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Choosing a no code database

Sue Bampton

Low or No-Code Database applications for Charities

Low/no-code database applications are highly beneficial for charities and not-for-profits due to their simplicity and cost-effectiveness.

These platforms eliminate the need for specialised IT skills, allowing staff with minimal technical knowledge to manage databases, which saves resources and time.

They are also more affordable than traditional software, enabling these organisations to allocate more funds towards their Cause and less to software. Additionally, they offer rapid deployment and user-friendly interfaces, enhancing operational efficiency and agility. This is crucial for rapidly responding to changing needs and also supports conituity when staffing changes. By encouraging innovation within the organisation and by including built-in security features, ensuring data protection these applications can help organisational agility, service delivery and fundraising. Overall, these applications empower charities to be more effective and focused with fewer resources devoted to IT development.

This article was created to help Charities and Not-for-profit organisations scope the selection criteria for a ‘no-code’ and low-code databases and give confidence that you are choosing the right tool for the project, department or Cause. It’s also relevant to anyone who needs to choose a low-code tool to build out a project.

Note: The core aim of this post is to cover the important features that your database will need, specific projects might have key requirements, and that will help to define your solution. We have separated technical requirements from usability features that are desirable.

Databases: Technical Essentials

SECURITY!

At the top of the list has to be security. Unless your database is robustly secure, you are placing yourselve, your business and your clients at risk. Key questions need to be satisfied before you can confidently move to other criteria.

  • Secure in storage
    Data should be encrypted in storage and the physical location should be within the legislative jurisdiction you work in - for example within the EU. The standard of encryption is important, with AES-128 being desirable. If you’d like to know more about encryption there is a good primer here

  • Secure in transit
    Data should be transferred back and forth via HTTPS should be via this protocol.

  • Application Security
    Once you can be sure of the integrity of your data, storage and transite, the final piece of the jigsaw are your users. In an ideal world, each user would only be able to do and see exactly what they need - no more and no less. In the real world, this translates into user ‘groups’. Part of your build will define so called stakeholder groups, and what they can and cant do. When your selecting your database application, it’s helpful to understand how groups can be defined, and what the tool does to ensure best practices: Users changing passwords, setting secure passwords and other good ‘identity hygiene’


PERFORMANCE

Website and Database performance are essential to engage with users and to make the process of adding, editing and working with data an enjoyable and frustration free experience. If your app is part of your line of business, this is even more important and a good user experience will help you grow.

  • Scalability: The database will grow (in terms of data stored or numbers of people accessing the data) and it’s wise to check that it can do so without slowing down. Understanding limits will help to plan for growth while managing costs as the project evolve.

  • Speed: The database should deliver search results and other services quickly, irrespective of how many people are using it.

  • ‘Relational Structure’ meaning that data tables can be linked together to create efficient data storage with minimum duplication. As data storage costs have fallen, There are new techniques for storage that place emphasis on speed rather than compact storage, but for most managers related tables are still the way to go.

CONNECTIVITY

  • Server Based: Meaning that lots of people can access the information from anywhere and that the tasks of maintenance and backup are carried out centrally. The location of the server is important for things like GDPR.

  • No local files: Internet browsers add flexibility and ensure security and accessibility is managed by

  • Multi User: The database should understand that different users will have different requirements.

  • Embeddable Headless applications are in vogue… basically applications that the user doesnt know they’re using. The database should be easy to embed on multiple HTML web pages, even multiple websites - with tweak-able CSS to customise the colours and typography

  • Management Tools for collectively removing and updating records

  • Import/Export functions

  • API to connect with other applications and operate as part of an application 'Stack' Even better if it has a pre build Zapier connector

COMPARING COST

  • Per user pricing generally speaking - it’s advisable to avoid apps that price per user for front end publishing (Doing this makes the application impossible to use on a publicly accessible website or at least impossible to manage the cost!): This means that some applications are priced per user, and if you don’t know how many users will visit your application online, then it’s not possible to know how much it will cost. Applications that price in this way are generally pricing for a closed ecosystem of users, for example within a company.

  • Hidden costs (for file size, number of users, number of apps) Be aware of the total cost of ownership. The database provider/developer has to earn a living and make the app profitable. When comparing databases, it’s important to compare the total cost, not just the headline monthly fee.

  • Affordability: It’s all relative when it comes to business critical systems and the size of your business, so affordability is not only relative to your business, but will also change over time. The best rule of thumb is to ensure that the cost of the application is proportional to the likely growth of your business/revenue.

WORKFLOW - AUTOMATION

Data visualisation: There should be sets of tools to build useful reports/graphs and drill down to underlying data.

Easy Management: Key tasks should be easy to understand and perform with automation where possible,

Task Management: The Database should have a task manager to perform rule based actions at defined intervals

Workflow Manager: The Database should integrate with communication methods and dovetail into company work flows.

Speed of development: Many of the better database apps have pre built layout elements, so when you’ve built your data tables, these save time laying out pages for different users and tasks.

MARKETPLACE

Here is a list of the large players in the online database market.

  • Knack

  • Amazon DynamoDB

  • Caspio

  • Microsoft Access

  • Filemaker Pro

  • VisionFlow

  • Ragic

  • Quick-base (UPM)

  • BettyBlocks

  • Firebase

  • AwareIM

  • VisionX

  • KiSSFLOW

  • Bubble

  • SQL for example MySQL

  • RestDB

  • Airtable

  • Clappia (UPM)

  • Scoro (UPM)

  • Odoo

  • Clappia (UPM) Scoro (UPM)

  • Odoo

  • Filemaker - Claris

Form builder tools

Form builder tools are sometimes very helpful - especially if you work with a database that is a store of data without a ‘front end’ to add and edit data.

  • TheFormTool

  • WuFoo

  • Cognitoforms

  • JotForm

  • 123formbuilder


CONCLUSION

The ‘best’ tool’ is the one that most closely fits your current needs, allows for your future needs and does both at the lowest cost. Where your particular pivot point on the various aspects of online tools, will determine how important certain criteria are.

In this article, we’ve created a ‘wish list’ that until now has been almost impossible to satisfy…. all of that said, Knack is a particularly well priced, Secure, flexible, powerful and well rounded tool, and for many organisations, it’s an invaluable part of the online toolkit.

Declaration: Isoblue have implemented many Knack solutions, and support more by providing simple answers, training, and development advice.

In our experience, continuity, and training, and empowering the organisation to pass on skills using video, and internal website resources to empower new team members is as important as the tool selected.

As a business we provide consultancy based on over 30 years, building databases for over 700 clients. Our current tools include Knack, Squarespace, Wordpress, Elementor, Typeform. Our preference changes depending on client needs, but Knack is a robust and reliable choice for many if not all SME’s as well as larger enterprises with clear project focus.

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