This article aims to highlight some of the best no-code/low-code back-end platforms for you to use in 2022. We emphasize their unique capabilities, whether the tools offer extensibility, and whether they are flexible enough.

Code-free and low-code development platforms allow people around the world to build their businesses and applications for them without writing code. According to Forrester, the no-code/low-code category will grow to $21.2 billion by 2022.

Prior to these platforms, building an application for an enterprise required hiring experienced software developers. But that is not the case now. Today, many no-code/low-code platforms make it possible for independent creators, artists, and entrepreneurs to build their own applications.

Although there seems to be a paradigm shift from writing code to using visual development tools, the basic concepts of having a back end and a front end remain the same. To build an application for your business, you will need a way to connect your back end and front end. A communication channel called an application programming interface (API) is used to request information from one computer system to another. When developing an application, you usually call apis back and forth between the back end and the front end.

Draftbit is a visual development platform for building native mobile applications. It has nothing to do with the back end. Mobile applications built with Draftbit can connect to almost any back-end as a Service (BaaS) platform through REST apis. Our large user base uses different back-end services to connect their applications to databases.

This allows us to look at the most popular back ends that are integrated within Draftbit. Examples include Xano, Supabase, Firestore, Airtable, and many more designed to provide a better overall user experience. We are also app Development Experts who can guide you in choosing the right backend and what to look for.

This article aims to highlight some of the best no-code/low-code back-end platforms for you to use in 2022. We emphasize their unique capabilities, whether the tools offer extensibility, and whether they are flexible enough. Finally, for each tool, there is a pricing plan that peeps into them. Many of the backend tools listed below provide an API gateway that connects to the front end from the managed backend provided by the platform.

1, Airtable

Best for beginners who want a visual, flexible back end and are just beginning to understand the API.

Airtable is an enhanced version of Google Spreadsheets, or typical spreadsheets. However, it offers more than that. It is easy to get started and has rich API support. It allows you to create a spreadsheet based database without the hassle of writing code. In addition, it is a fast and flexible way to organize data tables (called bases).

It contains functions such as calculating fields. These are special field types, and Airtable handles numerical calculations. Automation of repetitive tasks can save a lot of time and reduce error rates. Establishing an automated workflow in the Airtable foundation is done by using custom actions to trigger an event. Eventually, the action was integrated inside the Airtable base.

Airtable also generates a REST API for each base. Front-end development tools can consume the API directly. The different endpoints generated using Airtable can perform various operations. Operations such as reading, writing, updating, sorting, and filtering data can be used.

While Airtable may not be a traditional back end, it gives teams and individuals the freedom to organize tasks. In addition, it offers more than 50 built-in applications that can be easily integrated with G Suite, Outlook, Sendgrid, Slack, Jira, and a host of other applications.

Pricing:

  • Free edition: Unlimited, each base is limited to 1200 records and 2GB of attachments.

  • Plus edition: Costs $12 per month, comes with 5,000 records, snapshot history, and 5GB of attachments.

  • Pro: Costs $24 a month, has unlimited apps, 50,000 records each, and 20GB attachments each.

2, Supabase

Best suited for experts who are building production-grade applications, are familiar with SQL queries, value open source, and want to have a scalable solution from the start.

Supabase is an open source Firebase alternative backend. It provides a dedicated database based on Postgres. It also supports importing existing databases. In addition, it has built-in support for authentication API requests that integrate JWT authentication. This gives you control over what your application users can access. It exposes a WebSocket endpoint that enables any front-end application to communicate in real time. The advantage of using a relational database is that it helps you be consistent all the time.

Relational or SQL databases are table-based databases. They have predefined schemas and use structured Query Language (SQL) to define and manipulate data. Non-relational or NoSQL databases have dynamic schemas. They store data as collections or collections of files.

With Supabase, you’ll spend most of your time in its graphical user interface (GUI). It also provides an SQL editor that you can use to write custom SQL queries to manipulate data in tables.

