[CerebralCerb]

An environment-health-security app for the B2B market

* Flutter frontend iOS/Android

* Parse Platform backend backed by MongoDb, hosted on Hetzner dedicated server with backups in Azure

- Migrated from Firebase

* ASP.NET 5.0 backend for various other integrations and periodic back office jobs

- Migrated from Firebase Functions

* Back office tools (CRM, billing etc) in React/Redux

- Currently experimenting with Appsmith to allow for quicker iterations

* Landing page in React

- Originally just plain HTML. Re-wrote to React to be hip.

[foxbee]

I would try Budibase instead of appsmith

[CerebralCerb]

Thanks, I'll check it out. Definitely seems like Budibase fits my use case.

[CerebralCerb]

I found Budibase cumbersome to use. It looks sleek, but the overall usability is worse.

To delete a component you have to find it in the component list, open a hamburger menu and delete. This despite having a panel with component details open with plenty of screen real estate for action buttons.

The API I use outputs data in a nested json ("results: ..."). As such Budi parsed everything into a single column. There was no clear way around it. Automations maybe?

In general there was very little use of the screen with most things being empty. I guess it is earlier in development than Appsmith. I do like the aesthetics and SSO support though. It was also much easier than Appsmith to install self-hosted. I'll keep following the project.

[shogunpurple]

Hey, co-founder of Budibase here.

This is fantastic feedback, thank you very much for taking the time to write this up.

We totally agree with the points you have raised - in fact we are in the process of addressing the component deletion problem; providing the ability for users to delete components with the keyboard or use an action bar that will be shown in the preview.

As for mapping data - this is something that is requested a lot and as such is high priority. We will be working on this in the coming weeks, providing full JS support and transformation logic for any source of data that you fetch from your Budibase applications.

Great to hear you had a good experience using Budibase self hosted. We are constantly trying to make the Budibase setup process easier, both through our self hosting setup CLI and through standard deployment configurations that developers are used to - such as docker compose and helm charts for kubernetes. Which method did you use?

Please do continue to follow Budibase - We are confident that you will love the features we planned on our roadmap for the next few months!

https://github.com/Budibase/Budibase/projects/10

[CerebralCerb]

Those changes sound great! I'll definitely keep following you. I use docker compose.

Your product is solving a very real problem that I think is under served. I developed a lot of back office tools in my old job. It was very easy to find good ideas for tools that would improve the workflow and efficiency of our sales, marketing and accounting departments.

I found that rapid prototyping and quick iterations worked great for finding good solutions for non-technical stakeholders. It made it possible to give them something concrete to "touch and feel" after every meeting. It spurred a lot of engagement.

Low-code tools like yours will really aid this kind of process, and I look forward to seeing where you'll go.

[arey_abhishek]

Hi CerebralCerb,

I'm a co-founder of Appsmith. Thanks for trying us out. Would love to know the problems you ran into while self-hosting? We are replacing the install script with a docker compose, so errors should reduce. My email is abhishek@ if you need help.

[CerebralCerb]

The port used by the docker container could not be setup during installation. Letting the setup fail and then edit the intermediates (docker-compose.yaml) worked fine but it was not elegant compared to Budibase's installation procedure. It's an issue resolved in 5 minutes though so far from a deal breaker, and with the changed install script it should be gone.

You've made a pretty great product and I look forward to following your journey. We're already using it in production.

[kinj28]

or you could check Dronahq.com

[CerebralCerb]

No self-hosted option unfortunately. It seems to be a more mature solution than Appsmith though.

[kinj28]

Self-hosted solution is coming up soon. Would love to hear your feedback on the platform though.

[CerebralCerb]

I first used my Google account to sign up using my phone, but decided to switch to desktop halfway through the onboarding process. It was then impossible to login because: "Email ID not registered." It was also impossible to register because: "An account already exists for this email address." I started a new free trial using another Google account.

I tried to add my REST API as a data source, but I had to initialize it with an endpoint that returned some entities. My base endpoint ('/parse') does not do this. Therefore it seems like I need to add a new connector for every API resource I have ('/parse/classes/Dog' etc).

I added a table and hooked it up to the data connector I made earlier, but despite using a previously configured connector I had to re-configure authorization headers etc. Inbuilt pagination was nice.

I clicked "Test&Finish", everything looked alright but the table in the designer did not update. After spending a few minutes trying to figure out what went wrong I tried the play button and it seems like it worked all along, just that the data changes is not reflected in the designer. That kinda ruins the WYSIWYG aspect of it.

I figured I should try one of the templates to see how a real DronaHQ app can be. It seemed to me like DronaHQ can do more complex apps than the two others. I tried the Dashboard template. It had a bunch of filter options, but nothing happened when I clicked on them.

Overall it looks like DronaHQ is more ambitious than the others. But the bugs really needs to be ironed out.

[kinj28]

Thanks for sharing your experience @cerebralcerb . I can understand for first time user playing around with new tool can be daunting. e.g. there is a small notification on top of Table which highlights that "below is sample data, to view your real data that you bind. Plz go to preview mode"

But these feedbacks encourages the team to smoothen the experience further.

Yes, you are correct the platform is capable of creating quite complex apps too. We have many operational tools built on it by IT and business teams alike.

Thanks again for taking time to share your feedback.