Interest in ‘no-code’ has skyrocketed since 2020, but why now?

A quick search on Google Trends tells us that the ‘No-Code Development Platform’ topic has been experiencing an upswing in worldwide interest since the end of 2019. The same applies to ‘Low-Code Development Platform’… but why now, and what do these terms actually mean?

No-code before no-code
First of all, the practical concepts of ‘no-code’ and ‘low-code’ aren’t entirely new. The Boomers, Gen-Xers and Millennials among us likely remember iterations of it from our years tinkering with early desktop computers in the 90s and 2000s. For me, it was Microsoft Frontpage — a web editing platform that allowed me to build websites despite being a pre-teen with only a basic grasp of HTML. For a close friend of mine, it was Dreamweaver. Instead of no-code, you might have heard them called WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get).

The rise of Squarespace
Speaking of web development, in more recent years we have seen the likes of Squarespace achieve unicorn status and list on the NYSE. Despite some shaky share price performance in recent months, Squarespace’s journey is a good case study on the growing relevance of no-code. Their target market is SMEs who need a website but don’t have the four-to-five-figure budget to hire a web design and development team. Consequentially, they claim to have a total addressable market of 800 million users worldwide. That’s an ambitious 10% of the global population. Since Squarespace was founded in 2004, the Crunchbase list of no-code companies founded has doubled every 3–4 years.

No-code and PropTech
No-code isn’t limited to web design. An increasing number of no-code platforms are being offered across the PropTech ecosystem including workplace experience, booking management, property management, smart buildings, sales management, virtual reality and site management. This enables real estate professionals with little-to-no programming experience to customise and develop PropTech solutions unique to their specific project or organisation. One example is Lane, a Canadian workplace experience app founded in 2014. Their client list boasts real estate MNCs such as JLL, CBRE and Brookfield. For Lane, no-code means allowing global organisations to customise their platform for specific buildings — offering tenants a bespoke experience of the technology. They have raised $32 million to date. Beyond Lane and their contemporaries, PropTech is also beginning to see the integration no-code and 3rd generation artificial intelligence.

Shortage of coders
The rise of no-code becomes clearer when we take into account what’s happening in the job market. According to various sources, IT jobs are repeatedly reported as being among the highest paying. Of the 670,340 jobs advertised in the UK via LinkedIn in late-September, 181,817 were categorised as ‘information technology’ and 82,438 contained the word ‘software’. A similar dynamic is at play in the EU, where 702,750 of the 2.9 million listed jobs were categorised as ‘information technology’ and 245,028 contained the word ‘software’. The UKVI’s ‘shortage occupations list’ identifies four categories of IT professionals needed across each of the devolved nations. These include:

- IT business analysts, architects and systems designers
- Programmers and software development professionals
- Web design and development professionals
- Cyber security specialists

Where to from here?
There isn’t enough time or budget to train a large enough proportion of the real estate industry in the various coding languages required to create customised tech solutions. Because of this, PropTech should expect to see much more from no-code for the foreseeable future. UX/UI will play a major role in the uptake of such innovations, as will compatibilities with workflows and other platforms. In other words, for a no-code product to work, it’s going to have to be:

1. So easy to use that it overcomes any resistance from end users (who are usually several degrees of separation from decision makers)
2. So efficient that it supplants the in-use approach to whatever problem the innovation aims to solve

At Pi Labs, we see no-code as one of the more promising approaches to closing the real estate innovation gap. By enabling capable but non-technical real estate professionals the opportunity to design and operate their firm’s new technical solutions, we accelerate innovation adoption and the likelihood of successful product implementation. For these reasons, we’re always on the lookout for no-code PropTech products that offer an easy-to-use and scalable solution to one or more of real estate’s many enduring challenges.

For more updates from the team and for a look into life at Pi Labs, follow us on Instagram and subscribe to our monthly newsletter.