Welcome fellow NoCoder!

Sept 30th Discover NoCode issue #12

• Tool - FlutterFlow

• Leader Spotlight - Andrew Daniels & Alim Charaniya

• Community & Resources - FlutterFlow’s BetterMode Community

• Story - How FlutterFlow is making it possible for traditional development teams and UI/UX developers to work in the same environment.

• Training Video - Learn more about FlutterFlow 5.0 from their FFDC 2024 NYC event!

Tool

FlutterFlow

Strengths:

• Drag-and-Drop Interface for UI/UX Designers: For your UI/UX teams FlutterFlow finally makes it possible for these teams to collaboratively build in the same software as the development team — with real time collaboration.

• Custom Code & Libraries: FlutterFlow lets you build your own custom widgets when the built-in ones don’t cover your use cases. This also means you can export your entire code base and host the platform on your own as your company and users scale. You can also publish your own libraries for your team and soon make them public on a marketplace!

• Backend Platforms: FlutterFlow is a front-end builder but they have taken the time to make it easy for you to connect to scalable DBs such as Firebase and Supabase.

• Environments & Branching Updates: For the first time on a NoCode platform you can now have environments where you can fully test your product before you deploy it. Save different secrets and keys for each environment and do end-to-end testing before going to production.

• Branching Updates: Create new features in a separate branch and merge that branch back into the main branch when you are ready with a comprehensive app diff comparison tool to help you check dependencies.

Weaknesses:

• It’s Not Perfect: FlutterFlow has it’s own set of bugs and quirks that you will have to deal with. Since it’s based on Flutter as a codebase as Flutter changes and updates their software FlutterFlow may lag behind or you’ll need to find other ways to compensate.

• Dependencies: FlutterFlow is real code so there are many dependencies that they use and will likely not be on the most up-to-date version of each dependency so the newest cutting edge features of each dependency likely will not be available to you.

• Hosting Limitations: FlutterFlow hosts the web-driven side of their software on Google Cloud. For better of worse Flutter is a Google-backed platform and building in FlutterFlow puts most of your infrastructure into the Google Cloud right from the start which could impact the level of effort it may take to migrate out of the Google Cloud should you ever need to.

Leader Spotlight

Andrew Daniels ↗ and Alim Charaniya ↗

Andrew Daniels is the previous head of design at FlutterFlow. After his departure in April he has begun to put time into Kaleo and NoCodeUI. He has begun building software for other companies using FlutterFlow through Kaleo and began hosting trainings for people to learn more about good UI/UX through NoCodeUI. If you haven’t followed him on LinkedIn yet, you should definitely check him out. His designs are amazing.

Alim Charaniya (often called Ambitious Alim) runs Ambitious Labs, one of the coolest NoCode agencies and bootcamps out there. They focus on teaching people how to build software using NoCode tools. FlutterFlow and BuildShip are the foundational platforms his bootcamp trains on. He also hosts a podcast where he interviews people who have built really amazing things on FlutterFlow to hear about how they got started.

Community & Resources

FlutterFlow’s BetterMode Community

The BetterMode community it FlutterFlow’s official community. There are many Discord servers you can join as well and often in different regions with communities focused on supporting one another in different hemispheres.

With the leaderboard it’s easy to get noticed in this community if you work hard to help others.

Story

How FlutterFlow is making it possible for traditional development teams and UI/UX developers to work in the same environment.

Potentially for the first time in NoCode product of this scale, dev teams officially have the ability to have different environments to develop, test, and sent apps into production.

This was the biggest missing-link in the NoCode space for dynamic teams of developers and UI/UX app builders. In almost every NoCode tool these two teams can collaborate but at the cost of the devs not having a traditional set of tools to develop and deploy software in separate spaces.

FlutterFlow 5.0 has bridged the gap. Even as apps begin to scale and stability becomes the focus of an app, they can stay (if they wish) inside of the FlutterFlow development environment. Where before companies may have opted to leave and start hosting the code on their own as stability becomes more important than shipping fast.

These new features extend the runway for companies building in FlutterFlow allowing them to continue using the platform beyond initial MVPs.

Training Video

Learn more about FlutterFlow 5.0 from their FFDC 2024 NYC event!

SmartSuite hosts monthly feature release webinars that you can join and see what they are working on! These are live with their team demoing the new features and taking questions at the end of the webinar so be sure to join this one tomorrow morning at 8AM PT! It’s going to be their biggest release yet!

Have a stellar week and keep on Discovering NoCode!

Have a tool or other idea you think we should highlight?
Submit it here: https://www.discover-nocode.com/submit-a-tool