A Guide to Building Mobile Apps with No-Code

You have an app idea, but you don't know how to code. Five years ago, that sentence would have ended in frustration. But now, thanks to no-code tools, it's possible to build professional mobile apps without writing any code at all. And I'm not exaggerating, because we tried it ourselves.

Our team has two people with no software development experience. Together with these two colleagues, we built one app each on three different no-code platforms. I'll share everything about the process, the challenges and the results.

Glide: From Google Sheets to an App

Glide lets you build a mobile app using Google Sheets as a database. Yes, you heard right: an app comes out of a spreadsheet that looks like Excel.

Our first project was a restaurant menu app. We entered the dish names, prices and photo links into Google Sheets. Glide took that data and automatically created a nice app interface. In twenty minutes we had a working app. When the restaurant owner saw it, he couldn't believe his eyes.

Glide's greatest strength is its speed. Turning an idea into a prototype takes minutes. It's especially great for internal tools, inventory tracking apps and simple catalog apps. A real estate agent I know built a property catalog app to show his clients, and he says his client portfolio grew by 40%.

It has its limitations too, of course. It falls short for apps that need complex business logic, custom animations or heavy data processing. Design customization options are also limited; you're tied to Glide's ready-made templates.

Softr: Powerful Apps with Airtable

Softr uses Airtable as its database and lets you build web apps and simple mobile apps. It's a step ahead of Glide because it offers advanced features like user login, authorization and payment integration.

We tried building a freelancer marketplace with Softr. A platform where freelancers create profiles, clients post job listings and matching takes place. We built the freelancer and listing tables in Airtable and designed the interface with Softr. Within two days, we had a working MVP.

An entrepreneur friend of mine took a niche marketplace he built with Softr to a thousand users in three months. With no code at all, at a cost of only $50 a month. He had a product to show investors and raised seed funding. This story is the best example of the power of no-code.

Softr's downside is performance. It can slow down with complex queries and large amounts of data. It also doesn't offer a fully native mobile experience; what you're actually building is a responsive web app.

Bubble: The Heavy Hitter of No-Code

Bubble is the most powerful tool in the no-code world. With database design, API integrations, complex business logic and custom design, you can work almost like a developer without writing code.

We built a task management app with Bubble. It was a full-featured app including user registration, task creation, team invitations, a notification system and reporting. The development process took two weeks.

To be honest, Bubble's learning curve is much steeper than the others. For the first three days, we were just trying to understand the platform. Learning concepts like conditional workflows, database relationships and responsive design takes time. But once you've learned them, you can build truly powerful apps.

A startup founder I know built his entire product with Bubble. He has a thousand active users, and his monthly revenue has reached five figures. He has proven that it's possible to build and launch a product even without a technical co-founder.

Bubble's downsides are the learning curve, sometimes slow performance and lock-in risk. Your entire app becomes dependent on Bubble, and moving to another platform later is very hard.

The No-Code Ecosystem with Make and Airtable

When building no-code apps, the main platform alone isn't enough. You set up automations with Make or Zapier, manage the database with Airtable and create forms with Typeform. All of these tools connect to one another to form a powerful ecosystem.

In the apps we built, we often used the trio of Airtable, Softr and Make: Airtable as the database, Softr as the interface, Make for automation. This combination is excellent for rapid prototyping.

Realistic Expectations

Don't think you can do everything with no-code tools. Building complex apps like Instagram or Uber with no-code isn't possible. But building an MVP, testing your idea and even developing products that serve thousands of users is absolutely possible.

My advice is this: If you have an idea, start right away. Build the simplest version of it with Glide in a day. If the idea catches on, build a more comprehensive version with Softr or Bubble. And if it really grows, then write a native app with professional developers.

No-code tools don't make coding unnecessary, but they remove the barrier to getting started. And that's a huge difference.