“You can build anything with no-code,” claims almost any no-code company you ever come across. Indeed, building “anything” is a large plus for citizen developers who might not even grasp the scale of possibilities of no-code. But, don’t worry, dear citizen developers, we have your back. Especially me, Mariam, the farthest person from Tech and web app building who started working as Softr’s content marketer around 7 months ago. If I’ve managed to publish this article to our no-code blog, understand what no-code tools are all about, even build a few templates, so can you. But what is a no-code startup?
No-code startups are businesses that have been made built and are being managed without the founders writing a single line of code. Some examples of successful no-code startups include:
- Qoins
- Comet
- Makerpad
- Mmirror.io
- Kollecto
So without further ado, let’s open the brackets of what this “anything” presents and let us introduce 12 no-code startup ideas that can become yours and help you conquer the world.
Table of Contents
- E-learning community
- Marketplace
- Directory/listing site
- Online Courses
- E-commerce
- Client portals
- Freelancing network
- Job Board
- microSaaS
- Subscription business
- Health and fitness platform
- Crowdfunding site
1. E-learning community
E-learning communities have been around for a while now. But last year, with Covid-19 being a part of our daily lives, there was a strong need for maintaining a small part of our outdoor lives indoors. So e-learning communities started to get a blast with more users enrolling in their courses and joining their communities.
Among those e-learning communities is Makerpad. Makerpad is a niche e-learning community people rely on to learn the essence of building no-code apps, websites, and much more.
E-learning heroes is also an interesting use case. It’s the number one community for course creators. The engaged and friendly community offers guidance for when you’re planning your next project. They even organize offline and online events on learning design, studio software, and much more.
Another online community website worthy of your attention is 100DaysofNoCode built by Max Haining. Founded only last year, the niche community already has 250+ paying members, 500+ projects built and launched, 5000+ connections formed, and more. If you want to launch an e-learning initiative similar to 100DaysofNoCode, check out Softr's e-learning template.
2. Marketplace
Marketplaces are known to be a wide range of SaaS platforms that dominate the market with their popularity and scalability.
Marketplaces stand as a link between products and their potential buyers. The most popular marketplaces are known to be Amazon, eBay, Craigslist, and much more.
There are two types of marketplaces: service and product marketplaces.
Service marketplaces
A service marketplace is a website or app for buying and selling services. Popular examples are Fiverr, Upwork, and Thumbtack. Service marketplaces can be easily built with no-code. A proof of this are no-code service marketplaces Plato, Nanny Networks, and ASAP Living.
Product Marketplaces
A product marketplace is one where the sellers or vendors sell physical or virtual products. Examples of product marketplaces are Rakuten, Etsy, Runnics.
Users love building marketplaces with Softr. There are also other tools perfect for building marketplaces like Bubble, Adalo, and Webflow.
One of the Softr marketplaces we are proud of perfectly shows how every idea can become a marketplace thanks to no-code. The marketplace is Boats By Owners. It connects boat owners with boat buyers. Built by Marco Mendes, the niche marketplace was chosen as the product of the month by Aron Korenblit, the founder of Automate All The Things.
Makerpad has a great case study on the building process of Boat by Owners we highly recommend you take a look.
3. Directory/listing site
Another very popular use case with no-code startups is directories. Directory listings are a great no-code business idea as they are one of the easiest to build, and people love quick and easy access to the information and products they need.
You can build any directory you think people will need strong enough to acquire access to it. A must-have for paid directories is creating a website with member-only features and pricing plan options fittable into your business.
An exceptional directory website example is Nomad List. If you have a similar no-code business idea in mind, check out Makerpad’s tutorial where they break down how you can build a Nomad List clone with Webflow.
To better understand what directories you can build with no-code, take a look at White Label Tools or Listr. Both web apps are built with no-code tools and have already managed to find their potential customers.
But if you want an easier start, we recommend working with NoCode HQ’s Directory/Listings template built with Bubble, or Zeroqode’s Listy.
No-code tools like Simplescraper, Parsehub can help boost the building process.
4. Online Courses
Online courses are a part of Elearning communities but they can be a no-code startup option separately.
One of the best learning platforms is hyper popular Coursera which saw a 450% growth in users in 2020. So, skipping this no-code business idea would be a shame.
You can build platforms like Coursera, Udemy, or Sololearn where people can publish their courses, get paid, communicate with their students.
There are many no-code tools you can go for but we recommend going for Bubble or Webflow. Alternatively, if you're considering Bubble alternatives, check out the less popular but equally good BuilderEngine.
There is also an interesting Youtube tutorial on how you can build an Udemy mock-up using Bubble.
5. E-commerce
No-code eCommerce platforms are known to be among the most scalable and profitable ones. Our and thousands of others’ favorite no-code tool to build no-code eCommerce web apps is Shopify.
Shopify is a free website-building tool, helps you to build your business online, find a way to sell your products, and manage your store and revenue without typing a single line of code.
If you’re still doubting, take a look at these 50 eCommerce platforms, all built with Shopify.
