The Forrester Wave™: Low-Code Platforms For Citizen Developers, Q1 2024

Low-Code Platforms For Citizen Developers Vendor Product Comparisons 2024

Key features and pros and cons of top Low-Code Platforms For Citizen Developers products:

Creatio - Leaders

Pros:

Has pivoted to no-code and composability with substantial investments in enabling well-governed citizen development and breaking down SaaS products into reusable business components
Demonstrates credible thought leadership with vendor-agnostic citizen development playbook
Superior publicly listed partner ecosystem
Top marks for strategy and innovation
Product evolved substantially with explicit design for creating net-new apps versus customizing CRM
More flexible UX designer with 'beautiful' UI according to reference customers
New and substantial governance module provides 100+ recommended policy configurations OOTB
Features for documenting, versioning, auditing, and enforcing custom policies with superior automation tools
Offers many AI features for both assisting developers and making AI-infused applications

Cons:

Data modeling tools rate below par
Platform lacks key administrative features such as alerts for unused apps

AgilePoint - Strong Performers

Pros:

Extremely strong automation features suitable for complex process automation
Strong automation-adjacent features for AI-infused applications and content management
Strong mobile development with mobile-specific layouts and offline use
Dedicated analytics module addresses reporting
Solid roadmap and innovation history
Multiple reference customers cited product's affordability
Addresses both complex automation and scaled citizen development in the real world

Cons:

Vision for decentralized citizen developer teams conflicts with enabling truly autonomous citizen developers to solve problems locally
Platform experience for citizen developers is only fair
UX development presents overwhelming menus of configurations
Reference customers noted drawbacks in user experience
Published pricing page was undergoing maintenance and incomplete at time of evaluation

Betty Blocks - Strong Performers

Pros:

Thoughtful and visionary company with long-standing view that citizen development is mechanism for scaled technology-driven innovation and culture change
Outstanding set of professional services and product features for design and governance consulting for citizen developer programs
Modules for ideation to help customers implement vision
Powerful UX development tools that are near pixel perfect
Unique features like enforced UI templating which customizes developer experience by role
Excellent AI-assisted development tools
Excellent features for coded customization
Aggressive AI-related plans in roadmap

Cons:

Past two years spent substantial energy on verticalized platform strategy for legal industry and other knowledge-worker businesses, lessening enterprise citizen development edge
Views no longer unique as other vendors are catching up
Lacks stateful workflow engine (major gap)
Below-average range of quality and dependency checks
Platform security practices are vague

Kissflow - Strong Performers

Pros:

Core focus on enabling those closest to business problems to solve them by 'reducing semantic gap between humans and systems'
Aggressive but credible roadmap
Expanded to full-blown application development in past 18 months
Attractive, well-integrated IDE with many thoughtful design touches
Top marks for overall developer experience
High praise from reference customers for intuitive learnability
Superior streamlined developer experience for process automation and workflow
New UX development tools balance flexibility and ease
Governance features are on par
Thoughtful and distinctive approach to SDLC

Cons:

Weak in data modeling - data objects built as forms, bottoms-up table building and relational data modeling not supported
Integration tools have too few connectors with reference customer complaints
Mobile apps functionality limited
End-user RBAC not managed at data level

Microsoft - Strong Performers

Pros:

Largest, most important enterprise citizen dev vendor
Credible vision for enabling collaboration between low-code and high-code developers with AI-driven Copilots support
Competitive advantage from rolling free version into enterprise agreements (inimitable)
Gigantic network of partners with experience in enabling real-world citizen developer programs at enterprise scale
Most widely adopted low-code product for citizen developers, professional developers, and everyone in between
Professional grade platform with excellent tools for UX functionality, data management, integration (1,100 connectors), AI-infused applications, testing, coding, and TuringBots
Enterprise grade security practices
AI investments in Copilot may mitigate experience problems over time

Cons:

