A low-code platform is software on which business apps are built mostly by dragging screens, forms and data connections together and choosing their settings, with a little hand-written code. Companies use it when they need many small internal apps and do not have enough developers to write them all. A no-code platform is the same idea with no code at all, for people who are not programmers.
What does an app on such a platform look like? Typically, it is a form, a list, a few rules and an approval. An expense claim. A request for a new laptop. A checklist for a site inspection. Each one is simple. But a large company needs hundreds of them, and writing each one by hand takes a developer weeks.
Consider a cooperative bank in Nashik with 60 branches. Its audit team visits every branch each quarter, and fills in a 40-point checklist on paper. The IT team is asked to turn this into an app. On a low-code platform, a developer drags a form onto a page and adds the 40 questions, with yes-or-no answers and space for photos. She connects the form to the bank's list of branches through an API, so the auditor picks the branch from a list. She adds a rule: if any answer is "no", the app creates a task for the branch manager, with a deadline of 7 days. She adds an approval step for the regional head. The answers are stored in a database, and the app works on phones and laptops.
Where code is needed, it can be added. For example, she writes 15 lines to calculate each branch's score from its answers. Two people build the whole app in three weeks. A hand-coded app would have taken about four months.
Low-code platforms are sold at different levels. Large-company platforms run case management for banks, insurers and governments: long processes such as a loan application, from the first form to the decision. The page on business process management (BPM) and case management explains this. Platforms for developers, some of them open source, can be installed on the company's own servers, so that the data never leaves its control. No-code platforms let a non-programmer, such as a store manager, build a simple app from forms and rules on their own.
What are the risks? An app built on a platform runs only on that platform. Moving it elsewhere later usually means rebuilding it. And when every department builds its own apps, the IT team must keep a list of them, and control who can see which data.
Low-code apps reach other systems through the company's API gateway or through an integration platform (iPaaS). They can read and write records in the company's ERP. A newer neighbour is the AI app builder, which writes a whole app, including all its code, from a plain-language description. A low-code platform keeps the app as configured blocks that the company's own staff can see and change.