I found Budibase cumbersome to use. It looks sleek, but the overall usability is worse.
To delete a component you have to find it in the component list, open a hamburger menu and delete. This despite having a panel with component details open with plenty of screen real estate for action buttons.
The API I use outputs data in a nested json ("results: ..."). As such Budi parsed everything into a single column. There was no clear way around it. Automations maybe?
In general there was very little use of the screen with most things being empty. I guess it is earlier in development than Appsmith. I do like the aesthetics and SSO support though. It was also much easier than Appsmith to install self-hosted. I'll keep following the project.
This is fantastic feedback, thank you very much for taking the time to write this up.
We totally agree with the points you have raised - in fact we are in the process of addressing the component deletion problem; providing the ability for users to delete components with the keyboard or use an action bar that will be shown in the preview.
As for mapping data - this is something that is requested a lot and as such is high priority. We will be working on this in the coming weeks, providing full JS support and transformation logic for any source of data that you fetch from your Budibase applications.
Great to hear you had a good experience using Budibase self hosted. We are constantly trying to make the Budibase setup process easier, both through our self hosting setup CLI and through standard deployment configurations that developers are used to - such as docker compose and helm charts for kubernetes. Which method did you use?
Please do continue to follow Budibase - We are confident that you will love the features we planned on our roadmap for the next few months!
Those changes sound great! I'll definitely keep following you.
I use docker compose.
Your product is solving a very real problem that I think is under served. I developed a lot of back office tools in my old job. It was very easy to find good ideas for tools that would improve the workflow and efficiency of our sales, marketing and accounting departments.
I found that rapid prototyping and quick iterations worked great for finding good solutions for non-technical stakeholders. It made it possible to give them something concrete to "touch and feel" after every meeting. It spurred a lot of engagement.
Low-code tools like yours will really aid this kind of process, and I look forward to seeing where you'll go.
I'm a co-founder of Appsmith. Thanks for trying us out.
Would love to know the problems you ran into while self-hosting? We are replacing the install script with a docker compose, so errors should reduce. My email is abhishek@ if you need help.
The port used by the docker container could not be setup during installation. Letting the setup fail and then edit the intermediates (docker-compose.yaml) worked fine but it was not elegant compared to Budibase's installation procedure. It's an issue resolved in 5 minutes though so far from a deal breaker, and with the changed install script it should be gone.
You've made a pretty great product and I look forward to following your journey. We're already using it in production.
