This is the third and probably final post (for now) in a series about the no-code and low-code movement. It started with a birdseye and somewhat philosophical post about pencils and collaboration, then asked the hard-hitting question are ‘no code’ tools crap? I hope I managed to barter a little ceasefire there, so if successful this post can flourish in the lull of gunfire.
No-code tools are tools that allow people to create things that previously would have required coding.
1. Naker
In a nutshell: Interactive 3D content for websites to increase engagement
Price: Free with paid upgrades for higher pageviews
It’s always a good idea to be cautious not to stuff a website full of flashy effects that risk slowing things down and presenting compatibility issues, but cool effects can be effective when serving a design purpose.
The aim of Naker’s tools is just that – to increase visitor engagement with interactive 3D content that either shows off a product, encourages form submissions or strengthens brand recognition in an engaging way.
Features include:
- Naker Back: 3D backgrounds with particles that respond to the user’s cursor
- Naker Form: 3D particle backgrounds that gradually form an image as a visitor fills in a form. This gamifies the form filling experience nudging the user to take action and rewarding them when they do.
- Display interactive 3D models in a web page
- Works with pretty much every framework and CMS
2. Integromat
In a nutshell: Get disparate web apps to automatically talk to each other
Price: Free with premium upgrades
You may have heard of IFTTT? This works similarly but allows far greater complexity. For instance, you can set up a scenario that says
“when I get a new call display the caller details from Zoho CRM before I pick up the call”
or
“When a Jotform is submitted create an invoice on Invoice Ninja and add the submitted email address as a subscriber in Mailchimp.”
Features include:
- Create triggers and actions to link a vast list of potential app integrations
- Connect to almost any web service with HTTP/SOAP and JSON integration, all without code
- Process data between apps
- Set up complex branching automations visually
3. Hypothesis
In a nutshell: Collaboratively annotate websites and documents
Price: Free
Hypothesis is an amazing tool for collaboratively annotating websites. It’s ideal for journalists, researchers, educators and designers to discuss research, give feedback on designs or to add helpful notes to teaching material.
Users can annotate any publicly facing website, PDF or EPUB alongside other people, they can reply or share annotations and add tags for organisation and easy searching. This can be done within the Hypothesis website interface or use a Chrome extension.
4. DivShow
In a nutshell: Build website walkthroughs with audio
Price: Free with premium upgrades
Add low bandwidth product walkthroughs to a website using just one line of javascript. This can include audio, demo cursor position and page scrolling. This is great for quickly showing visitors how to use a web interface, flattening out the learning curve to make life easier for potential buyers or new customers. It can also be used to train new staff in how to use internal tools.
Click the link below to see a short demo on the DivShow homepage.
Features include:
- Play back audio, show cursor movements and scroll the window as the show progresses
- Allow visitors to record their own shows, e.g to show where they’re facing difficulties
- Collect visitor feedback after the walkthrough
- Multiple shows per page
5. Divi Theme Builder
In a nutshell: Powerful WordPress theme builder
Price: £72/year or £200 for life
Divi is the most popular WordPress theme in the world and I would call it the ultimate visual page builder. While this tool allows for code development so much can be done without as much as seeing a line of code. The theme builder is a winner, allowing fantastically efficient and powerful design of page templates across a website.
Features include:
- Full layout builder to create page header, content and footer templates for all page types
- Create custom layouts for custom post types and utilise custom fields
- Extensive e-commerce integration with WooCommerce modules
- 156 free layout packs available for a variety of website types
- Scroll animation effects
- An intuitive interface including WYSIWYG editing, modal editing and wireframe editing
- Draggable sizing and spacing controls
Note: this is an affiiliate link, though I do genuinely highly recommend Divi!
6. Adalo
In a nutshell: Build a native app without coding
Price: Free with premium features
Adalo is a drag and drop app builder that doesn’t need you to type a line of code.
After laying out block elements and setting up your styles you’ll then set up a database in a simple spreadsheet interface all in Adalo. After that all you have to do is connect your design to your database, telling Adalo which data should be shown in each of the elements you’re designed.
Features include:
- Native apps that can be run on Apple, Android or your own web domain
- In-app chat
- Push notifications
- Advanced workflows like requesting and booking
- E-commerce functionality: calculate tax, manage subscriptions, take payments and more
- Connect your Adalo apps together or integrate with your own or a common API
7. Humaaans
In a nutshell: Free illustrations of people
Price: Free for commercial or personal use
This is a procedurally generated collection of illustrations of people. Choose from a slew of poses and select from a wide range of skin tones, hairstyles and clothing. Rotate and position elements for custom poses then add scenery like a wheelchair, plants, furniture or abstract interface elements.
Features include:
- Customise colours, styles, poses and scenery
- Start with a template for speed
- Fully vectorised for further fine tuning and high res applications
8. Deep Namer
In a nutshell: An AI powered domain name generator
Price: Free suggestions
If you’re struggling to find a domain name (or even just a name) for your business then feed this AI assisted generator just a few raw suggestions and it will work its deep learning creative magic. The suggestions it comes up with can be quite, er… out of the box, shall we say. But that’s the power of it – it may think of things you and I would never come up with. And that’s exactly the idea.
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