I’m from NZ as well. I have looked at most of the no-code cross-platform solutions and it came down to Appgyver and Adalo.
Appgyver is missing a few things and there is way too much uncertainty after it was acquired by SAP, despite their reassurances. If Appgyver introduced a paid plan I would have a bit more confidence. Having said that Appgyver is a true data-centric no-code solution – In my opinion, its powerful.
I have to say, I trust Adalo more, they seem open and honest - If you watch some of the townhall meetings – To me, they seem pretty open and genuine and they are trying to fix issues. You won’t get this level of open communication from the founders of other no-code solutions. David and Ben seem like good genuine hard working blokes.
Adalo has the best interface and is a well-rounded solution. But I see too many posts about poor performance. But I don’t know if its just new users designing apps poorly or whether its actual issues with Adalo. To be honest I’m being selfish and lazy I guess, I need to build a complex solution and test out the performance perhaps, But I have invested a bit into learning Appgyver, so not too sure if I want to invest more time learning Adalo. I mean learning the basics is easy but making a complex app to test takes time.
For me performance is key, then features. Having said that you also need some critical features to start with, which Adalo has. I haven’t published any apps with Adalo. We really need Adalo to provide some info/evidence to show how an app performs. Just an example app with some real stats. Let’s say an app with 10K records and an app with 100k or 500k records with filters and pagination etc. These apps should be well designed and optimised – Showing us the best case scenario – A crm app or an uber app or whatever.
Being in the pacific (NZ), I would always go for AWS or GCP in the Sydney region. So if I was to use Adalo, I would definitely use external data. Looked at Supabase, Back4App and Xano. Xano will be my preference as it has good learning resources and its a true no-code back end. But it concerns me that all api requests are routed through Adalo. I know what their reason is, but it kind of takes away a chunk of the performance advantage you get from external data. This is annoying.
As for Bubble, I think it’s the probably the poorest no-code solution despite their very large user base. Compare them to Adalo, appgyver, wappler, draftbit, flutterflow, clutch, glide whatever – Bubble is way behind and slow to innovate. Yes, it’s a somewhat powerful solution but they can’t provide you with a decent back end for the price. You don’t get to choose your region and its like $800 to get a dedicated solution. I think they are very closed minded and relying on their cult following. They have been around for like 10 years and have plenty of funding but still can’t provide a decent value-based backend or cross platform capability? The vast majority of their email communications/promotions are about paid bootcamps and promotions or something like that – I always found that confusing – Trying to sell bootcamps to no-coders is their biggest news item to email their userbase! They started in 2012, 100M revenue from 250k user base in 2017, 1M userbase now, 100M funds raised in 2021 – Still no cross-platform capability. Now compare them to Adalo - Adalo has done way more in a short period of time and only just raised 8M this year. I know who I’d choose if the choice was between bubble and Adalo.
PS - I’m not too sure if the person who actually started this thread had a genuine concern or not. They provided no real evidence - Not doing anyone any justice. But the topic of performance is a worthwhile one in my opinion.