My Current Favorite No Code Stack
June 5, 2023 | Garrett Houghton
This is my current favorite no code stack for building. There are a lot of no code tools out there and so I think it would be helpful for me to share my ethos for why I use these tools. My principles with selecting no code tools are: speed to launch, simple to use, widespread integrations, enjoyable to use and powerful. This criteria heavily informs the list. Your criteria might be much different (which is great!). I hope this list is helpful. I plan to revisit it every few months to update as I continue to experiment and use new tools.
Automation Tool: Zapier
There feels like there's two real tools here in 2023 that are best in class for no code automation workflows: Zapier and Make (fka Integromat). And between the two, I gave to go with Zapier at the moment. I find the interface far easier to navigate than Make (which saves me time). In addition, Zapier is very quick to release new, innovative products (e.g. AI, Interfaces, Tables, etc.), which is great for no coders trying to keep pace with traditional programmers. Additionally, the logs on Zapier are great, which is so helpful when things inevitably break. The main downside of Zapier is the cost. It can be much more expensive than Make depending on the volume of automated tasks you're processing, but to me, it's worth the cost.
Database: Airtable
Airtable is so powerful. Deceptively powerful. Primarily, it's built in automation features, out of the box relational table structure and vast number of extensions make it an awesome tool to work with as a no coder. It's also the most user friendly database product I've ever used. I find it much friendlier to use than Google Sheets and it integrates with a wide variety of other no code tools as well.
Forms: Tally
If you like Notion, you will love Tally. Making Tally forms feels like writing in a document. It takes me less than five minutes to spin up a new form and Tally integrates with almost every other no code tool on the market. It's got sleek animations and high quality design customization. I've used Tally forms for everything from sales leads to feedback forms to generic email subscription capture. It's great.
Website Building: Typedream
Typedream feels like if Webflow was more user friendly. No diss to Webflow! It's an incredibly powerful product. I always just find myself extremely frustrated when using it. With Typedream, I feel like they took a lot of the great design elements from products like Figma, Notion and Webflow and got rid of the confusing elements and kept the best parts. In addition, Typedream seems to be focused on enabling extremely modern and luxe design. It helps me, a non-designer create great looking websites without needing a designer or spending a ton of time messing with pixels and margins. I use Typedream for all of my landing and marketing pages.
User Interfaces: Softr
This pick might be recency bias and may change in the future, but Softr has been the easiest no code user interface tool I've tried to learn thus far. Many people will prefer other tools, like Glide or Bubble or WeWeb or Flutterflow (many of which are what I would call "fullstack" no code tools since they handle frontend and backend), but given my current criteria, I'm really liking Softr right now. You can easily add user authentication, create a PWA, manage page and element level permissions, dynamically render content to users, and more. Also, it deeply integrates with Airtable, which is a big plus given my preference for that tool as well. Softr is probably best used to build internal tools and client portals, but I've branched out and built consumer facing apps with it as well.
Payment Processing: Lemon Squeezy
Funny name; great product. There seems to be a few big players in the no code payment processing tooling landscape, namely: Stripe, Gumroad, Paddle and Lemon Squeezy. A big difference between these tools is whether they are a merchant of record (MoR) or not. Both Lemon Squeezy and Gumroad are, which means they actually resell all of your products for you, and as such, take on all sales tax processing and liability. This, to me, is. a huge time saver, and the #1 reason I like Lemon Squeezy over the more well known Stripe (which isn't a MoR). Compared to Gumroad, Lemon Squeezy has a lower take rate (5% vs. 10%), and I'm a fan of their design, which is less branded than Gumroad so feels more native to my products.
Email: Loops
Loops is the first email product I've used that isn't painful to use. They've made major strides in making sending business email, dare I say it, fun. They can handle broadcasts, transactional emails and a host of other email needs. I've moved off Sendgrid and Mailchimp and over to Loops for all of my email needs. Pricing is aligned with startups and the team is responsive. It's early days for me with using Loops, and it might not be as full featured as the incumbents, but it does all the necessary stuff really well, and I'm sending more email than before for my business, which is a great sign.
AI: Open AI (Text) | Leap AI (Image)
OpenAI's GPT products have been incredible for building no code AI text-based products. It integrates deeply with Zapier, the pricing is great and working with the tool is simple, powerful and fun - everything I like! On the image side, I've been having a blast with Leap AI, which similarly integrates with Zapier and makes creating text-to-image apps as a no coder, not only possible, but extremely powerful. You can train your own custom models programmatically, do sketch to image refinement and more.
