Think fast
Thoughts and ideas on how to build tools, automate workflows and speed-up the workplace.
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
10 Microsoft Access Alternatives for 2025
For a lot of businesses, finding a suitable Microsoft Access alternative for their needs is becoming pretty urgent. See, Access has been rumored to be reaching its end-of-life for a few years now - although Microsoft hasn’t unveiled any formal plans for a retirement party. Even so, in 2023, Access feels like a bit of a product of a bygone era. Not to be outwardly critical, but in the age of cloud computing, low-code development, DBaaS tools, and even AI, it’s tough for legacy platforms to keep up with the needs of modern businesses.
Ronan McQuillan
Apr 20, 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
5 best open source low-code platforms (tried and tested)
Low-code and no-code are the latest phenomena to take over our strategy meetings and development chats. These solutions are not new, but the emergence of new technologies and a shift in how we work has accelerated their need within the workplace. The statistics below provide an overview of the scale of the low code market: Forrester states that as much as, 75% of application development uses low-code platforms. Gartner places worldwide low-code market growth at 23% in 2021 According to the market research study published by P&S Intelligence, the global low code market will witness a 31.
Joe Johnston
Apr 5, 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 Budibase 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