Top 5 Low-Code App Development Platforms

The low-code development platforms provide the Graphical User Interface (GUI) for simple programming and thereby develop the application at a very fast pace & eliminates the conventional programming hurdles and challenges.

These platforms not only make coding easier but also enables quick setup and deployment.

Working Of Low-code App Development Platforms

These platforms don’t require you to write code line-by-line code. On the contrary, these platforms allow you to draw a flowchart, and the code will get ready accordingly. It makes the Code-development process faster than ever.

Benefits of Low-code App Development Tools

Low code development platforms possess many benefits and feasibilities, so more people get encouraged to participate in the application development process. In addition to that, these platforms enable organizations to improve their agility and reduce the complexity of the application development process. Low code platforms possess two primary benefits.

• Increased productivity
• Decreased cost

These benefits drive by the capability of low code development to develop more applications in a short period.

Also Read: What is No-Code Application Development?

The following visuals reveal the importance of low-code development platforms. Statistically, it accelerates the digital transformation by 69% and reduces the need for any prerequisite technical knowledge by 40%.

Top 5 Low-Code App Development Platforms in a Glance

Visual LANSA

Visual LANSA Pricing: Visual LANSA offers three variants in terms of pricing structure,

• Entry Level - $16.66 user/month
• Mid-tier - $13.34 user/month
• Enterprise - $8.34 user/month

LANSA’s low-code development tool accelerates and eases the development process of enterprise-level apps while allowing your employees to be more productive. LANSA provides you control when it comes to creativity.

‍Features:

• Provide a powerful low-code development environment to develop desktop, mobile, and web-based applications.
• Allow you to develop apps faster, easier, and at a lower cost than mainstream development methods.
• Enable you to perform scalable testing, deployment, and integration operations.
• Several thousand companies around the globe actively use apps developed on Lansa.
• Provide utility to write code inside the IDE.

Use Case:

‍ACBS is a division of Fidelity Information Services and a LANSA customer. The international leader provides state-of-the-art systems for initiating, servicing, trading, and regulating corporate loans, specifically large syndicated loans.“We use business analysts, not programmers, to develop our software, ” said the former Vice President, Sales at ACBS. “We have gone to great extremes to hire experienced bankers and business analysts for product design, development, and deployment. We assemble small teams of highly-trained professional developers which produce tightly-knit, controlled efforts and results.

‍Conclusion: Visual LANSA encourages professional developers to develop applications much faster than conventional coding practice while giving immense control rarely ever observed in low-code development platforms.

Appian

Price: A free trial is available for the Asian product, and it cost you around $90 per user per month for Standard Licensing. Appian’s enterprise-level automation tools help businesses develop smart applications that boost the growth process, customer engagement, and overall efficiency. It offers high scrutiny and security for your important applications.

‍Features

• Simple Drag and Drop interface.
• Provides AI utilities.
• It also offers no-code integration to Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) platforms via Google Cloud, Amazon Web Service, and Microsoft Azure Cloud.
• Its code development interface allows you to integrate enterprise data, systems, and web services.

Use Case Ryder used Appian to create a smartphone’s first reservation system and reduced time-to-transaction to almost half. Bayer integrated different back-end modules for clinical trials and streamlines operations to reduce reporting time from hours to minutes.

‍Conclusion: Appian provides a low-code app development platform and an integrated development environment to sustain intelligent automation and low-code development.

Mendix

Price: Mendix’s community version is free of cost. It offers three paid variants.

• Single App - Starts at $1875 per month
• Pro - Starts at $5375 per month
• Enterprise - Starts at $7825 per month

Mendix provides the perfect low-code development environment to build apps for any device. It provides utilities like private cloud, public cloud, and on-premises deployment, automated backups. Its Enterprise edition allows horizontal scaling.‍

Features

• Agile project management
• Visual modeling utilities
• Integration of reusable components from existing models

Use Case: Rabobank improved its existing system by adding value to consumer-facing and digital customer experience using Mendix’s platform. This change was found to be revolutionary for the business as it reduced IT costs by 50%.

‍Conclusion: Mendix provides a rapid app development environment with offline working tools and quick adaptability for anyone.

OutSystems

Price: OutSystems offer a free version for a lifetime with basic tools and utilities. There are two more variants.

• Enterprise plan - starts at $6250 per month
• Universal plan - starts at $15000 per month

OutSystems enables you to create applications quickly. It can be used for developing Mobile Apps, Web-based Apps, and Enterprise-level applications.

‍Features:

• Offers error-free deployment of apps on cloud or on-premises.
• Interactive dashboard for real-time performance visuals and graphs
• The perfect tool to develop highly scalable applications
• Security for applications and app data
• Allow development of apps that can be integrated with any system or device

Use Case: The city of Oakland used OutSystems to transform services for citizens with a single sign-in portal digitally. Humana developed a customer utility app to help citizens find COVID-19 test locations.

‍Conclusion: It has become easier for developers and non-developers to quickly create smart applications using OutSystems Rapid Application Development Platform.

GeneXus

GeneXus Pricing: Pricing charges for the number of end-users irrespective of the number of apps being created. A free trial is available for the product. Paid variants include:

• For Entry-Level Users - starting $100/month
• For Independent Software Houses - starting $250/month
• For Enterprise-grade apps development - starting $900/month

Features:

• AI-driven, highly automated software development
• Multi-Experience apps can integrate with multiple platforms such as responsive and progressive web-based applications, Mobile-based and hybrid applications, chatbots & virtual assistants.
• Offers high flexibility by allowing system integration with several database platforms available in the market.
• Support evolutionary processes within the developed systems over long periods and switch between technologies automatically.
• Business Process Management (BPM)  modeling that Supports Digital Process Automation
• Freedom to deploy apps on cloud or on-premises.
• High level of security for apps.

Conclusion: GeneXus provides a perfect platform to sustain the modern time requirements of users. It’s an all-in-one platform that can match the criteria of both present and near-future technologies without the need to acquire skills for different technologies for different tasks. GeneXus encourages non-developers to start creating and innovating and developers to learn, adapt and apply quickly in an agile way.

Conclusion

The mutual advantage of these low-code app development platforms is to help businesses and developers respond quickly to the evolving market trends amidst the increased need to develop internal workflow applications, customer care platforms, integration mechanisms, and automation. These platforms and tools are not intended to end the flavor of coding from the developers’ cuisine but to add value to developers’ life by boosting their ability to develop (not just code) and encouraging them to develop world-class applications.