Image: Designmodo
Just a few years ago, starting any online business was fraught with complexities. It was necessary to find developers to launch the site - if you needed even a step away from the functionality of conventional builders. In the case when it was also required to create a mobile application or a chat bot, things got even worse, and the budget just for launching was seriously increased.
Fortunately, no-code tools are becoming more widespread today, which allow you to solve previously rather complex problems easily and without having to write even a line of code. In a new article, I have collected several such useful tools that I use myself, and which allow you to quickly launch high-quality IT products without a large investment.
Siter.io : creating professional websites
This tool allows you to create a complete website design without having to write any code. Something similar to Figma, but the plus here is that using Siter, the site can also be easily "deployed" to a domain. That is, you can draw a design and make the site available to visitors completely without any code.
It has a function to import files from Sketch and Figma, which is very convenient. Opportunities for teamwork, tracking and rolling back changes, working with animations and design templates, including those for online store sites - the service has powerful functionality and saves time and money.
Bubble : creating mobile apps
Mobile app development has always been very expensive and time-consuming. With applications like Bubble today, it is quite easy to create a decent looking application without the need for programming.
It works like this: the user selects application components from the standard library and then customizes them. As a result, using this service, you can go from an application idea to a functional prototype many times faster (and cheaper!) Than with the traditional approach with the search for developers.
Landbot : Chatbot Builder
Chatbots over the past few years have gone from being an extremely hot topic to a half-forgotten phenomenon, and as a result, they have firmly entered the life of many online businesses. Companies use bots to support users, automate ordering and sales, collect critical information, and more.
At the same time, making a chat bot, even with limited functionality, yourself is not so easy. You need to know a couple of programming languages, to deal with the integration of the product with various social networks and messengers. The more applications you need to support, the more difficult the task will be. The Landbot service helps to facilitate it. With its help, you can "assemble" your bot in a convenient editor.
Of course, too complex AI bots cannot be created this way, but it will be easy to automate the support service or distribute customer requests to different departments within the company.
Postcards : a service for creating beautiful email newsletters
According to statistics, email remains one of the most effective tools for business communication with its audience. At the same time, even a few years ago, creating high-quality mailings required a whole technical team. In addition to copywriters and designers, we needed layout designers and developers who can customize the sending of letters and make them appear normally on various devices.
As a result, email marketing, despite the seeming simplicity of email itself, was becoming a rather expensive tool for a small company. The Postcards service aims to solve this problem. With its help, you can create beautiful mailings, work together on letters, and then, in a couple of clicks, export the result to a familiar sending system like MailChimp:
And it all works in a drag-n-drop editor without any code.
Gumroad : payment service for startups
One of the main tasks for any online business is to accept payments. For a business to grow, payment functionality must work smoothly, without errors, and be versatile.
Yes, there are website builders that have built-in payment gateways, but they are often not very flexible and also tie the founders to themselves. Moving from one website creation platform to another will be much more difficult if you have to transfer all billing.
Gumroad allows you to design payment options for your site without having to write any code.
Suitable even for those who want to test demand with a single product, rather than build an online store.
Parabola : data integration and business process automation
Another difficulty for founders of startups without technical skills is the automation of routine business processes, the integration of various tools to solve this problem. Very often you need to use some API that you just can't connect, you need to write code.
The Parabola service allows you to create automation for various workflows using a simple editor and integrate various business applications at each step.
For example, a service can download sales data from one service, load it into a table by applying a specific filter, and send letters based on this data.
Conclusion
It is important to understand that no-code tools will not be able to create a truly large-scale product right now; rather, they help to test the idea, improve some business processes.
At the same time, the development of no-code tools is an important trend that allows more people to create products, launch online startups and solve problems of different consumer groups.
What tools do you use to grow your business and automate tasks without code? Write in the comments - we will collect the most detailed list in one place.