The Most Revolutionary No-Code and Low-Code Tools

List of the best no-code and low-code tools that will make your life easy. Includes web app builders, UI frameworks, workflow builders, and more.

The Most Revolutionary No-Code and Low-Code Tools

It's amazing how many tools there are that get you from 0% to 100% in building a business, building a community, or changing someone's life for the better.

I want to explore what those tools are and how they can help you. My goal is to be unbiased and present only the best. I've carefully researched each one.

What are no-code and low-code tools?

Any tool that saves you hours a day in any of the following categories counts as a no-code/low-code tool in my book:

  • Hosting (deployment, scaling, security)
  • Backend (data collection, data processing, connecting to APIs, data storage)
  • User Accounts & Payments (user management, memberships, subscriptions)
  • Front-end (UI components, state management, app frameworks)
  • Marketing (landing pages, email lists, analytics, blogging platforms)
  • Customer Engagement (gathering feedback, usability testing, roadmaps)
  • Product Iteration (incorporating research, building new features quickly)

Criteria for inclusion in this list

To cut down on the amount of tools listed here, I have some strict criteria:

  • Designed for indie makers (takes max 3 hrs to set up)
  • Priced for indie makers ($10-$50 per month)
  • Extremely well designed (does what you tell it to)
  • Highly innovative (10x better results than average)
  • Well documented (reliable and easy to navigate)
  • Actively maintained (has received an update recently)

Also, each tool is rated with the following statuses:

  • 🧐 I want to try this
  • 🀩 I actively use and love this
  • πŸ₯° I've heard great things about it
  • πŸ€“ Created by an indie maker
  • 🀯 WTF! THIS IS REVOLUTIONARY!

The No-Code and Low-Code Tools πŸ‘‡

Mobile App Generator

Tools that let you build apps that work on smartphones, very quickly.

  • Adalo β€” 🧐πŸ₯° Exports a real mobile app. Has a database API. Allows you to trigger native smartphone notifications.
  • Glide β€” 🀩πŸ₯° Converts a spreadsheet into a responsive web app in minutes. Great for simple projects. Does not export a real mobile app.
  • DraftBit β€” 🀯 Has great UI and animations. Doesn't support exporting a real mobile app (but plans to). Doesn't support a custom backend (but plans to).
  • Thunkable β€” 🧐 Aimed at beginners, but still fully-featured. Exports a real mobile app. Uses a snap-code-into-place UI like Scratch.

Simple Backend as a Service

These offerings provide a really simple service, but make it easy to transform an otherwise static site into a dynamic one

  • EasyDB β€” πŸ€©πŸ€“ The easiest way to add a database to your web app. The database expires after some time unless you pay for it.
  • Cloud Local Storage β€” πŸ€©πŸ€“πŸ€― A service that lets you have a database in the cloud using the browser's familiar localStorage API.
  • Userbase β€” πŸ§πŸ€“ Quick and easy way to get a real application up and running, with user accounts and a database included!
  • JSON Box β€” πŸ§πŸ€“ A quick and easy way to add dynamic data to your website or app. Great for prototyping. Has some limits on data size.

Authentication as a Service

Let users sign up for your service and get access to individualized data.

  • Magic β€” πŸ₯°πŸ€“ With a few lines of code, your app can support a variety of passwordless login methods.
  • Auth0 β€” 🧐 Allow users to sign into your app from a variety of platforms. Especially great if you need PCI or HIPAA compliance.
  • MemberStack β€” 🧐 Add secure user authentication and accept payments on any website. Build a custom SaaS application or premium community.
  • Memberful β€” 🧐 Membership software to create paid communities. Lots of integrations with other no-code tools.

Backend as a Service for Complex Apps

These tools remove concerns about data management, data storage, user management, and file storage.

