After extensive experimentation, I highly recommend this no-code end-to-end tech stack to build your product 💡

Hi Indiehackers 👋

Not everyone can (or want to) code, but that shouldn't keep you away from building your own product using no-code tools. In fact, I am one of those. I've been trying a lot of different tools, but few have met my needs. Here are my biggest learnings if your product is a web app:

Complete stack in one product
Bubble.io has definitely been the go-to tool for me. Easy to use, easy to get started with, but a steep learning curve if you want to be a pro.

Pros

1. Free tier 😅 and then only $29 per month to give you all you need to launch a "professional" site
2. Easy to get up and running, with good explanations and videos. Documentation is on point, and always easy to find.
3. Tons of videos on Youtube. Can recommend Matt Neary, Coaching no code apps, Building with Bubble and Buildcamp
4. You can build almost anything you want and I keep getting surprised about the possibilities. Bubble is extremely flexible, so your own imagination is your biggest constraint.
5. Server side security, privacy rules and backend workflows are all concepts builtIN to Bubble. Which effectively means that you can use Bubble as your end-to-end tool for building your product.
6. Deploy new versions in under a second. Massive advantage compared to using a complicated tech stack. Built-in version control, so you can always revert.
7. Built-in design system, which makes it super easy as you scale. This makes sure that your app runs fast and is easy to change.
8. And then of course, no coding experience is required - at all 🥳

Cons

1. Steep learning curve to be a pro. If you are completely new and do this as a side project, expect at least 3 months with approx. 10-15 hours per week to understand the most complex setups (server side security, privacy rules and backend workflows)
2. There are actually no real communities for Bubble, so you would rely on their own forum, their own customer support (which is great!) and youtube videos
3. If Bubble goes out of business, you will be fairly screwed. But in mid 2021 they secured approx $100m in funding, so expect that to take some time to burn through ;) And they've been around since 2012 🥵
4. They still lack on some areas like being able to make professional onboarding of customers, that'd be a bit tricky. They could also benefit from having more integrations built-in, but they keep adding more.
5. Pricing structure (they recently changed it). As you scale, expect your "workload units" to increase significantly. They base their pricing on Workload units, which can be decreased by being more efficient in how you build your app. But if you are not aware, their workload units are a bit tight.

My entire tech stack for running https://jot.team/

• G-suite for email service: $5/m
• Bubble: $29/m
  That’s it!

The rest is free for now

• Notion (for managing tasks and to do)
• Sendgrid (for transactional emails)
• Chat GPT (for AI sparring)

What's your no-code tech stack? Any learnings you can share? 💡

If you are curious about what I am building: https://jot.team/
You are welcome to follow me on Threads where I soon will be posting quick learnings in shorter format and keep long format to Indiehackers: https://www.threads.net/@thesolohacker_