The role of software solutions in the successful performance of businesses can’t be underestimated. Well-thought-out applications can significantly streamline and facilitate a lot of everyday tasks for different teams, help to increase overall productivity, and minimize the risk of human mistakes. Nevertheless, to leverage all these opportunities, companies need to opt for the right solutions and the right approaches to their development. The creation of apps should be smooth, well-organized, and feasible from the financial perspective. And here’s when the low code vs traditional development dilemma enters the game.
Traditional development: What should you know about it?
Before we proceed to discuss the peculiarities of low code application development, let’s focus on the benefits of the traditional approach.
Custom software development is a term used to describe the process of designing, coding, deploying, and maintaining software solutions tailored to the specific needs of particular users. This approach is often named as an alternative to using off-the-shelf business apps that offer only standardized functionality and integrations.
Traditional software development presupposes building solutions from scratch. This allows developers to satisfy all the unique requirements of businesses.
Let’s take a closer look at its advantages and disadvantages.
Pros of traditional software development for businesses
- High efficiency. Solutions are specifically built to meet all business needs of an organization. This can ensure they fit the exact workflow and seamlessly integrate with existing processes. As a result, such apps can demonstrate outstanding productivity and efficiency.
- Scalability. Custom solutions can be designed with scalability in mind. That’s why businesses can easily expand or modify their features. Moreover, there is no need to switch to new systems when companies scale their activities.
- Competitive advantage. Custom software is unique and can provide businesses with a competitive edge. Such apps can offer features and capabilities that are not available in standard software.
- Seamless integration and compatibility. When you are building software from scratch, it can be designed to easily integrate with all your existing tools, databases, and workflows.
- Security. When businesses opt for traditional development, they can power their solutions with their own security protocols. This will allow them to safely protect apps against all major vulnerabilities.
- Full control. With custom development, companies will have full control over their software. It means that they can modernize or discontinue it when they have such a necessity. Their decisions won’t be blocked due to dependence on third-party platforms.
Cons of custom software development
- High initial costs. As a rule, custom software development may require significant upfront investments. The major part of them will be related to developers’ salaries and associated costs.
- Development time. Development from scratch is a rather time-consuming process. It involves a lot of steps, such as planning, coding, testing, and deployment. The implementation of off-the-shelf solutions and low code apps takes significantly less time.
- Complexity. If you choose this approach for creating your apps, you need to cooperate with professional developers. You can either hire in-house experts or work with external specialists. People without professional skills and knowledge won’t be able to write high-quality working code.
- Maintenance and support. After the launch of your custom solution, it’s necessary to continuously monitor its performance and regularly update it. These activities require extra expenses.
What is low code development? Basic info
Unlike traditional development, the creation of apps with the help of low code application platforms requires minimal hand-coding. This approach enables users to build applications through graphical user interfaces, drag-and-drop features, and pre-built templates. Such elements greatly reduce the complexity of traditional coding.
One of the key peculiarities of this approach is that low code digital transformation can be managed not only by professional developers. Non-technical users (often called "citizen developers") can also actively participate in such projects.
To make the right choice between the low code vs traditional approaches, you need to consider the benefits and pitfalls of both of them. And now it’s a turn for low code application development.
Pros of building low code apps
- Faster development. Instead of the weeks and months that are required for traditional development, you can build your apps in a couple of days or even hours. Pre-built re-usable components and templates offered by low code application platforms will help you to streamline the app creation process.
- Lower costs. Low code digital transformation is based on the principles of rapid application development. As fewer working hours are required, the overall cost of building apps becomes significantly lower. Moreover, with such an approach, you do not need to hire a full team of highly specialized developers.
- Involvement of citizen developers. Even non-technical users can build and update apps. It allows businesses to easily introduce the required changes in their solutions and workflows without waiting for the help of professional developers.
- Rapid iterations. It doesn’t take long to prototype, test, and deploy changes. This approach helps businesses seamlessly adapt to quickly changing requirements.
- Enhanced collaboration. The creation of low code apps makes it possible for technical and non-technical teams to easily cooperate. Direct communication between all specialists ensures that applications meet all their specific business needs.
- Easier maintenance. It is not very challenging to maintain such apps as low code application platforms usually provide updates, fix bugs, and address scalability concerns. Your developers won’t be responsible for that.
In one of our previously published articles, we talked about different low-code development platforms, their features, and benefits. You can read about Retool, Appsmith, UI Bakery, and other tools by following this link.
