How Baserow became the most scalable no-code platform in the market

• Scalability and flexibility in an ever-changing world
• Why should applications be scalable?
• How Baserow breaks the barrier in creating a scalable platform that connects data, people, and workflows
• Building scalable applications with Baserow
  • ncScale as the monitoring tool for your entire no-code stack
• Baserow + ncScale: the ultimate no-code collaboration for creating scalable databases and applications
  • For product managers
  • For IT managers
  • For business operations
  • For marketing
• Summary

The rise—or return, depending on how you define it—of no-code platforms has revolutionized the way businesses approach software development. As businesses continue to look for ways to streamline their operations beyond highly technical teams, organizations are often faced with hurdles in scalability, flexibility, and vendor lock-in. Among the many no-code platforms in the market, Baserow has carved out a unique solution that offers unprecedented scalability and flexibility with no vendor lock-in.

Baserow’s success is largely attributed to its ability to scale. Built with a robust and open-source technology stack, Baserow is designed to seamlessly integrate with other platforms to provide a fully customized solution that’s tailored to your needs.

With its intuitive interface and open-source nature, Baserow allows users to create scalable databases and applications without the need to write a single line of code.

Scalability and flexibility in an ever-changing world

Scalable software refers to an application or program that can grow and expand without experiencing a decline in performance or quality. It’s designed to handle an increasing number of users, transactions, and data without slowing down or crashing. Scalability is crucial for businesses that plan to grow and expand their operations in the future. It allows organizations of any size to accommodate new customers, handle more data, and support additional functionalities without compromising the system’s efficiency and reliability.

Having a reliable, scalable software platform saves businesses time, money, and human capital that would have otherwise been spent on fixing performance issues. Scalability also means happy customers. After all, users expect fast and reliable services, so any performance impact or downtime can lead to customer dissatisfaction and a negative reputation.

In the context of no-code and visual development, app scalability becomes even more important, as it allows non-technical users to create and launch applications without worrying about the technical side of the builds.

With the increasing popularity of no-code platforms like Baserow and Zapier, app scalability has become a critical factor in making sure that these apps can handle the growing demand of their users. This requires careful planning and design to ensure that it can scale up or down as needed—in that sense, serverless computing and open-source software are just some of the properties that no-code tools use to adapt to user needs.

Why should applications be scalable?

Building apps without writing code is a lot more feasible than it used to be. However, no-code does not mean:

• No technical considerations
• No focus on scalability
• No design
• No effort
• No learning curve
• No thought process
• Built-in a day

The last thing you want is an application that will only serve you for a couple of months or that can only be used by one person. When you’ve spent time and money building something that works, you want it to last and serve its purpose.

Whether you’re building something for internal or external use, scalability is something that you should consider from the start. When you take into account the growth of the business and your changing needs (bringing in new employees, an increase in sales, an increase in cross-functional collaboration, etc.), you build apps that are useful, flexible, and easily adaptable. This also means giving your users a more seamless user experience.

This long-term thinking helps decrease the downtime and time requirements of your apps significantly, making sure that the ROI for the automation, integrations, and interactions that you built is maximized.

The result? Increased user satisfaction, customer retention, and revenue for your business.

How Baserow breaks the barrier in creating a scalable platform that connects data, people, and workflows

One of the main benefits of Baserow is its open-source nature. Baserow is available for free, and its source code is publicly available. This means that you can use and modify Baserow to fit your unique business needs. Baserow is built using modern technologies such as Python, Django, and Vue.js, which make it a powerful and reliable tool.

Being open source, this also means that you can self-host Baserow on-premise and on your own servers. This allows you to meet strict legal and data compliance policies that are often difficult to maneuver when using SaaS-hosted versions of proprietary software.

Another benefit of Baserow is its no-code approach. You don’t need to be a developer to use Baserow. With its intuitive user interface, you can easily create custom database applications by dragging and dropping fields, tables, and views. Baserow offers a range of pre-built field types, including text, number, date, and file upload, which make it easy to create a database application that fits your needs.

If you are a technical developer, you’ll feel at home with Baserow’s API-first and developer-friendly approach. You’re welcome to build plugins and even your own software on top of Baserow due to Baserow’s MIT license, which is the most permissive open-source license in existence.

Baserow also helps you automate your workflows. With Baserow, you can create custom forms and views that enable you to reduce manual data entry. Baserow offers a range of automation features, including webhooks and integrations with popular tools such as Zapier, Make, and n8n. Integrations with these tools mean that you can connect to a virtually endless supply of other applications that enable you to create and automate complex workflows.

Whether it’s 10 users today or 1000 users tomorrow, Baserow is set up to grow with you. It can handle large amounts of data and can be scaled to millions of rows to meet the needs of growing businesses. Baserow’s modular architecture enables you to add new features and customize the tool to fit your business needs.

Building scalable applications with Baserow

In some cases, adapting your no-code applications to your growing business will require bringing in integrations, automation, and plugins that complement the foundation that you’ve built. This is common for Baserow + n8n/Make/Zapier users, who don’t want to limit themselves to one single tool and want to take their processes to the next level of automation and integration.