One of the most desirable features is that it provides a REST API that is readily available at database creation time. It is front-end agnostic and can be used with any application built with front-end tools. It gives you the option to self-host Supabase or use their cloud service to host one.

Pricing:

  • Free: $0 / month, unlimited API requests, real-time capabilities, and up to 500MB of database space.

  • Pro: $25 / month, unlimited API requests, real-time features, up to 8GB of database space, automatic backup and log retention for up to 7 days.

  • Pay as you go. Prices start at $25 a month, plus use of services such as database space, storage and transfer restrictions.

3, Cloud Firestore

Best suited to middlemen who want to build quickly, want to delegate security and user management to back-end services, and can handle some learning curves.

Firebase Firestore is a database service from Google. Although Firestore only launched in beta two years ago, it already has a huge community. It is an administrative database designed to support serverless application development. It provides a set of proposed functionality and is based on NoSQL.

The NoSQL paradigm lets you store data as collections and documents. Each document contains fields. Each field has its own unique data type. The advantage of this database type is that it helps you move quickly when building your application.

Firestore has its own built-in security system. It helps you define rules that allow application users to access data based on their authentication status. It supports traditional signature providers using email/password. Social vendors such as Google, Facebook, Apple, Twitter, etc.

Integrating Firebase with the front-end development platform is a bit of a matter of opinion. This usually means that a no-code or low-code platform must provide Firebase with an out-of-the-box integration to use on their platform.

Pricing:

  • Spark plan (free) : Firestore stores 1GB of data

  • Blaze Plan (Pay-as-you-go) : 1GB total, add $0.108 to Firestore for each additional 1GB of data stored.

4, XANO

Best suited for low-end code platforms that want to grow quickly and need a scalable database with built-in API gateways.

Xano is an extensible back end, independent of the front end. It provides a hosted and flexible database based on Postgres. It supports the REST API paradigm and consumes data to the front-end tools. It automatically generates ready-to-use REST API endpoints for each data table based on the schema created. Each endpoint generated by Xano can be customized using its code-free API generator.

Getting started with Xano is easy. Once you’re logged in, not much configuration is required. It abstracts the back end to a large extent. However, this abstraction does not come at the expense of database performance and power. Another feature of Xano is that it supports API requests for authentication. It also provides the ability to create custom functions to query databases without having to write a line of code. The flexibility and extensibility of such a platform makes it one of the easiest backends to start using.

Pricing:

  • Free: Limited to a workspace with 1000 total records and a rate-limited API.

  • Startup: Costs $67 per month, includes five workspaces with 100,000 total records each, and has no rate restrictions on the API.

  • The larger version costs $225 per month and includes 10 workspaces with 1 million total records.

5, mercifully CMS

Best suited for non-coders who have already built their own web applications and databases in Bubble.

BubbleBubble is a hosted web application “all-in-one” generator that provides users with complete design freedom without code. It allows you to create web application layouts without any knowledge of CSS or HTML. Traditional web applications require you to manage code and set up a process for deployment to a web server. The platform manages the deployment process and web hosting for you.

While Bubble is an all-in-one tool, their powerful Bubble CMS also makes it easy to connect to any other front-end development tool. Therefore, you can use the same data tables created inside Bubble CMS to connect them to any other front-end tools, for example, to develop native applications.

Pricing:

  • Free: No access to the API

  • Personal edition: $29 per month with API access

  • Professional edition: $129 per month

  • Production version: $529 per month

6, Backendless

Low-end coders are best suited for finding solutions to host databases in the cloud and for comprehensive services such as file storage.

Backendless is a cloud back-end platform that allows you to create applications without writing any server-side code. It provides programmable services that provide standard server functionality. In addition, it supports authenticated user management, authenticated API requests, relational data, push notifications, publish/subscribe messages, geolocation, video/audio recording, live streaming on servers, file services, and more.

Backendless makes these services available by implementing REST apis. It provides access to the REST API and can be used with any front-end tool. In addition to supporting REST apis, it also supports native SDKS for iOS, Android, JavaScript applications, and more.

