Dominik Keller

Hi Brian,

Dom here, co-founder of Five, a low-code company.

The first question I'd ask is this: do you want to continue using Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel as your database? If yes, then indeed Retool is a great choice because it connects to Google Sheets and lets you build a front end on top of it. An alternative could be AppSheet, which belongs to Google and does the same as Retool.

My advice, however, would be not to use a spreadsheet as a database. I won't go into all the reasons for this. But a spreadsheet is not designed to support web applications. At some point, it will either become very slow or you will struggle with data integrity, especially if you have ten users reading & writing data concurrently. That's why I'd look for an online database application builder.

Now, this is where I'm biased, given my role at Five, but here's what Five lets you do:

You can create your own MySQL database straight inside Five. So instead of storing data in a spreadsheet, you store it in a web-hosted MySQL database. You can import CSV files into your database, so your existing data won't be lost. You can then build the front end on top of the MySQL database. The advantages: you get something that is scalable and won't break in the future. And MySQL is open-source, so even if at some point in the future, you won't go elsewhere with your application, your data is portable.

Hope this helps and as I said, think about the right back end for your application first. :)

Dom

Hi Mark,

great question and I hope it's not too late for me to share my perspective on this.

Here's how I would evaluate this: First, I would eliminate Zoho Creator and MS Power Apps. Why? For two reasons: first, these two tools primarily make sense if you're an existing Microsoft Office or Zoho CRM user. They are primarily designed as extensions to the existing MS & Zoho product suite. Secondly, both rely on proprietary languages: MS Power Apps uses a language called Power FX, which is unique to Power Apps. Zoho Creator uses a proprietary language called Deluge. This means that you will not be able to extend these applications in standard JavaScript.

Next, I would eliminate Outsystems. Why? It's an enterprise tool and starts at 1,500 USD per month. I assume you're budget won't support an enterprise platform, unless your client is a multi-national company.

Next, I'd ask where does my data reside? It sounds like you need to build a new database from scratch so that your end-users can perform read/write operations on it. Retool is primarily a front-end builder on top of an existing data source, so I'd eliminate Retool as well.

Now, coming to my recommendation: Five (https://five.co). Why? 1. Five lets you create self-contained web apps. 2. You're building on top of a standard MySQL database. 3. You can extend Five through custom UI components in standard JS. 4. Five deploys onto AWS, so industry-standard cloud infrastructure.

Coming to your other considerations: ease of maintenance and ease of use. There's a learning curve in any new dev tool. Ease of use really depends on your skills. Are you familiar with relational databases? Then building your DB will come easy to you. Are you familiar with JS? Again, then writing custom components will be relatively easy. For all of the tools you've listed, PowerApps is actually the most "beginner-friendly" tool, but given your background in development, I reckon you'd also feel quite comfortable in more dev-focused low-code tools.

Full disclosure: I work for Five, but the use case you're describing is pretty much exactly what we're trying to solve with our low-code IDE.

Hey, are you just looking for a raw database? Then Xano or even Airtable could be simple options IMHO.

If you want to do a bit of programming and build front-end forms that point toward your database, then you could try an online database builder. Again, plenty of options out there...Five, Caspio, FileMaker, Zoho Creator, Knack.

If I were to build this in Five, I would: 1. Create a single table for my MySQL DB that stores all required information about the document: title, publication date, journal, authors, plus the actual file 2. Build a form for my application front-end 3. Launch the application.

Getting this up and running wouldn't take more than 30 minutes. You can give this a try by using our free download and build a local app first before deciding whether you want to push this to the cloud.

Hi Mark,

How much are you willing to pay for your application once it's up & running? And how many users do you expect?

Retool and Appsheet, for example, charge for every end-user on your application, starting at US$5 per user and month (and going up to US$50 per user and month). Are you (or your end-users) willing to pay US$5 to US$50 per month?

Next, exclude the platforms that do not publish any pricing, such as Unqork. Why? These are enterprise platforms and they are usually very expensive.

If end-user and enterprise pricing don't work for you, move on to platforms that charge by application (or server capacity), such as Bubble or Webflow. They give you fixed pricing even when you application scales from 5 to 5000 users.

Last, some of the companies you've mentioned there aren't app builders. Zapier is used to automate workflows. Airtable is mostly a database as a service.

Hey, I reckon with Flutter, Firebase, or Superbase you're looking at the right technologies, though I wonder if there's a faster way to get your new app up and running.

Your first sentence "CRUD SaaS" app made me wonder whether a low-code solution could do the trick for you. How much UI customization are you looking for? Is this a typical "admin panel" web app with a couple of screens for login/logoff, data entry, etc? Or is this something with a highly customized UI? And do you need native mobile or just a responsive web app?

There are a couple of online database builders that give you a hosted relational database, authentication, the ability to write logic, and deployment in one platform.

Our company Five, for example, has a low-code IDE that gives you a fully-provisioned MySQL DB, a prebuilt responsive React/MUI user interface, and one-click deployment of web apps onto AWS infrastructure.

You can build most of your application using Five's pre-built features. But you can also write SQL, JS or TS to query your data, or to add logic.