Three low-code options
Low-code is an idea that’s in the ascendant, with new platforms regularly emerging, and existing players continually adding new features. Here are three of our favourite low-code platforms: each offers a free tier, so you can try before you buy. OutSystems
Counting Intel, Vodafone and VW among its customers, OutSystems helps businesses create cloudbased, on-premises and hybrid applications for mobile and web. Its development environment is predominantly drag-and-drop, with views for processes, data and interface, and more than 100 responsive UI templates to get you started. The interface intelligently updates to reflect new data – so, for example, changing an underlying database will automatically update the forms that feed into or draw from it – and advanced users can add custom code if they need a function that doesn’t exist in the library.
Apps can integrate with third-party services from PayPal, Google, Oracle, Salesforce and more, and both Android and iOS executables can be generated with a single click, for distribution either via the relevant app store or as progressive web apps. Even non-mobile apps are fully portable and can be moved to an alternative provider.
OutSystems scores particularly highly when it comes to team development and collaborative testing. Testers can annotate and draw on the live interface, and add spoken or written notes that are sent back to the developers, along with device information. You can even connect the feedback system to Zendesk and other ticketing tools to help track suggestions and bug reports.
You can get started with OutSystems without spending a penny: a free account supports up to 100 end users and lets you run any number of apps from OutSystems’ own cloud servers, subject to a maximum database size of 2GB. The Basic platform starts at $4,000 per month, supports up to 1,000 end users and provides three separate runtime environments, to help you separate development, testing and deployment. For serious line-of-business functions, the Standard tier starts at $10,000 per month and adds a 99.5% cloud uptime guarantee, plus the option of on-premises deployment, while an Enterprise subscription extends the SLA to 99.95% uptime and brings round-the-clock support.
Microsoft Power Apps
Microsoft’s Power Apps platform shares many UI elements with Microsoft’s Office applications, which will help first-time developers feel immediately at home. It also comes with a library of prebuilt templates to help you hit the ground running.
One feature of Power Apps is Microsoft’s AI module, an optional add-in that allows developers to effortlessly add AI capabilities to their apps, such as identifying and counting objects in a photo or predicting outcomes based on behaviour or other variables. It even includes customisable AI-training tools, so you can show the algorithm what sort of results you’re looking for, such as by uploading your own pictures and performing manual identification during the development process.
Needless to say, Power Apps is designed to work with Visual Studio too. Professional developers can create custom APIs and deploy them through Azure, from where they can be accessed by low-code Power Apps, bringing together the best of both worlds.
Pricing starts at a monthly rate of £7.50 per user per app, for up to two apps with a maximum database size of up to 50MB each and total storage capacity of 400MB. The unlimited apps options costs £30 per user per month, and raises the limits to 250MB and 2GB respectively. To these, you can add portals through which external users can view your data, priced according to the number of logged-in users or page views required, while the AI add-in costs an additional £377 per unit per month.
AppSheet
AppSheet ( was acquired by Google in January 2020, replacing Google’s own older App Maker tool. It’s especially good for working with spreadsheets and databases: the idea is that anyone who can work a spreadsheet should be able to build an app on top of it, using data and rules to trigger events and notifications.
To that end, AppSheet builds natively on Google’s own Sheets and Forms products. For example, defining the contents of a row as headers effectively sets them up as field names in AppSheet, which then feed into prebuilt blocks. Hooks are available for a range of third-party tools too, including Microsoft Excel, and you can use AppSheet’s views, brand and format tabs to design an interface before deploying your app to the web or mobile platforms. Live data is stored in the cloud (with options including Google Drive, Box, Dropbox and Microsoft 365), and changes implemented locally are uploaded in real-time, so that all users have an up-to-date view of the underlying spreadsheet. If you later delete the app, the data remains on your cloud service untouched.
You can use the full AppSheet feature for free when developing your prototype, and share it with up to ten users for testing; when you’re ready to deploy it more widely, you can choose between the Premium, Pro and Business tiers. Premium costs $5 per user per month, while Pro raises the price to $10 but adds some great features including address geocoding, QR and NFC scanning and machine learning. For the most demanding roles, Business adds scalability and management features, machine-learning tools plus integration with Salesforce and MySQL. meetings with their advisors.
In the UK, Aviva used Appian to develop a unified dashboard for call centre staff, consolidating 22 diverse systems into one portal that brought a customer’s complete record within easy reach when dealing with enquiries – slashing the average time required to deal with a call to around a ninth of what it had been before.
Employees at Heathrow Airport, meanwhile, used Microsoft Power Apps to eliminate 75,000 pages of paperwork through the development of 30 low-code apps. One such app is a digital version of the airport’s language book, which details what can and can’t be taken onto an aircraft in all of the languages likely to be used by passengers. The app was developed in a week by airport employee Samit Saini – who was not even an IT specialist, but rather a security officer working in his spare time.
This is a perfect example of how low-code empowers frontline staff who are best placed to spot where existing processes can be improved. There can be fringe benefits too: Saini’s app won him a promotion, and 14 other Heathrow employees have been rewarded for innovating their own efficiency-enhancing low-code apps ( pcpro.link/315heathrow).
More recently, Worcestershire County Council deployed five apps in two weeks using OutSystems – some of them developed in 24 hours – as part of its Here2Help Covid-19 response. One notable success was the community response app, which pairs requests for help from vulnerable residents with individuals, businesses and volunteer organisations who have registered to offer support. The app provided a channel through which volunteers could instantly upload the required ID to perform disclosure and service checks.
Other apps allowed team members to report absences due to Covid-19 symptoms, manage coronavirus test requests and aggregate test results into a unified dashboard.
For an idea of how your business can use low code, see “Three low-code options”, left.