appetite for design doesn't take away from its data management features thanks to its interactions with Airtable, Bubble or Firebase.
Just like Draftbit, you will be able to have your application tested by your testers thanks to the native tools of Apple or Google such as TestFlight and others. And then publish it directly on your favorite application store.
A detail that has its importance, the editor shares its roadmap of upcoming features, if ever you miss something, you can eventually see if the team is already working on it. A nice little extra!
(Illustration of the "Quai de Champagne" application page, developed with Bravo Studio)
Conclusion and advice
If we have talked about 4 popular players in the NoCode ecosystem of mobile applications, they are not the only ones, because if the available features are often similar from one editor to another, the way they have implemented them will be different and it is thus up to you to make your choice according to your tastes and your way of working.
We invite you to sharpen your curiosity towards other publishers such as AppGyver, Play, Bubble's BDK and others.
Finally to make your choice, it will depend primarily on your objective. If your target audience is rather internal, or associative, turn to publishers such as Glide who will offer you a mobile application in the form of a PWA, that will do perfectly well. But if on the other hand you want your application to be available to the general public, you'll have to turn to Bravo Studio or Draftbit.
But above all, remember, have fun!
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