  • Xano β€” 🧐🀩πŸ₯°πŸ€― Build a backend for your web/mobile app without code. Includes custom API endpoints, easy-to-edit database, and simple UI.
  • Hasura β€” 🧐🀩πŸ₯°πŸ€― Build applications with realtime data and authentication on top of GraphQL. The easiest way to build a modern API-based backend.
  • AppWrite β€” 🧐πŸ₯°πŸ€“πŸ€― A community driven, open-source backend for web and mobile. Supports user accounts, database, and file uploads.
  • Base API β€” 🧐πŸ₯°πŸ€“πŸ€― Simple, easy-to-use interface with support for authentication, sending emails, uploading files, and a lot more!
  • Supabase β€” 🧐πŸ₯°πŸ€― An open-source alternative to Firebase. Realtime data. Generates APIs automatically. In early stage of development.
  • Firebase β€” 🀩πŸ₯° One of the faster ways to build a web app, with support for realtime data, user accounts, and everything you need out of the box.
  • Prisma β€” πŸ₯° Provides a front-end for your database that makes it easier to work with (query builder, migrations, editing data).
  • AWS AppSync β€” 🧐 GraphQL + user authentication as a service and built right into the AWS ecosystem.
  • Nhost β€” πŸ§πŸ€“ Like firebase, but with SQL and GraphQL instead of noSQL and REST. Has user accounts and file uploading built in.

App Generators

These give you a head start in developing an app and often come with crisp code, beautiful UI components, admin dashboards, and seamless interfaces.

  • Divjoy β€” πŸ₯°πŸ§πŸ€“ Generates a full-stack React application with a landing page, authentication, database, and hosting configuration built in. Really cool!
  • Create React App β€” πŸ₯°πŸ§ The officially supported way to create single-page React applications. It offers a modern build setup with no configuration.
  • React Slingshot β€” 🧐 React starter kit with Redux, Babel, React Router, and PostCSS built in.

Complex Visual Web App Builders

These make some things easy, but aren't that flexible. I think these are mostly for building back-office apps and not user facing apps. Also might not be mobile friendly.

  • AppGyver β€” 🧐🀯 A state-of-the-art visual app builder with high security and a good database. It's geared towards enterprise, but free for smaller customers.
  • Bildr β€” πŸ₯°πŸ§ A powerful way to build interactive websites. Interface is like a design tool (e.g. Figma) instead of a standard website builder.
  • UI Bakery β€” πŸ₯°πŸ§ Build front-end UI components using their visual builder and export nicely formatted Angular code.
  • Bubble β€” 🧐 Visual web app builder. Leader in the space. You can use a template from Zeroqode to get started or use their How to Build tutorials.

SaaS Generators

These give you a head start in starting a full online service business and they usually come with landing pages, payment integration, and some UI components.

  • Gravity β€” πŸ§πŸ€“πŸ€― A Node.js SaaS boilerplate with React UI that comes with support for subscriptions, user accounts, flexible database support, and more.
  • Bedrock β€” πŸ₯°πŸ§πŸ€― A modern full-stack Next.js & GraphQL boilerplate with user authentication, subscription payments, teams, and invitations!
  • Laravel Spark β€” πŸ₯°πŸ§πŸ€― A Laravel package that provides scaffolding for your SaaaS app: subscriptions, invoices, Bootstrap CSS, backend APIs, and Vue.js.
  • Ship SaaS β€” πŸ§πŸ€“ A SaaS starter that uses Next.js, Tailwindcss, Stripe, and Supabase.
  • Jabloon β€” πŸ§πŸ€“ A Ruby on Rails SaaS starter kit that uses Tailwind CSS + Stimulus JS and has payments, auth, email templates, and UI components.
  • Bullet Train β€” πŸ₯°πŸ§πŸ€“ A Ruby on Rails Saas template that comes with some UI components and has user accounts, subscriptions, and good test coverage.
  • SaaS App β€” 🧐 Open-source SaaS starter kit built on React and Node. Supports user accounts, teams, Stripe subscriptions, and file uploads.
  • Wave β€” 🧐 Out of the box Authentication, Subscriptions, Invoices, Announcements, User Profiles, API, and more.