Experience for nontechnical citizen developer has flaws
UI dev in Canvas apps is overwhelmingly flexible (a demerit in experience heuristic)
Canvas apps decoupled from data sources and overreliant on Fx language
Experiences and vocabulary of platform's subproducts are separate and different, which customers call 'confusing'
Requires investment in training and support structure to make it work

Quickbase - Strong Performers

Pros:

Pioneer of citizen developer movement
Known for boutique partner network and passionate developer community
Makes data-first app development genuinely fast and easy
Lovely entity relationship diagram (ERD)
Complex calculation support from expression language
Greatest strength is data-level RBAC enabling custom and dynamic access rules down to field level (praised by reference customers)
Strong dependency checks
UX development features improved from previous evaluation and are on par
Pragmatic roadmap includes critical plans to improve version control and continuous integration/delivery
Distinct ideas for applying AI

Cons:

UX development coupled to database makes platform inefficient for front-end-only use cases
Acquired mobile forms product to better support field services but hasn't fully integrated it yet
Key weakness: doesn't provide workflow engine - customers must rely on tools like triggered actions and report filters to automate processes (significant gap for firm focused on 'complex' and 'dynamic' work management)

Tulip Interfaces - Strong Performers

Pros:

Unique in evaluation by completely committing to apps for citizen developers to support physical work environments with IoT devices/machines
Aggressive marketing and direct competition with SaaS solutions
Compelling wins against leading manufacturing execution systems
Formula of powerfully verticalized and democratized low-code platform upends outdated build-versus-buy paradigm
Top marks for innovation and aggressive well-planned roadmap
Unusual and useful AI plans such as generating new custom-coded components
Distinct features for IoT devices, computer vision, deployment on industrial machines, and livestreaming of data
Offers predictive and generative AI features
Solidly on-par features to govern SDLC with deployment approvals

Cons:

UX development tools are flexible but not the simplest to use
End-user RBAC has useful roles OOTB but custom roles aren't possible
Integration has only a few connectors focused on its niche
App portfolio monitoring is limited
No long-running workflow capability

Zoho - Strong Performers

Pros:

Engineering company at heart that develops and controls all aspects of platform down to infrastructure
Deeply integrates its many products resulting in high-quality Creator platform
Global partner network larger than average
Product capabilities incredibly strong with impressive breadth and balance between power and accessibility
Reference customers described product as 'enjoyable'
Provides 850 integration connectors developed and supported by Zoho (staggering number)
Excellent UX and mobile tools including low-code support for specific user gestures
Well-integrated quality tools including full test automation suite
Ability to flip between low-code and high-code tooling
Highly professional approach to platform security
No serious flaws in the product

Cons:

Historic SMB focus hasn't yet embraced risk-averse culture of enterprise IT teams
Strategy and marketing for enterprise needs not fully developed
Track record of innovation and product roadmap focus on useful details and table-stakes trends (e.g., AI-assisted development) but not advanced enterprise features for governance, version control, and SDLC

Airtable - Contenders

Pros:

Well known for use in collaborative work management and organic adoption by businesspeople, especially in marketing
Substantially invested in low-code development over past two years
Well-judged innovation approach with democratizing AI as key theme
Plans to address key gaps such as ALM features are on par with other players
Simple and modern platform
Spreadsheet metaphor for building relational databases is polished and intuitive
Database fairly functional and can store hundreds of thousands of records
Useful quality features such as dependency summary for each database
Strong platform security
Actions and integrations component is Zapier-like and easy to use
UI layouts are fairly flexible

Cons:

Vision and strategy for enterprise market are unrefined
Not clear how it plans to convince and cater to enterprise IT gatekeepers that control scaled citizen development strategies
Partner network, supporting services, and training material are immature
Actions/integrations component is lightweight with few connectors
Custom styling and dynamic behavior like hide/show rules aren't possible in UI
No SDLC features
RBAC not granular enough or well designed for scaled citizen dev
Declined to participate in full Forrester Wave evaluation process

Caspio - Contenders

Pros:

