Think fast
Thoughts and ideas on how to build tools, automate workflows and speed-up the workplace.
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
A beginners guide to web application development (2025)
It was the year 2010, I had an idea for a web application which would allow my family and I to share images, organise shopping, populate a shared calendar, and store bills. My family was terribly disorganised. We needed this! This idea was going to make me 💰💰💰. There was a small complication with my vision - I didn’t know how to build a web application. But thankfully, I could build a static site with HTML and CSS so it couldn’t be that hard, right?
Joe Johnston
Apr 24, 2024
How to Build a Web App: Beginner's Guide (2025)
Picture by Med Badr In this post, I’m going to show you EXACTLY how to make a web app. In fact, this is the process I’ve used, revised and perfected over the last 5 years. I’ve used this exact process, or a version of it to build over 15 applications of all shapes and sizes. For me, this is 100% the best way to build web applications. But, before we start the tutorial, a quick recap on what we define as a web application at Budibase.
Joe Johnston
Apr 23, 2024
5 best open source form builder apps (tried and tested)
My name is Joe, and I have been building online forms for the last 10 years of my life. I have developed forms in several different ways; with html5 form builders, with Javascript form builders, to niche React form builders, and more. From my experience, I can conclude that the best open-source form builders make it quick and easy to create beautiful, functional, and accessible forms. Forms are a critical construct of the digital age.
Joe Johnston
Apr 19, 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