Cons of low code application development
- Limited customization. Though the majority of low-code platforms provide some customization possibilities, they are not limitless. That's why for building highly complex or specialized apps with such tools, developers may face limitations posed by predefined components and templates. The only way out of this situation is to turn to traditional coding.
- Vendor lock-in. Custom development provides businesses with full freedom and control over their solutions. With the low-code approach, organizations can become dependent on the chosen platforms. As a result, it can be difficult to switch to another tool. Moreover, migrating apps outside the platform’s ecosystem may require significant effort.
- Security and compliance. Some platforms for low-code development may not be appropriate for highly regulated industries like finance or healthcare in terms of security and compliance concerns. That’s why businesses should choose platforms for building their apps with diligent attention. It’s always necessary to check whether the tools under consideration fully meet the regulatory requirements in the particular markets.
- Performance issues. You can use low code application platforms to build solutions of different types. But you should bear in mind that highly complex apps might experience performance issues.
- Scalability limitations. As well as in the case of customization questions, low code apps may be not as scalable as custom software products. That’s why this approach is not always the best choice for building enterprise-level solutions or apps that need to deal with complex data processing. Given this, it is recommended to study the capacities of each low-code platform before choosing it for your business.
Low code platform vs traditional development: Comparison
Low-code and traditional development represent two distinct approaches to building business apps. We offer you to compare them based on the important criteria.
Speed of development
Traditional development involves writing code from scratch. This is a time-consuming process.
With pre-built components, drag-and-drop interfaces, and visual workflows, low-code platforms help to reduce development time. Users can create fully functional apps in days or weeks, depending on complexity.
Development cost
Traditional coding takes longer and typically requires a larger team of developers with specialized skills in comparison to low-code development. This leads to higher upfront costs.
The faster development time and reduced need for specialized developers result in lower expenses. As for the use of low-code platforms themselves, access to them is offered in accordance with a subscription-based model. As a rule, they have several pricing tiers that address the needs of different businesses. For example, on our blog, you can read about Retool pricing.
Flexibility and customization
Custom development ensures complete control over the application's architecture, design, and functionality. Developers can tailor the app to any needs of your business.
Low code application platforms have predefined components and templates that may restrict advanced customization. It can be difficult to implement specialized or highly unique business logic.
Maintenance
Businesses have full control over the maintenance of their custom apps. The development team must handle bug fixes, updates, and all changes in technologies.
In the case of low-code development, the platform usually handles all routine updates and infrastructure maintenance. Nevertheless, businesses have limited control over updates. It means they may face breaking changes or downtimes.
Integrations
With the traditional approach, developers can create custom integrations with internal systems, APIs, or third-party services to address the exact specifications of the business.
With low-code solutions, the situation is rather complicated. On the one hand, a lot of platforms come with pre-built connectors for common services like databases or cloud platforms. With such integrations, it is absolutely simple to connect your apps to different systems.
On the other hand, such possibilities are limited. And it may be very difficult or even impossible to integrate your low code apps with some less commonly used tools or legacy systems.
Skill requirements
The traditional approach requires proficient software developers. They should be skilled in working with programming languages, frameworks, databases, and various development tools.
Low-code platforms are designed in such a way that even non-programmers can build applications. But for non-technical users, it may take longer to learn the functionality of such platforms and understand their logic. For more complicated projects it’s actually better to find an expert, for example, if you work with OutSystems, Appsmith, Retool developer might be a big help to implement everything you are seeking for.
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Final verdict
When our customers come to us with questions about what to choose: low code vs traditional development, we can’t provide any precise answer just at once. At Akveo, we have rich expertise in both custom and low-code software development. And we know that both approaches have their pros and cons. That’s why each case should be viewed individually. This means that without a deep analysis of your needs, requirements, and the existing IT infrastructure, it will be impossible to make the right choice.
Given the strengths and weaknesses of both approaches, it is possible to define cases when each of them may bring the highest value to your business.
Low code application development can be chosen for:
- Projects with budget constraints;
- Companies that want to involve non-technical team members in working with software;
- Applications that are not highly complex or performance-intensive;
- Businesses that are interested in rapid application development.
Traditional custom development is best for:
- Large-scale solutions with unique requirements;
- Companies that want to have extensive customization opportunities and full control over their solutions;
- Projects that require deep integration with legacy systems;
- Businesses with long-term investment strategies in software.
Need a Retool developer or a consultant for another low-code platform to understand which approach you should opt for? We are here to help you. Just contact us and we will get back to you as soon as possible.
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