Think fast
Thoughts and ideas on how to build tools, automate workflows and speed-up the workplace.
Pega vs Appian
Pega and Appian are two of the biggest names in the automation space. In particular, they’re two highly enterprise-focused platforms that enable teams to automate workflows and processes without excessive custom code. However, the market for automation builders is hugely varied. At one end of the spectrum, we have platforms that allow teams to create automations without writing any code at all. On the other, we have highly code-intensive platforms, aimed at more traditional development tasks.
Ronan McQuillan
May 7, 2024
5 Smartsheet Alternatives & Competitors
Managing data around projects, tasks, workloads, and resources is one of the most basic challenges every business deals with. For many teams, this has historically meant relying on spreadsheets. However, over the past decade or so, a class of tools has gained popularity that seeks to combine the familiar UX of a spreadsheet editor with more advanced capabilities - like those of a traditional database. Smartsheet is one of the most popular names in this space.
Ronan McQuillan
May 6, 2024
What is a Workflow Engine? + 5 Open Source Tools
Workflow engines are used to simplify, expedite, and optimize all sorts of internal tasks and processes. By codifying and digitalizing business logic, an effective workflow engine enables us to achieve a high degree of efficiency, repeatability, accuracy, and productivity within daily operations. They’re also a powerful basis for business process automation, integration, real-time analytics, and other digital transformation efforts across your business. Today, we’re exploring everything you need to know.
Ronan McQuillan
May 1, 2024
Mendix vs OutSystems
OutSystems and Mendix are two of the oldest names in the low-code space. Together, they occupy a huge corner of the market, with tens of thousands of businesses relying on them to ship custom applications. But, despite being direct competitors, there are huge differences between the two - in terms of key functionality, target personas, pricing, and use cases. Today, we’re giving an in-depth account of everything you need to know.
Ronan McQuillan
Apr 26, 2024
Top 7 Quickbase Alternatives & Competitors in 2025
Quickbase is one of many tools on the market today that seeks to give teams a single platform for unifying data, managing internal processes, and automating menial tasks. This reflects a huge problem that’s faced by almost every business today. Companies have never relied on data more. At the same time, data assets are dispersed, siloed, and uncoordinated. Therefore, centralization offers huge potential for efficiency savings, improving accuracy, facilitating collaboration, providing oversight, and more.
Ronan McQuillan
Apr 12, 2024
Top 7 Airtable Alternatives & Competitors in 2025
When Airtable launched in 2012, it was a real innovation. Spreadsheets hadn’t changed much in several decades. So, the power to add interfaces, automations, advanced in-line components, and external data syncing on top of this was huge. Today, Airtable has upwards of 300,000 users - including some of the world’s biggest companies. But, despite Airtable’s popularity, it’s not necessarily the ideal solution for every use case. Today, we’re exploring some of the other tools that teams can use to collaborate on data and manage internal processes, with our roundup of Airtable alternatives.
Ronan McQuillan
Apr 6, 2024
How to Build an Employee Portal
Employee portals are some of the most ubiquitous internal tools around. Teams of all sizes in every industry need a secure, efficient way to share information, handle requests, and deliver internal services to employees. Portals offer a unified, centralized platform for interacting with data within internal processes. Today, we’re checking out how Â鶹AV empowers teams to build sleek, professional portals on top of just about any data source. With our open-source, low-code platform, you can output fully functional solutions in a fraction of the time.
Ronan McQuillan
Apr 5, 2024
Top 10 PowerApps Alternatives & Competitors in 2025
Microsoft PowerApps was one of the first modern low-code platforms when it launched in 2015. The goal was to provide large businesses with a new, faster way to output custom applications. Today, it’s used by developers and other IT professionals alike to simplify the process of building custom software. Thousands of companies in all kinds of industries choose PowerApps for internal development projects. However, that doesn’t mean that PowerApps is the right fit for every organization.
Ronan McQuillan
Apr 5, 2024