Integrating and pushing the limits with multiple tools means introducing other complexities that you need to account for. For example: tool interoperability, codependence, and documentation. It’s important that the features that made your application scalable in the first place remain healthy and intact.

The best way to ensure that even your most complex apps scale is by building a center of excellence (CoE).

The CoE is a place where you can store, manage, and monitor all the components of your no-code stack, helping you gain a deeper understanding of the apps and workflows you’ve built. The goal of a CoE is to enable teams across your organization to build software apps, workflows, and other solutions in an organized, structured way that lets you adapt your data, people, and workflows without skipping a beat.

ncScale as the monitoring tool for your entire no-code stack

Think of ncScale as the Datadog for no-code.

By integrating with top no-code tools like Baserow, ncScale allows users to have a comprehensive overview of their entire no-code infrastructure and to regain control over their workflows, databases, and automation. The ncScale team—who uses Baserow for their internal IT processes—believes that no-code is the future.

And now that more and more companies are using these tools to manage their internal processes, it’s important that they have visibility.

With ncScale, you get:

• 📊 Your no-code stack health at a glance
• 🔭 Centralized place for all your stack events and logs (Baserow Enterprise License required)
• 🚨 Alerts if something goes wrong (Baserow Enterprise License required)
• 🗂️ All your no-code assets in one place
• ↔️ Automatic dependency discovery
• 📑 Versioning to track changes
• 🔍 Full-text search (find any variable anywhere!)
• 🥷 Obfuscated sensitive data (Baserow Enterprise License required)
• 🤖 Push any log or asset via API

Baserow + ncScale: the ultimate no-code collaboration for creating scalable databases and applications

As your stack evolves, you can pair it with ncScale to ensure that Baserow’s inherent flexibility is transferred over, even as your no-code stack changes and evolves. By connecting Baserow (and other tools) to ncScale, you’ll be able to leverage the properties that make Baserow scalable with other tools that you may integrate as well.

There are many cases where a Baserow and ncScale stack shine.

For product managers

As a product manager, Baserow allows you to organize and centralize your data, track your projects, and collaborate cross-functionally in real time. Connect organizational goals to specific tasks and people that ensure everyone is working towards the same objectives.

You can also make customer feedback actionable. Gathering insights allows you to make data-driven decisions that align with customer needs. You can even automate product development processes to reduce inefficiencies and deliver quality products to market faster.

For IT managers

With Baserow, IT managers easily plan projects, control software sprawl, and collaborate with stakeholders. Creating customized databases that are tailored to your unique business workflows becomes infinitely valuable, especially at scale. This saves time and resources that would otherwise be lost throughout the entire project lifecycle.

The best part is that multi-stakeholder collaboration happens under one roof, which allows you to control the software sprawl that’s so imminent in today’s workplace. Rather than working across multiple tools, it’s all centralized to keep processes close and intact.

Working with ncScale, monitoring activity, spotting errors, and determining whether it’s safe to delete a field or database becomes straightforward. As an IT manager, it’s crucial to understand and explain the dependencies between your databases and other parts of your tech stack. The Asset Catalog is a great tool for this, allowing you to identify the owner of each asset, which streamlines notifications and troubleshooting.

For business operations

Baserow’s fully customizable nature allows your team to tailor the platform to your internal processes, which eliminates the need for complicated workarounds. It facilitates communication on objectives and even allows you to automate repetitive tasks. This has a huge impact on resource allocation, especially for team members because it allows them to focus on more impactful work. This also means reduced errors and easier access to information.

With ncScale, you can set up custom alerts for your team if something goes wrong. Our customizable notification system lets you send essential data via Slack, webhook, or email, helping your team quickly understand and resolve issues. If you need to update a variable or an email address across multiple assets, our powerful search feature enables you to make these changes swiftly and efficiently.

For marketing

With Baserow, marketing teams can automate repetitive tasks, freeing up more time to focus on strategic planning and creative ideation. Additionally, the platform allows for the gathering of all marketing assets and collateral in one centralized location, improving collaboration and organization within the team. This facilitates easier access to crucial information and reduces the risk of miscommunication or misplacement of important documents.

On the ncScale side, you can create custom dashboards to monitor activity and track changes. This helps prevent mistakes and allows for quick fixes when needed.

Summary

Baserow has distinguished itself as a leading no-code platform in the market, offering unmatched scalability and flexibility without vendor lock-in. Its robust open-source technology stack allows for seamless integration with other platforms, providing a fully customized solution tailored to individual business needs. Users can create scalable databases and applications without writing any code, making them accessible to both technical and non-technical users.

Scalability is vital for businesses planning to grow, and Baserow’s ability to handle increasing users, transactions, and data without compromising performance or quality makes it an ideal choice. Furthermore, Baserow’s open-source nature and intuitive interface allow for easy customization and automation.

When paired with ncScale, a monitoring tool for no-code infrastructure, businesses can have a comprehensive overview of their workflows, databases, and automation, ensuring that Baserow’s inherent flexibility is maintained even as their no-code stack evolves.

This combination of Baserow and ncScale provides a powerful solution for building and managing scalable applications that can adapt to changing business needs.