Convert API to a SaaS

If you're a developer who can build useful APIs, but doesn't want to add billing, memberships, and marketing, these can get you set up quickly.

  • SaaSBox β€” 🧐 Plugin in your API and get a Saas product that you can charge money for, including a user management dashboard and simple landing page.
  • Saasify β€” 🧐 Monetizing your API easily as a SaaS product, and get user accounts, subscriptions, and developer documentation built in.

All-in-One SaaS Management

You have an online business, but don't know how to manage customer feedback, handle billing, or integrate a help desk. Start here.

  • Outseta β€” 🧐🀯 An all-in-one SaaS management platform. Includes an embeddable billing widget, CRM, email lists, help desk, and authentication.

Traditional Approaches to Flattening the Stack

The first generation of all-in-one web app frameworks that made it much easier to create powerful online products.

  • Rails β€” πŸ₯°πŸ§πŸ€― A modern, full stack web app framework with a huge community, tons of resources, and many examples of successful products built on it.
  • Laravel β€” πŸ₯°πŸ§πŸ€“πŸ€― An amazing and easy-to-use full stack framework, with a huge ecosystem, exciting community, and lots of cool plugins.
  • Django β€” πŸ₯° The alternative to Rails for developers who love Python. Great community, excellent documentation, and a lot of powerful features.
  • Adonis β€” 🧐 A batteries included Node.js framework that supports routing, sessions, auth, file uploads, emails, and even web sockets.

New Approaches to Flattening the Stack

These solutions try to keep the benefits of modern frameworks (developer ergonomics, real-time updates, component front-ends), while removing the headaches (asset bundling or server-side rendering or too much to keep track of)

  • Remake β€” 🀩πŸ₯°πŸ€“πŸ€― I made this product. It lets you define web app functionality using nothing more than a few HTML attributes.
  • Blitz β€” 🧐πŸ₯°πŸ€“πŸ€― A framework that's really taking off! A full-stack Node.js framework that lets you import server code in your React components!
  • Livewire β€” 🧐πŸ₯°πŸ€“πŸ€― A full-stack framework for Laravel that makes building dynamic interfaces simple, without leaving the comfort of Laravel.
  • Remix β€” 🧐πŸ₯°πŸ€“πŸ€― A React framework by the creators of React Router. Adds APIs and conventions for server rendering, data loading, routing, and more!
  • RedwoodJS β€” 🧐πŸ₯°πŸ€“ A React framework that makes building a full-stack web app feel like building a Jamstack website. Uses GraphQL and Prisma.
  • Inertia.js β€” 🧐πŸ₯°πŸ€“ An exciting framework that gives you the instant, real-time interactivity of front-end frameworks with classic server-driven code.
  • Hyperstack β€” 🧐🀯 Build your UI, your front-end logic, and your backend logic all in one language: Ruby!

Revolutionary Approaches to Flattening the Stack

Some of the most interesting and revolutionary tools are in this category. These tools allow tons of flexibility while completely removing at least one full layer of the product development stack (e.g. database, back-end, build tool, hand-off).

  • Elm β€” 🧐πŸ₯°πŸ€“πŸ€― A language that helped inspire React! It has a simple, easy-to-use API, helps saves you time, and compiles down to plain JavaScript.
  • Imba β€” 🧐πŸ₯°πŸ€“πŸ€― An amazing new language designed specifically for building web applications. Based on Ruby. Treats DOM elements as first-class citizens.
  • Mavo β€” πŸ§πŸ€“πŸ€― Build interactive websites and web apps using a declarative language that harnesses the simplicity of HTML.
  • Phoenix LiveView β€” 🧐πŸ₯°πŸ€― This is a very exciting framework that lets you build web apps with real-time experiences using server-rendered HTML.
  • Alan β€” πŸ§πŸ€“πŸ€― A framework that uses a high-level model-based configuration to output a software application. Looks very promising.
  • Anvil β€” 🧐 Build full-stack web apps with only Python. An all-in-one framework that comes with a UI builder, database connector, and user accounts.

