7 reasons low-code and no-code tools fail to deliver

The potential benefits of low-code and no-code development tools include faster application development, lower expenses, and more agility. The technology is not suited to every scenario, however, and in some cases, low- and no-code solutions could be a barrier to productivity.

Research firm Grand View Research predicts the global low-code development platform market will expand at a compound annual growth rate of about 23 percent from 2023 to 2030. The report attributes this growth to the increasing focus on digital transformation and automating business operations. It may also be driven by the demand for quick solutions and more streamlined business processes.

While the promise of easier development is tempting, organizations must be prepared to navigate the potential pitfalls of low-code and no-code tools and platforms. We asked tech leaders what to watch out for when migrating to these solutions. Here’s what they told us.

7 reasons low-code implementations fail

1. Losing depth and flexibility
2. Over-simplified solutions
3. Failure to scale
4. Unreliable LLMs
5. Security risks
6. Vendor lock-in
7. Underestimating the technology

Losing depth and flexibility

A core use case for low-code and no-code tools is enabling unskilled users to create software. This not only widens the pool of individuals who create software but may have financial benefits for organizations seeking to hire fewer developers. But it’s important for organizations adopting low-code and no-code solutions to be prepared to lose some flexibility in the process.

“Low code/no code platforms typically provide a set of predefined templates and components that make it easier for business users to develop simple apps quickly,” says Clayton Davis, senior director of cloud-native development at cloud services provider Caylent. “However, these templates often lack the flexibility and depth needed to create truly customized, purpose-built solutions that resonate with end users,” Davis says.

While low-code and no-code tools and platforms can suffice for internal business solutions or simple tasks, “they do not meet the standards required for customer-facing applications, where user experience is critical to adoption and satisfaction,” he says.

Low-code and no-code tools can also be restrictive for developers needing more control over an application’s architecture. Arsalan Zafar, co-founder and CTO of Deep Render, a developer of video compression technology, says a possible solution is to “use low-code platforms with extensibility options or leverage APIs to integrate custom features when necessary.”

Over-simplified solutions

Over-simplification is a related challenge, where business users might create applications that don’t fully address the nuances of a problem, Zafar says.

His organization faced such a challenge while trying to build an application for comparing video codecs. “Initially, the no-code platform allowed us to quickly prototype and deploy a basic version of the application, which was a huge time-saver compared to starting from scratch with traditional development methods,” he says. However, as development progressed, the team ran into major hurdles.

“When it came to incorporating custom features that would set our product apart in the market, we found the platform’s limitations became more apparent,” Zafar says. “Integrating more advanced features, like multi-layered video comparison metrics or AI-driven enhancements, became a tedious and time-consuming process.”

The lack of support for custom integrations forced the organization to spend extra time working around the platform’s constraints, which hindered its ability to deliver tailored solutions. “This experience showed us the trade-off between the speed and convenience of no-code tools for quickly building something and the lack of flexibility when it comes to scaling up a product for more complex, enterprise-level needs,” Zafar says.

Failure to scale

“Low-code and no-code are absolutely amazing for prototyping or testing out MVPs—minimum viable products—but fail extremely short for scaling,” says Kushank Aggarwal, a software engineer and founder of DigitalSamaritan, a platform sharing artificial intelligence (AI) tutorials and tools.

“For example, when we came up with the idea for [AI tool] Prompt Genie, we went from idea to launch to first paying customer in just four days, using a no-code approach,” Aggarwal says. “But once we got the product to a market fit, we ran into major challenges in scaling.”

The low-code, no-code platform the company used wasn’t designed to handle a growing user base, “so it required a complete rebuild and migration of all the users, which was nothing short of tricky,” Aggarwal says. “You can run into issues with data loss, downtime, and broken workflows, among others. Depending on how validated your idea is, you can skip low-code and no-code and build things for scalability from scratch.”

While suitable for smaller, less complex applications, “these platforms may struggle to meet the demands of large-scale enterprise applications,” Zafar says. Evaluate the long-term viability of the platform before using it in mission-critical systems.”

Unreliable LLMs

Most low- or no-code development today is done through the use of large language models (LLMs), and this can be costly for organizations, says Devansh Agarwal, senior machine learning engineer at Amazon Web Services.

LLMs “are really good at predicting what would be the next word” or token, Agarwal says. “Based on this, they are able to generate sentences and code.” However, LLMs do not reason like human beings do, he says. “[Software product] requirements are very complex and ever-evolving. To get a decent output from an LLM, we need to try multiple prompts.” Doing so can be costly, he says.

It’s difficult to provide all the product requirement information to an LLM and expect it to generate a solution, as the product requirements are changing all the time,” Agarwal says. “If you ever try to make ChatGPT write code and if it makes a mistake, then you ask it to correct it, it will generate an entirely new solution,” he says. “Imagine the chaos it will cause when product requirements change.”

Security risks

“As a CIO, you want to make sure the technology you’re providing to your organization is both safe and useful,” says Jon Kennedy, CIO of Quickbase, a provider of project management software. “Unfortunately, not all no-code or low-code platforms are built with a framework that promotes security and governance.”

For example, highly regulated industries such as healthcare have strict requirements, which not all platforms are designed to operate in or support, Kennedy says.

“When a no-code platform is deployed throughout an organization, or open to outside users, it may be prudent to restrict access and controls,” he says. “Quickbase has so many of our customers with countless tools and vendors to manage and integrate with, and they need to securely make all this information and data accessible when and where it’s needed.”

A major security risk emerges when a large number of websites are created using a no-code tool that has even a small security flaw in the code. “It would leave all these websites and their millions of users vulnerable,” Agarwal says. “This is terrifying, as the people who use these no-code tools won’t know how to fix these risks, so [they] will remain in the public ___domain for a long time.”

As the adoption of low- and no-code tools increases, the risk of this kind of major breakdown also increases exponentially. A good practice is to “always keep a human in the driver’s seat and keep the tools as just a helping agent,” Agarwal says. “You should have at least one expert on your team that could vet anything that is being created by these tools.”

Vendor lock-in

Many low-code or no-code platforms work as closed ecosystems, so it can be difficult to switch providers, Aggarwal says. “This kind of dependency might lead to higher costs, will limit flexibility, and there’s always the risk of a platform shutting down a feature you need,” Aggarwal says.

“If you have to switch platforms, that is a nightmare,” says Siri Varma Vegiraju, security tech lead at Microsoft. “Because you are locked into that platform, switching platforms requires understanding the new one from scratch,” he says. Switching platforms means re-building everything from scratch, he says, “whereas, with code, you just have to change some infrastructure components and dependencies.”

Underestimating the technology

While most experts spoke about low-code’s technical shortcomings, underestimating the potential of the tools is also an issue, says Alan Jacobson, chief data and analytics officer at Alteryx.

“For some, this can be tied to a bias based on the solution’s name and ability to open access to non-technical workers,” Jacobson says. “This bias unfortunately leads to an incorrect assumption that these solutions are less powerful or less sophisticated.”

Organizations can address this misconception by ensuring their teams are learning and understanding the full capabilities of the tools to unlock their true value, realize their full benefits, and empower end users, Jacobson says.