If Shopify is not your cup of tea, there are other no-code tools you could use to build your eCommerce startups such as Appy Pie, Big Commerce, Wix, Swell, or Conclusion.
6. Client portals
Client portals are the best among B2B and B2C platforms for many reasons. Mostly for their top-notch security, personalization, convenience, and more.
Client portals are a very popular no-code startup option. We highly recommend going with no-code client portals as there is not too much hustle and things to worry about as no-code tools take care of the security and personalization of your portals. There are also benefits such as the cut of expenses and energy that help website organize, building, developers focus on their main tasks without having additional bargains on their way.
An incredible example of what client portals you can build is Untapped Capital, Yohei Nakajima, the general partner at Untapped, mentioned that they track thousands of businesses and required a system for their investors to monitor startups as part of the fund's outbound process. The choice landed at no-code, specifically at Airtable and Softr.
To learn more about how Yohei and his team managed to build such a scalable and profitable client portal, check out the tutorial below by Aron of AATT and Yohei himself.
Other no-code tools for building client portals include Bubble, Wix, and Pory.
7. Freelancing network
Freelance networks like Fiverr, Upwork have proven themselves as solid business options. These B2B marketplaces managed to bring revenue not only to their founders but also to the freelancers who chose to work in their platforms.
Building a no-code freelancing platform might not be the easiest thing to do, but it’s 100% possible. One of our favorite no-code tools, Zeroqode, has come up with a complex and a little costly template, Uplance, which will be perfect for building a great functioning and beautiful freelancing platform.
8. Job board
Job boards are also known to be one of the easily built no-code startups that also bring quite the revenue. All you gotta do is have an idea, find your tool, integrate a payment gateway for companies to add their jobs to your board and for employees to have their accounts, add a resume. Some job boards even charge employers for every candidate they interview.
Seems like a lot of work right? Not exactly. Let’s see how you can create a job board similar to Indeed, Monster, or ZipRecruiter.
- Create a base of the job board in Airtable.
- Create a homepage and integrate your Airtable base to tools like Softr, Bubble.
- Create a Stripe account and integrate the payment gateway with your web app.
- From here, it’s all subjective and optional as you can choose to style and change your job portals to your preference.
9. microSaaS
Tyler Tringas of Storemapper defined microSaaS platforms as. “A SaaS business targeting a niche market, run by one person or a small team, with small costs, a narrow focus, a small but dedicated user base, and no outside funding.
No-code mircoSaaS startups have two essential parts needed to be covered to have a scalable no-code startup: SAAS categories and a niche market.
SaaS categories are classified into three sorts. The three types of SaaS categories are known to be systems of records (a customer keeps track of everything and accesses this information as one source of truth), of engagement (a customer uses these platforms to help with their business tasks), and of decisions (a customer uses to make a decision informed by data, history, and records of information).
The niche market of microSaaS companies is a wide range of business ideas that fit your goals and the customers you want to attract.
LetterHunt is an example of a microSaaS, a niche market of which are newsletters. LetterHunt is a directory that helps you discover, categorize and reach out to your preferred newsletters.
Incomee is another no-code microSaaS example that is used by freelancers who seek simple tools to manage their cash flow and business.
If you decide to build a microSaaS no-code startup, you can use tools like Bubble, Webflow.
Since microSaaS is a little complex no-code business model, we’ve found the perfect tutorial for you that showcases how you can build microSaaS platforms with several no-code tools.
10. Subscription business
People love subscription businesses since they make their lives easier and keep them satisfied by delivering their beloved products to their doors on a monthly/yearly basis. That’s why we believe a subscription business is a phenomenal no-code startup idea.
Zapier partnership manager, Briana, agrees with us as her coffee subscription startup has managed to create buzz around itself.
Briana used Softr to build the website, Stripe as payment gateway, Airtable for the marketplace, and Zapier to push collected emails to a drip sequence in ActiveCampaign.
Learn more, by checking out Makerpad’s case study on Briana’s no-code startup.
11. Health and fitness platform
People are obsessed with their health and maintaining their psychics. That’s why it’s high time for no-code platforms to conquer the health and fitness field.
No-code tools like Hype-burst will help you build fully functioning web and mobile apps for your customers.
12. Crowdfunding site
Our last tech startup idea is building a crowdfunding web app. Crowdfunding is a popular business idea since the global value of the market was $10.2 billion in 2018, and it is estimated to triple by 2025.
Kickstarter is one of the most popular crowdfunding platforms in the world and NoCode.Tech has a guide on how to clone the platform and kickstart your journey.
About Softr
Softr is an easy-to-use no-code platform that turns Airtable bases into powerful web apps and client portals. Softr offers a way for you to authenticate your end-users, control access to your content and data based on conditional rules like roles, logged-in status, subscription plans etc. If you're using Airtable as a product catalog you can use a Softr template to build your e-commerce website. Or maybe you'd like to build a custom website for your travel journal, there's a template for that too!