Exciting Frameworks & Stacks

These are some of the most exciting combos in the front-end framework world.

  • React + (Next.js or Gatsby) β€” 🧐 Build full-stack Jamstack web apps on top of React with some good conventions and a strong ecosystem.
  • Svelte + Sapper β€” 🧐 File-based routing and code splitting, built on top of Svelte.
  • Vue.js + Gridsome β€” 🧐 Lets you consume APIs from anywhere, transform it into a GraphQL API, and render it with Vue.js.
  • Vapor β€” πŸ₯° A server-side Swift framework that provides a nice interface for all the common web app APIs.
  • Marko β€” 🧐 A front-end JS framework with a focus on best-in-class performance. Supports server-rendering without too much work.
  • Meteor β€” 🀩 A framework for building real-time web apps that has everything built in! Real-time database, user accounts, shared client/server code.

Auto-Generated Admin Panels

Uses a database schema to auto-generate a UI that lets your manage users and app data easily.

  • Forest Admin β€” 🧐πŸ₯°πŸ€― A framework for building powerful admin panels. Can be combined with Hasura for super-powered development capabilities!
  • BaseDash β€” 🧐πŸ₯°πŸ€― Edit a production database with the ease of editing a spreadsheet! All changes are versioned.
  • Backpack for Laravel β€” 🧐πŸ₯°πŸ€“ Lets you manage your back-end models, create new pages, change user roles, see debug logs, and manage files!
  • React Admin β€” 🧐πŸ₯° Build a usable admin interface for all your app data and users with very little effort.

Generate UI Quickly Using a Visual Builder

These UI frameworks come partially pre-assembled or let you build UI with a visual builder

  • WeWeb β€” πŸ§πŸ€“ Create a website on top of a custom data source (Airtable, Google Sheets, etc.) with the flexibility of a drag-and-drop website builder.
  • Visly β€” 🧐 Build React components using a visual design program that behaves like Sketch or Figma.
  • Chakra UI and OpenChakra β€” 🧐πŸ₯° An open-source component library for React that comes with a visual drag-and-drop builder.
  • Modulz β€” 🧐πŸ₯° Close the gap between design and code by creating your front-end components in an interface design tool.
  • Hadron β€” 🧐 Another interface design tool that doubles as a front-end component builder. Unifies your design system in one app.
  • Startup 3 β€” 🧐 A beautiful website builder that's fast and easy to use with the help of pre-designed blocks.
  • Frontendor β€” Generate landing pages by copy and pasting blocks of code. Built on Bootstrap.

Generate UI Quickly With Pre-Built UI Components

These UI frameworks come with pages and components pre-built, so you can just piece them together like a puzzle to create a great web app.

  • Tailwind UI β€” 🀩πŸ₯°πŸ€“πŸ€― Generate components for your project by using Tailwind beautiful components hand-crafted by the creators of Tailwind.
  • Shuffle.dev β€” πŸ§πŸ€“πŸ€― Truly amazing. Use this drag-and-drop builder to make a website with Tailwind, Bootstrap, Bulma, or the Material UI CSS framework.
  • Tailwind Starter Kit β€” 🧐 A quick and open-source way to get started with your project by using pre-built Tailwind CSS components.
  • MerakiUI β€” 🧐 Beautiful open-source TailwindCSS components.
  • Tails β€” 🧐 A drag and drop page creator based on TailwindCSS. Over 120+ components to help you build websites.
  • Tail-Kit β€” 🧐 Over 250 free components and free templates, based on Tailwind CSS 2.0. Just copy and paste the code.
  • Kutty β€” 🧐 Accessible and reusable TailwindCSS components that are commonly used in web applications

Generate UI Quickly (Assembly Required)

You still need to take care of the back-end, but these easy-to-use libraries will make your front-end look nice without much work

