The Best No-Code Tools You Should Use 🧩
And why they are an incredible opportunity for your dev team
Hey 👋 this is Luca! Welcome to a 🔒 weekly edition 🔒 of Refactoring.
Every week I write advice on how to become a better engineering leader, backed by my own experience, research and case studies.
You can learn more about Refactoring here.
To receive all the full articles and support Refactoring, consider subscribing 👇
I have been a founder for most of my working years, so a sizeable part of my network is made of other founders.
I talk with many of them on a regular basis, and we often discuss technical strategy — how to develop something, what's the best framework for this, etc.
More and more often I find myself saying: "just use this no-code tool".
For those who are not familiar with them, no-code tools allow to develop features / websites / entire apps without writing code. They fit a range of purposes and go from the very specific (e.g. Memberstack) to the very generic (e.g. Bubble).
Over time, they have become an incredible opportunity for any team, for two main reasons: ⚡ Speed and 👥 Empowerment.
⚡ Speed
When they fit your needs, such tools aren't just faster than writing code, they are 50x faster. They are often "2 hours vs 2 weeks" faster.
They cut both your time to market, and the time you are going to spend on maintenance down the line.
👥 Empowerment
They allow non-technical people to become active contributors and replace engineers in many tasks, producing two benefits:
You empower these people and motivate them, by making their work independent from the development process.
You optimize your team resources by freeing up engineering time.
Think of your marketing team directly editing content on Webflow, or your operations team tweaking an Airtable workflow.