Pricing:

  • Springboard: Costs $0 per month for unlimited API calls per month.

  • Cloud9: Costs $35 per month with 10,000,000 API calls per month.

  • Cloud99: Costs $149 per month with 40,000,00 API calls per month.

7, Contentful

Best suited for a middleman looking for a content management platform that provides an API gateway to create media-intensive applications.

Contentful is an API-first content management platform for creating, managing, and publishing content to any digital channel. It is a modern content management system (CMS) where the content model is created independently of any presentation layer. It organizes content into space, allowing you to group together all the relevant resources of a project, including content items, media assets, and Settings for localizing content into different languages.

Pricing:

  • Community edition: A full-featured CMS that costs $0

  • Team edition: Costs $489 per month and is ideal for teams working on digital products or more.

8 Hasura.

Best suited for experts who are looking for a quick solution based on GraphQL and want backward compatibility with REST.

Hasura is a real-time GraphQL APIs engine. It makes your data instantly accessible through the GraphQL API or REST API. This helps you focus on how fast you can build and ship your application.

Hasura uses Postgres connections to connect to the database. It can scale horizontally and hold state to cache queries. Json-based Network token (JWT) authentication can be used to add permissions or role-based systems.

Pricing:

  • Free version: costs $0 and includes a 1GB data overdraft

  • The standard version costs $99 a month, including a 20GB data overdraft

9, FAUNA,

Best suited for specialists who can handle a bit of a learning curve and are looking for a transactional serverless database.

Fauna is a database as a service that works well with serverless applications. It’s not a traditional database. It has its own query language, called FQL. It provides flexible data modeling and supports ACID transactions that eliminate data exceptions.

While Fauna is more of a complete database solution, in general to generate an API you will have to use a tool such as NoCodeApi.com.

Pricing:

  • Personal edition: $25 per month

  • Team edition: $150 / month

10, Directual

Best suited for low coders looking for an extensible NoSQL database that supports advanced API configurations such as authentication.

Directual provides a cloud-hosted, scalable NoSQL database. It provides tools for configuring databases, supporting data structures and object fields. It also supports most data types, such as strings, numbers, files, and so on.

It has a built-in Web page generator interface and is free to connect to any other low-code or no-code tool. In addition, you can use its RESTful APIS to create web or mobile interfaces using any front-end platform.

It provides an API builder that enables you to configure advanced API Settings for authenticated API requests, user management, and event handling without setting up infrastructure. It also includes filtering, validation, sorting, and custom query parameter handling.

Pricing:

  • Free version: includes one developer slot and has 3,000 operations.

  • Startup: Costs $39 per month, has three developer seats and 30,000 operations.

  • Pro: costs $129 per month, has 5 developer seats and 500,000 actions.

  • Business edition: $439 per month with 10 development slots and 2M of business.

11, Back4App

Ideal for professionals who want an advanced solution that supports authentication, file storage, supports REST and GraphQL, and is open source.

Back4App is an open source, low-code platform for developing modern applications. It supports the creation of a spreadsheet like database. It includes data storage, RESTful and GraphQL APIs, file storage, authentication, and push notifications.

It provides a solution to integrate GDPR compliance into your application. It also offers two hosting options. If you are looking for a cost-effective solution, you can choose to share it, or choose to use it exclusively for extended and large applications.

Pricing:

Back4app has the most pricing options, more than any other backend platform on this list.

  • Free: maximum 10K requests per month

  • Personal edition: 50,000 requests per month, starting at $5

  • Basic: 500,000 requests per month, starting at $25

  • Standard edition: 2 million requests per month, starting at $50

  • Silver edition: starts at $200 with unlimited requests per month

12,

Given the recent demand for no-code and low-code applications, it’s not surprising that there are options for creating a backend for your application.

Depending on your requirements, any of these tools can help you start low-code application development. However, each of the back-end platforms described in this list has its advantages and limitations. Therefore, it is crucial to consider which one best suits your needs.

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