  • TailwindCSS β€” 🀩πŸ₯°πŸ€“πŸ€― A utility-first CSS framework that can be composed to build any design, directly in your HTML markup.
  • Framework7 β€” πŸ§πŸ€“πŸ€― A free and open-source framework to develop mobile, desktop or web apps with native look and feel.
  • Ant Design β€” 🧐πŸ₯° An absolutely phenomenal CSS framework that looks beautiful, is accessible, and supports tons of components.
  • TurretCSS β€” 🧐 An amazing, accessible, and beautiful CSS framework for creating intuitive UI quickly.
  • Material Design Components β€” 🀩πŸ₯° Made by Google. Well-designed, beautiful, reliable components for use in a web application.
  • Bulma β€” 🀩πŸ₯°πŸ€“ A CSS framework for building UI components quickly. A nice alternative to Bootstrap.
  • Daisy UI β€” 🧐 Beautiful, easy to use component library built on top of TailwindCSS.
  • Semantic UI β€” 🧐πŸ₯° A flexible and thoroughly documented CSS framework with support for a lot of different components and themes.
  • Quasar Β β€” 🧐 A pretty advanced Vue.js component library that can produce a multi-platform app from the same code base.

Workflow Builders & API Automators

Connect different apps and their events, so you can create an automated process to run your business instead of doing things manually.

  • Zapier β€” 🀩πŸ₯° One of the original no-code automation tools. Connect websites, web apps, and data and automate your work.
  • Integromat β€” 🧐πŸ₯°πŸ€― An advanced Zapier alternative that has a lot more power, but is also a little more complex to work with. Amazingly powerful!
  • Parabola β€” 🧐πŸ₯° Build flows and pipelines by using pre-built components that let you extract, transform, and load data.
  • Huginn β€” 🧐🀯 A hackable, open-source version of Zapier on your own server. It can read the web, watch for events, and take actions on your behalf.
  • Pipedream β€” 🧐πŸ₯° Connect APIs with code and pre-built building blocks. Makes building integrations for your product a lot faster.
  • Story.ai β€” 🧐 Use natural language to create workflows and connect APIs. Allows non-developers to harness the power of workflow builders.
  • Autocode by Standard Library β€” 🧐 A Zapier alternative aimed at developers. Makes it easy to connect different services together.

Marketing Automation

Help customers explore your product and collect leads with automated forms.

  • Headlime β€” πŸ€©πŸ€“ Automatically generates headline and page copy for your website and leaves room for you to improve it if you need to.
  • Autopilot β€” 🧐 Capture and convert leads using forms, emails, and workflow automations.
  • TextIt β€” 🧐 Build scalable, interactive chatbots on any channel without writing any code.

Spreadsheet as a Database

A quick and easy way to get started prototyping an idea. Can be used to hand off a small project to a client.

  • Stein β€” 🧐 Use Google Sheets as a low-effort headless CMS. Perfect for prototyping and simple client websites.
  • Sheety β€” 🧐 Turn their spreadsheets into powerful APIs to rapidly develop prototypes and websites. Comes with pre-build templates.
  • Sheet.best β€” 🧐 Turn a Google Sheet into an API that you can use to power any website. Comes with a full CRUD API and some security features.
  • Sheetsu β€” 🧐 Connect Google Sheets to anything - Web, Mobile, or use it as an API for anything else.

Spreadsheet to Website

Make beautiful-looking websites using data from a simple spreadsheet. One of the fastest ways to experiment with a new idea.

  • Pory β€” 🧐πŸ₯°πŸ€“ Create beautiful websites using content from Airtable. Supports filtering, search, and custom domains.
  • Table2Site β€” πŸ§πŸ€“ Turn an Airtable spreadsheet into a website. Supports custom domains and CSS.
  • Siteoly β€” πŸ§πŸ€“ Turn a Google Sheet into a website. Supports custom domains. Comes with 15 templates, search, and filtering.
  • Sheet2Site β€” πŸ§πŸ€“ Turn a Google Sheet into a website. Supports custom domains and includes 12 templates, search, and filtering.
  • SpreadSimple β€” 🧐 Create a beautiful website using Google Sheets data. Supports search, filters, card customization, and custom domains.
  • Softr β€” 🧐 Create websites and portals using Airtable data. Comes with a lot of nice templates, including upvoting sites and job boards.