20-year veteran of low-code market
Standard bearer for low-code database apps in vein of Microsoft Access
Strategic advantage is commercial model offering low-cost starting point by resource consumption instead of end users (key differentiator)
Solid partner network for firm of its size
Mature professional services
Aggressive roadmap includes full platform refresh (currently in beta) with revamped developer experience
Strongest scores in assessment for relational database work
Above-average tools for database actions
Generative AI feature for table schema
Extensive coded customization allowed in UX tools
Granular RBAC for both developer and user access to tables and interfaces
Supports version control and rollbacks for individual objects
Focuses on platform security with many certifications accrued

Cons:

Vision is dated - raison d'etre is building database apps, not enabling enterprise citizen development at scale
Innovation approach questionable with slow R&D delivery - platform refresh was on roadmap in 2021
Product's developer experience is dated and technical across the board
Weak integration with few connectors
Mobile development has nothing offline
AI-infused applications have no OOTB features
Workflow engine is absent

Google - Contenders

Pros:

AppSheet is elegant product and was ahead of its time
Strong foundation for the future
On-par product vision focuses on improving experiences for citizen developers, end users, and administrators
Invested in Workspace integration (e.g., to consolidate billing)
Recently released OOTB relational database (long overdue)
Platform is attractive and practical
Reference customers praised it as suitable for 'anyone'
Strong tools across key pillars of data modeling/management, UX development for web and mobile, process automation, and AI
Solid features for RBAC and governance
Lightweight version control and SDLC
Developer experiences effective for nontechnical audience
Automation component particularly approachable

Cons:

Reference customers and Forrester clients disappointed in Google's roadmap and pace of innovation
AppSheet underintegrated into Google Cloud services
Underrepresented in partner ecosystem
Siloed with Workspace instead of becoming broad, modern, collaborative dev platform on Google Cloud
References cited confusion about AppSheet's enterprise pricing which is unpublished
Weak integration with limited OOTB connectors
No collaboration features
Little support for coding and customizations

TrackVia - Challengers

Pros:

Pioneer in citizen development movement
Once known for innovations like experiments in AI-generated apps
Business strength is supporting services including on-par training materials
Experienced services team
Customer service appreciated by reference customers
Firm claims to be profitable
Platform's overall developer experience receives top marks
UX development tools extremely easy to learn and use (appreciated by reference customers)
Database features on par with normal data relationships available
Simple ERD
Calculations between tables can use expression language

Cons:

Has gone through multiple pivots with current vision and roadmap seeming determined and disconnected from enterprise needs
Platform hasn't improved since previous assessment, likely due to lack of strategic purpose
Tools for UX development, mobile, and reporting are useful but functionally limited
Doesn't provide workflow engine
Most significant weaknesses: RBAC for developers isn't granular, portfolio monitoring is minimal
SDLC requires copying and then locking down entire TrackVia account for deployments
Lacks version control or options for rollbacks

FAQs

Q: Which vendors are Leaders in 2024?

A: Creatio

Q: What does "Leader" mean in Forrester Wave terms?

A: Leaders in the Forrester Wave are vendors that demonstrate the strongest current offering and strategy in the low-code platforms for citizen developers market. Based on the report context, Leaders excel at: explicitly targeting scaled enterprise citizen development, empowering a digital workforce of many nontechnical workers, providing features and roadmaps for governance and administration, supporting collaboration between different roles including citizen and professional developers, continuing to improve foundational low-code components, and digitizing and automating governance at enterprise scale.

Q: How do I interpret a Forrester Wave?

A: https://www.forrester.com/policies/forrester-wave-methodology/

Report:

Top Vendor Products for Low-Code Platforms For Citizen Developers in 2024

Low-Code Platforms For Citizen Developers Vendor Product Comparisons 2024

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FAQs

Q: Which vendors are Leaders in 2024?

Q: What does "Leader" mean in Forrester Wave terms?

Q: How do I interpret a Forrester Wave?

Reference