The Scale, Speed, and Spend of Low Code: Benefits and Challenges of Low-Code Platforms

Editor's Note: The following is an article written for and published in DZone's 2024 Trend Report, Low-Code Development: Elevating the Engineering Experience With Low and No Code.

The relevance of low-code development is growing as businesses seek to accelerate their digital transformation, improve operational efficiencies, and respond swiftly to market changes. By democratizing app development, low-code platforms enable both professional developers and non-technical users to build, deploy, and maintain software solutions efficiently.

The core benefits of low-code development are multifaceted, including increased scalability, accelerated speed to market, and reduced costs. Low-code platforms are designed to scale with business needs, handle growing user demands, and facilitate the rapid deployment of applications. Additionally, they offer cost-saving opportunities by reducing the need for extensive coding expertise and streamlining development processes. This article provides an overview of these critical aspects.

Scalability in Low-Code Development

In low-code platforms, scalability means the capability of handling higher workloads, including increases in volumes of users, load, data, and complex transactions, without performance loss. Low-code platforms support scalability since they have built-in features like load balancing, resource allocation, and performance monitoring. These allow the distribution of services across multiple servers to ensure applications remain responsive, even at peak usage times. Moreover, most low-code platforms integrate with cloud services that are easily scalable per requirements.

Scaling Traditional vs. Low-Code Development

Traditional development requires significant time and resources to scale applications since all the code must be written and adjusted by hand. In the case of custom code, one has to be extra careful with the intricate design, testing, and performance optimization. Experienced developers are the only personnel who are able to create new applications or make changes, meaning that organizations are limited based on developers' availability. However, unlike low code, traditional development allows for fully customized coding that can be adjusted to each personal or organizational use case.

In contrast, low-code platforms make scaling easier. They use automated tools and preconfigured components (e.g., drag-and-drop tools, data display components, audit logs) that can be used by various organizational roles to manage wide-scale deployments more effectively. Some example deployments enabled by low-code tools are internal business applications, workflow automations, and data collection. 

Figure 1. Advantages and limitations of low-code development

Advantages of Low-Code Scalability

One of the primary advantages of low-code scalability is the ease of managing and upgrading applications. Low-code platforms provide a centralized environment where updates can be seamlessly deployed across all application instances. This capability reduces downtime and ensures all users can access the latest features and improvements without extensive manual intervention.

Low-code platforms come with built-in features that support both horizontal and vertical scaling. Horizontal scaling involves adding more instances of an application to distribute the load, while vertical scaling enhances the capacity of existing instances by adding more resources. These features are typically automated, allowing applications to adjust dynamically to changes in demand and ensuring consistent performance.

Limitations of Low-Code Scalability

Despite the advantages, highly customized low-code solutions can potentially introduce performance bottlenecks. For example, the increased development speed from low-code tools can result in decreased quality and a plethora of bugs to fix. Debugging tools for low code are often less thorough due to the environment, and platform compatibility issues can block necessary updates or maintenance.  

Additionally, the abstraction layers that make low-code platforms user friendly can sometimes lead to inefficiencies. As customization increases, these platforms may struggle to maintain optimal performance, particularly for applications with complex, unique requirements, such as compliance rules or detailed business logic.

The scalability of low-code applications is heavily dependent on the capabilities of the underlying platform. If the platform lacks robust scalability features or fails to integrate well with existing systems, it can limit the overall performance and scalability of the applications built on it. This dependency underscores the importance of selecting a low-code platform that aligns with long-term scalability needs.

Speed to Market With Low-Code Development

Low-code development speeds up the application development process as developers can quickly prototype and deploy applications using drag-and-drop interfaces, pre-built templates, and reusable components. Speed is vital in a competitive market, where increasing the time to market of a new product or service can provide a healthy competitive advantage.

Real-World Example

Many organizations have achieved a faster time to market by developing processes using low code. For instance, the consumer goods companies Unilever developed their mobile sales application on a low-code platform. The sales app was developed and deployed within three weeks, and it improved the sales process and enriched customers' experiences. This rapid development enabled Unilever to respond to market changes and improve its sales operations much faster than traditional coding would allow.

Accelerating Development Cycles

The most significant advantage of low-code platforms accelerating development cycles is the reduced coding time. Drag-and-drop interfaces and pre-built templates allow developers to focus on business logic and the user experience rather than writing extensive lines of code. Furthermore, developers are able to automate repetitive tasks through low code. This reduction in manual coding shortens development timelines, reduces the potential for errors, and most importantly, frees up a developer's workload so that they can focus on more critical projects that will have a lasting impact on the organization.

Low-code platforms also facilitate faster iteration and prototyping. Developers can quickly build, test, and refine applications based on user feedback. This iterative approach enhances the quality of the final product and ensures that it meets user expectations. Rapid prototyping allows developers to experiment with new ideas and pivot quickly based on user feedback.

Speed vs. Customization

While low-code platforms offer speed advantages, trade-offs between speed and the depth of customization are possible. Highly specialized applications may require custom code to meet specific requirements, thus slowing development. However, low-code platforms often provide extensibility options, allowing developers to incorporate custom code when necessary and balancing speed with customization.

The trade-offs between speed and customization can impact innovation and differentiation in the market. While low-code platforms enable rapid development, standardized components can lead to similar-looking applications. To stand out, businesses may need to invest additional time and resources into customizing their low-code solutions, thus ensuring they offer unique features and a differentiated user experience.

Cost Implications of Low-Code Development

Businesses must consider the cost implications of adopting low-code platforms. Initial costs typically include platform licensing fees and user training. Ongoing costs may involve subscription fees, support services, and potential costs associated with scaling and customization. Despite these expenses, low-code platforms often prove cost effective in the long run due to reduced development times and lower labor costs.

Low-code development offers significant cost savings compared to traditional software development approaches. Traditional development requires highly skilled developers, extensive coding, and prolonged testing phases, all of which contribute to higher labor costs and longer project timelines. In contrast, low-code platforms reduce the need for specialized skills, streamline development processes, and shorten time to market — resulting in lower overall costs and the democratization of app development.

Low-code platforms also help reduce project timelines, which translates to cost savings and efficiency. Shorter development cycles mean businesses can deploy solutions faster, reducing the time and resources spent on each project. Additionally, faster deployment allows businesses to realize returns on their investment sooner.

Hidden Costs and Considerations

While low-code platforms offer many benefits, they also have potential hidden costs and considerations. One consideration is the lock-in of or dependency on the platform's vendor. However, if you are already dependent on a low-code platform, moving to another platform can be rather complicated and expensive. This can limit flexibility, leading to more significant costs in the long run.

Other considerations are the long-term maintenance and upgrade costs. While the upfront development costs could be low, maintenance, updates, and platform upgrades in the long term can be expensive. Businesses must consider the long-term costs and ensure the selected platform is supportive and scalable according to future requirements.

Conclusion

All in all, low-code development offers a very appealing ratio of pros to cons. It enables boosting scalability, speed to market, and cost efficiency, making it an attractive choice for any business looking to speed up its digital transformation. However, possible drawbacks include performance bottlenecks, platform dependency, and long-term maintenance costs. Balancing the advantages and disadvantages of low-code solutions is crucial for businesses. Looking forward, low code will likely evolve to be more scalable and more flexible, where developers can switch between low code and traditional code as needed and thus increase customization options. Integrating low code today will be key to ensuring successful, efficient development for years to come.

This is an excerpt from DZone's 2024 Trend Report, Low-Code Development: Elevating the Engineering Experience With Low and No Code.

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