Internal Spreadsheets with Advanced Functionality

These tools work as internal admin dashboards by adding advanced capabilities onto the spreadsheet model

  • Notion β€” 🀩πŸ₯°πŸ€― One of the most useful and flexible apps for keeping track of projects, planning, and collaborating with a team.
  • Airtable β€” 🧐πŸ₯°πŸ€― A spreadsheet that works like an app, lets you have more control over data, and comes with templates for collaborating with a team.
  • Baserow β€” 🧐🀯 An open-source, self-hosted Airtable alternative build on top of PostgreSQL. Build a database with no-code!
  • Rows β€” 🧐🀯 It's basically a bunch of nicely designed no-code tools you can use to automate workflows for your team. Looks really promising.
  • Fibery β€” 🧐🀯 A workflow builder inside a collaboration app. Lets your team customize and control how you work together.
  • Retool β€” πŸ₯°πŸ§ Build internal apps and dashboards for your team with an advanced interface that makes interacting with a database incredibly easy.
  • Clay β€” 🧐 An advanced filterable, sortable, rich spreadsheet that can auto-fill data based on the information you need.
  • Coda β€” 🧐 Create advanced, internal apps that work like spreadsheets. Using data, filtering, automation, and templates, you can build any internal workflow.
  • Actiondesk β€” 🧐 Pull in data from any source and let your team generate spreadsheets and reports on it. Looks powerful
  • Stacker β€” 🧐 Use Google Sheets and Airtable as the foundation for your admin panels and internal workflows. Allows customizing the UI and theming.
  • Amazon Honeycode β€” 🧐 Build custom, internal applications using a visual builder combined with a spreadsheet interface.

Rapid Application Development Frameworks

These tools focus on speed above all else. They might lose some flexibility, but your ability to get to market fast and test out your idea will more than make up for it.

  • Alpine.js β€” 🧐πŸ₯°πŸ€“πŸ€― If you need to add a bit of behavior to your page, but don't want to import a full view library like React or Vue, Alpine.js is perfect.
  • Dark β€” 🧐πŸ₯°πŸ€“πŸ€― Makes setting up a simple backend with persistent storage a breeze. Provisioning databases, deploying, security, etc. is all taken care of.
  • htmx β€” 🧐πŸ₯°πŸ€― Access AJAX, CSS Transitions, WebSockets and AJAX calls using HTML attributes, so you can build modern user interfaces fast.
  • Streamlit β€” 🧐πŸ₯°πŸ€― Open-source app framework for Machine Learning and Data Science teams to create beautiful data apps with Python.
  • DataFormJS β€” 🧐🀯 A really cool web app framework that can use React/Vue to render, but takes care of other behavior with simple HTML attributes.
  • Alpas β€” 🧐 A batteries-included, yet a modular, web framework for Kotlin with a very strong focus on developers' productivity.
  • Buffalo β€” 🧐 A framework for building web apps with Go, which supports routing, templating, and an asset pipeline.

Rapid API Development Frameworks

These tools allow you to generate an API from a database very quickly, potentially saving years of work.

  • PostgREST β€” 🧐 A standalone web server that turns your PostgreSQL database directly into a RESTful API.
  • PostGraphile β€” 🧐 Instantly spin-up a GraphQL API server by pointing PostGraphile at your existing PostgreSQL database.
  • Fastify β€” 🧐 A web framework highly focused on providing the best developer experience with the least overhead and a powerful plugin architecture.

