No Code or Custom Development? When deciding on your SaaS architecture choosing a No Code or Code based platforms from the beginning is an important decision to make and can have huge repercussion further down the track depending on what path you choose.
No Code development can significantly increase your productivity, speed up your development, be more cost effective (initially), easier to modify and typically has better support from vendors.
While all this sounds great there are other not so positive aspects to a No Code platform that you need to consider and plan for should you choose this path.
No Code tools are less flexible as if there is a specific feature you want that is not currently available you will have to contact the platform developer team and ask them to add it. You won’t be able to do more complex tasks like generating faster algorithms, creating new designs and add complex new features.
Security can also be an issue as once again you are at the mercy of the developers should anything go wrong. External integration to other apps can provide issues which are difficult to overcome. Having said this most No Code tools have proven to be trustworthy and infiltration proof but do your research on possible scenarios you will need to encompass.
You don’t own the source code so if you need to migrate to a code-based platform further down the track you’ll effectively need to do a full rewrite. If you can build your start-up on a no-code platform, then potentially others can too so you plan for this eventuality.
When weighing all of this up, No Code tools can be a powerful way to test the market and get to the crucial business validation point much faster than developing from scratch. In contrast to this according to a survey by Goodfirms (https://www.goodfirms.co/resources/software-development-research) the average time an experienced team can deliver a custom ddeveloped minimum viable product is around 4.5 months depending on the complexity of your solution.
Just be sure that you have a plan that aligns growth, scale and investment before you choose the best path forward. If you are interested in starting up a SaaS based business and considering your next steps talk to us about how we can help.
I recently read a white paper on “The Rise of Startup Studios” which talks about why entrepreneurs and investors are increasingly turning to the lesser-known Startup Studio model. The benefit of this model is highlighted in the below graphic which compares other models and the priority and involvement given to each stage. This paper is definitely worth a read, and we are happy to say that StartItNow closely align to the Startup Studio model.
https://www.gan.co/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/The-Rise-of-Startup-Studios-White-Paper.pdf
