Using No-Code SaaS Builders To Make Your New Product

Lots of people out there have many good ideas for what to build but have no clue how.

They believe they need to spend months learning coding, have technical friends, or lots of money to hire programmers. But even if it sounds logical, most of them are excuses.

Nowadays, you can start making progress on those ideas and validate what works using no code builders.

The only problem is that the “no code movement” has grown in popularity over the last few years so much that there are now lots of tools to choose from. Finding and trying them out to see what works for your specific use case can become a full time job in itself.

That’s why, in this article, I’ll share tools  you can use to start prototyping your ideas.

You’ll see if you have gold hidden in plain sight or something shiny but without future. All of this is possible without ever writing a single line of code.

Sounds good?

Well then…

Overview of no code SaaS tools

Rather than making this another “top X apps you can try”, I’m going to give you an overview of the no code SaaS builders landscape.

You’ll see those with the best ratings, user reviews, and most importantly, those with budget friendly plans for when you want to transition from “cool prototype” to “revenue-generating product”.

All the tools you’ll find below were handpicked by me to save you time doing the research, and to get you up and running with your first (or next) SaaS app.

With that out of the way…

Let’s see which tools are the finalists!

In the category of website builders

Bubble

Ratings:

⭐4.6 of 284 reviews (Capterra)

⭐4.4 of 138 reviews (G2)

Pricing:

Free tier

Starter: $32 /month

Growth: $134 /month

Description:

If you’ve been in the no code space for some time, you’ve heard of Bubble before.

This tool is the most popular and most versatile out there. It helps you build not only websites but also mobile apps. It features a drag-and-drop editor, several templates to build from, and a wide collection of tutorials and learning resources..

You can use the free plan to build prototypes and learn how the platform works. Once you have something you think is good for an MVP, you’ll have to upgrade to the Starter plan to get it live and on its own domain, ready to start getting users.

Carrd

Ratings:

⭐4.7 of 20 reviews (Capterra)

⭐4.5 of 38 reviews (G2)

Pricing:

Free tier

Pro lite: $9 /year

Pro standard: $19 /year

Pro plus: $49 /year

Description:

“Simple, fully responsive one-page sites for pretty much anything”. That’s the tagline on the landing page. And you know what? It’s completely true.

If you’re building something and need a website to showcase it (or even a landing page for a waitlist) Carrd lets you have a site live in 10 minutes (or less).

Even knowing about web development, I use Carrd for all projects, for prototyping, and to test out ideas.

It’s the only website builder that charges in a year what other tools charge per month and it helps to not overcomplicate the building a website process. After all, most websites don’t need to be built from scratch.

Webflow

Ratings:

⭐4.6 of 223 reviews (Capterra)

⭐4.4 of 514 reviews (G2)

Pricing:

Free tier

Basic: $18 /month

CMS: $29 /month

Description:

Webflow is one of the most popular website builders out there. It also has a drag-and-drop editor but it provides waaayy more than that.

It’s mostly used by designers who don’t know (or don’t want) to code. If Carrd focuses on simplicity and putting something “out there”, Webflow focuses on customization, integrations and being an alternative to Wordpress websites.

Webflow makes a tradeoff between simplicity versus control. That is, it gives you full control over what you want to do with your website and how you want to do it, at the risk of overwhelming you with too many options and features.

Its steep learning curve is one of the many things it is known for. But, if you have the time and space to learn it, you can get to do everything a developer could in terms of making powerful, responsive websites.

In the category of app builders

AppSheet

Ratings:

⭐4.8 of 537 reviews (Capterra)

⭐4.8 of 375 reviews (G2)

Pricing:

Starter: $5 /month

Core: $10 /month

Description:

AppSheet is the fastest way to build a mobile app without code.

Why the fastest? Well, almost everyone uses the Google ecosystem of products. So, making a mobile app is as easy as taking data from a Google sheet and connecting with an interface of your choice before deploying it.

It also gives you the option to customize the “look and feel” of the app and integrate it with other services you already use like Dropbox or Salesforce.

It is a good option to get started building apps from resources you already have and prototype ideas that can later be shared with others.

Appy Pie

Ratings:

⭐4.6 of 1336 reviews (Capterra)

⭐4.7 of 1242 reviews (G2)

Pricing:

Basic: $16 /app/month

Gold: $36 /app/month

Description:

Appy Pie is most known for its mobile app building platform. It’s one of the most well known and top rated tools in the space. Rather than giving you an editor where you can drag and drop elements into a canvas, it has a whole onboarding process.

It guides you through choosing a color scheme, adding features you want, what platform to deploy on, be it Android or iOS app, and further customize the way it looks.

It used to have a free trial that was quite limited (only HTML5 apps). Now, it has expanded and provides much more services than mobile app development. One of those is making websites with templates and such.

It’s quite a robust platform now with different categories of frequently built apps. So, if your idea fits into one of those categories, you can get a full app done in minutes.

Even though it has grown so much and become very popular, it is still affordable to build and publish apps on the Apple or Google Play store.

Thunkable

Ratings:

⭐4.3 of 5 reviews (Capterra)

⭐4.4 of 38 reviews (G2)

Pricing:

Free tier

Starter: $15 /month

Pro: $45 /month

Description:

Thunkable is one of the contenders in this category for a good reason.

It gives you the full “no code experience” to build apps for Android, iOS, and web apps.

Instead of using predefined templates, it has prebuilt components that simplify the process, and it also has many integrations with tools you’re already using like Airtable, Cloudflare, or Firebase.

Thunkable also has categories of frequently built apps, whether it’s startups, traditional education, IoT, or agencies. And lastly, it has many tutorials and learning resources. Plus, a growing creator community with different use cases and success stories.

Conclusion

Congrats for making it all the way here.

You now have an overview of the different no code builders you can use for making a website or a mobile app.

Next steps are to pick one of those in each category and set aside some time to try them out and see how they work. Depending on your use case, you can choose one to get started quickly and later on try another that gives more control and flexibility.

Remember, you don’t need anything fancy to get started. Most ideas are not worth the time anyway, and the sooner you can build something to put it out in the market, the sooner you’ll arrive at a winner that is worth spending more time and money on.

Thanks a lot for reading and catch you next time.

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