Convert 3rd Party Websites into APIs

These tools scan 3rd party websites, assemble their info into a structured format, and let you use the data in your own web app

  • ClickDiv β€” 🧐 Run automated tasks on different websites and assemble the results into data that can be passed on to other services.
  • ParseHub β€” 🧐 An advanced parser that can crawl a website and assemble the results into structured data.
  • ScrapingBee β€” 🧐 Uses powerful tech to get around blocking and extracts all the data you need from any website.
  • ScrapeHero β€” 🧐 Convert a website into high-quality, structured data and convert it to any format. Useful for conducting research or collecting leads.
  • Axiom β€” 🧐 Lets you automate by recording actions, like an Excel macro, but for the whole web. It can plugin to APIs and reach places tools like Zapier can’t.

Quick Prototyping

I hesitated to add this section, but I think it's relevant. As design and development become more entangled, everything should start to feel as easy as prototyping.

  • Figma β€” 🀩 πŸ₯°πŸ€― Create clickable prototypes and high-fidelity designs using a real time, collaborative design tool. Great with the Ant Design UI Kit.
  • ProtoPie β€” 🧐πŸ₯° Rapidly iterate on UX designs by building out fully featured prototypes with real data and real interactions.
  • MirageJS β€” 🧐 Mock out rich, dynamic API endpoints for testing features and building prototypes without building a real backend.

Landing Page Templates

These tools will help bootstrap your marketing website by giving you the HTML and CSS to get started. You'll need to modify them and host it yourself.

  • Cruip β€” πŸ§πŸ€“ Beautifully designed HTML, React, Vue.js, and Tailwind templates. You can set up a startup landing page instantly.
  • Landing Folio β€” πŸ§πŸ€“ The best free and premium landing pages curated to ensure the best quality for your next design project.

High-Level CMS For Building Landing Pages

These tools focus more on high-level components, letting you define the content, but not getting into the details

CMS with Unique Approaches

Uses web native tools (like online spreadsheets) that are familiar to users and can easily hook into multiple platforms to serve as a back-end

  • Vapid (one of my favorites)
  • Editmode β€” a headless CMS with inline content editing (kind of like TinaCMS)

Headless CMS

Makes it easy to manage data, so you can just focus on displaying it.

Blog & Note Taking

When you want to share your journey with customers and build a community, which tools do you turn to?

CMS

Usually not great for building a full-fledged web app, but great for managing a website builder.

Beyond CMS

More powerful than the standard CMS

  • Ycode β€” Build and design a website visually for multiple clients, let them login to view or edit data, and deploy in seconds.
  • Budibase β€” 🧐 Set up a web app's backend (database, models, records) using a visual interface and connect it to your front-end through a visual builder.
  • Wordpress (headless CMS, website builder, e-commerce) + Elementor or Sage + ACF
  • TinaCMS
  • Factor (not sure exactly what this is yet, but claims to save tons of time!)
  • Keystone 5 (CMS / App boilerplate)
  • Webiny (headless CMS + ui builder)
  • Stackbit (CMS for JAMstack)
  • Primo (development a component library in the cloud, while generating static assets, and give non-technical users a CMS interface for editing data. it's an IDE/CMS/SSG all in one product!)

Technical Documentation

Tools for Gathering Customer Feedback

Roadmaps, Announcements, & Feature Voting

How do you keep track of everything you're working on and share it with other people?

Payment & Pricing Integration

Hosting

  • Netlify β€” Serverless deployment platform with a git-based workflow, automated deployments, shareable previews, and other features.
  • Vercel β€” Β Fast deployment/hosting with a great developer experience. Works great with Next.js.
  • Render β€” Hosting platform for both static and dynamic apps. Free SSL, global CDN, private networks, and auto deploys from Git.
  • Fly β€” A CDN for apps. Deploy apps close to your users. Can make apps much faster for users.

Marketplace Creators

These tools help you set up a marketplace or membership-based website really quickly

Membership & Β Online Course Creators

Form Endpoints

These services let you collect visitor information and possibly display it somewhere else.

