In today's rapidly evolving digital landscape, businesses constantly seek efficient ways to develop software applications and streamline workflows. Traditionally, custom code has been the go-to approach for building applications from scratch. But a new alternative has gained significant traction: low-code development.
Let’s compare custom code with low-code and see how each approach can help businesses make informed decisions. What you’ll find is that low-code is often a clear choice.
Custom Code
Low-Code
What are you building?
An application with a well-defined roadmap that addresses existing /
mature / standardized business problems.
An application targeting fast-growing markets with changing technical
and regulatory conditions and will require multiple integrations.
Budget
More expensive to build and manage.
Cheaper to build and maintain.
Development Timeline
Feature Development
Maximum flexibility to create applications:
- More UI/UX flexibility
-
Must rely on solid architecture, development, and production support
resources
- Takes more time and resources to manage developer operations
Offers faster development cycles because the platform automates:
-
Developer operations - pushing new releases, synchronizing
development / staging / production environments, monitoring,
troubleshooting, scaling resources
- Permissions infrastructure
- API deployment / documentation
- UI development
- Integrations
- Data orchestration
Integration
Developers have to do more ongoing work:
- Build an integrations framework
- Leverage external integration tools / frameworks
-
Create tools / write code to move data among integrated applications
Built-in integrations framework for repeatable integrations:
- Existing packaged integrations
- Easy methods to create new integrations
- Environment for data transformation
-
Rebuilt tooling to move and orchestrate data across connected
applications
Security
Developers define and manage application security throughout the
product lifecycle:
- Platform security
- Securing code base
- Fine-grained permissions infrastructure
- Adhering to compliance guidelines
Out-of-the-box framework that governs all new data entities, fields,
permissions, and APIs:
-
Many field types, including transient and private, that adhere to
security guidelines
-
Pen-tested encryption between all platform elements and endpoints
- Fine-grained permissions at the field level, on demand
Scalability
More suitable for applications that require scale specificity
according to load demands.
Built-in automated scalability features reduce the cost and effort
associated with scaling applications.
Respond to New Market Requirements
Significant development time to implement changes or introduce new
features that may hinder the organization's ability to stay
competitive in a rapidly changing market.
Rapid application development and iteration, allowing quick
adjustments and updates to meet evolving market needs without
time-consuming refactoring.
Maintenance
Multi-disciplined production support team on staff.
Production support subscription for end-to-end application support.
Developer Resource Recruiting/Management
- Larger teams
- Developer onboarding takes longer
- Lack of consistency of architecture / code quality
- Lack of consistency in documentation
- Requires higher degrees of technical experience
- Common code / frameworks easy to staff
- Smaller developer teams
- Easier to orient new developers
- Consistency of architecture and features
- Can leverage less experienced developers
- Requires lower levels of technical expertise
- Rely on Slingr for services
Portability
Application is portable to any suitable infrastructure ecosystem.
Platform is portable to any suitable infrastructure ecosystem.
In conclusion, low-code development offers organizations the benefits of faster time-to-market, streamlined processes, and significant savings in time and budget. Low-code accelerates application development by reducing the need for extensive, expensive, and time-consuming custom coding. This streamlined approach expedites product delivery, enhances competitiveness, and enables efficient collaboration and iteration. The reduction in development time translates into cost savings and increased overall efficiency. Ultimately, low-code empowers organizations to achieve their software development goals more efficiently and cost-effectively.