Email List Automation

  • Buttondown β€”
  • Sidemail β€” Create an email list, then send automatic campaigns and newsletters. Also sends transactional emails (e.g. "Thanks for your purchase!")
  • Mailerlite β€” Built for small businesses. Email campaigns, landing pages, and popup sign up forms.
  • ConvertKit β€” Built for indie makers. Email campaigns, landing pages, and popup sign up forms.
  • Mailcoach β€”
  • ListMonk β€”
  • Sendy β€”

Addons & Popups

  • Poptin β€” Popups and embeddable forms to get visitors' email addresses and send them followup campaigns.
  • GetSiteControl β€” Popups and forms. Really nice product.
  • Jolt β€” πŸ§πŸ€“ Add comments, analytics, email forms, and more without any code or site builds.
  • StaticKit β€” Squarely aimed at the JAMstack crowd. If you have a static website that you want to add forms and payments to, this might be the ticket.

Purpose-Built Apps

These tools help you do one thing really well with very little effort.

  • Cloakist β€” πŸ€©πŸ€“ Put any type of link behind a custom domain. Could be an Airtable form, ClickUp document, Adobe Spark page, or Trello board.
  • RoomService.dev β€” Add real-time collaboration to a React app in a few minutes
  • Flatfile (add a data importing feature into your app)
  • ConvertCalculator (build a calculator for your product)
  • Outgrow (build an interactive calculator or quiz)
  • Dash is a framework for building data visualization web apps in pure Python.
  • Luna β€” WYSIWYG language for data processing. Very exciting!
  • Kapwing β€” A collaborative platform for creating and editing images, videos, and GIFs. Has a powerful studio editor as well as purpose-built tools.

Database Query to Application

These tools allow you to build app views from database queries, generating the front-end automatically

New Languages

Languages that let you do things differently than normal and save a lot of time.

  • Mint β€” A programming language purpose-built for creating SPAs (single page applications). Used to build Base API.

High-Level Web App Definition Languages

These tools allow you to create a very high-level definition of your app, which is then seamlessly transpiled into the language/framework of your choice.

  • Wasp β€” πŸ§πŸ€“πŸ€― A declarative language that makes it really easy to build full-stack web apps while still using the latest technologies

Website Builder Builders

These tools work one level up from normal website builders, allowing you to make your own, custom website builder.

  • GrapesJS β€” 🧐🀯 An open-source framework that lets you make your own website builder.

Convert a Static Design into An App

This seems like a big promise to fulfill, but if they can pull it off it would be amazing.

  • Relate β€” 🧐 A design + development platform all-in-one with real-time collaboration, so no hand-off from design to development is required.
  • Supernova Studio β€” 🧐 Translates Sketch and Adobe XD designs into code β€” no hand-off from design to development. Perfect for creating design systems.
  • Yotako β€” 🧐 Tries to understand what kind of user interface you are designing and generates UI components based on that.

Comments & Tips

"Combine Hasura (automatic GraphQL on top of PostgreSQL) with React Admin (low code CRUD apps) and you can build an entire back office admin suite or form app (API endpoints and admin front end) in a matter of hours." β€” cpursley on HN

"We ended up using AppSync and it is fairly impressive. I highly recommend anyone who is stuck in the AWS ecosystem to check it out. AppSync integrates with a lot of other AWS services (Cognito, S3) very easily and allows you to use Dynamo/Aurora/RDS/Elastic as data sources. On top of this, you can also use Lambda to implement resolvers that need more intense business logic, making the service incredibly powerful." β€” afvictory on HN

"PostgREST is performant, stable, and transparent. It allows us to bootstrap projects really fast, and to focus on our data and application instead of building out the ORM layer." β€” Anupam Garg from a testimonial

"As I was looking at some of these workflows, I couldn't help but think how there will be this eventual shift like with Craiglist where companies will spring up that just focus on certain more complex popular workflows. . . . So my advice if you're looking for your next indie software idea. Just observe what these no-coders are automating on Zapier and build a nice UI around it." Kameron Tanseli from a blog post

Further Reading