Every PM should propose no-code solutions, even with an engineering team. Here's when.

11 tools to use in 11 different situations

Did you know you every product manager SHOULD propose as much low and no-code stuff even if they have a complete software engineering team working alongside? Here are 2 reasons why:

 1. Your engineering and design teams are really expensive so any shortcuts saves money
 2. Your teams should focus on core stuff, not “software commodity” that has (better) been built by others

Having an API-first approach at solving your problems makes a huge difference, especially if you have a small team. Here’s a number of situations you will probably face when building a product, that you should resort to No/low code tech to solve it, even with an engineering in-house:

 1. Build your onboarding flows either directly on Typeform or use their API.

 2. Build any payments, tiers or subscriptions infra using Stripe Connect or their API.

 3. Build your back office, Admin or Ops Team tool using Retool and connect to your own API.

 4. Build e-mail flows using Intuit Mailchimp API and add template inside using drag-and-drop and some custom schema.

 5. Build landing pages using Webflow and connect your API to it. Great way to empower marketing teams and free your engineering teams.

 6. Automate manual processes using Zapier. Need a manual action: connect Zapier with your API and Slack or Microsoft Teams.

 7. Build design assets using Canva or even use Stable Diffusion to generate free original imagery.

 8. Write copy with Copy.ai. You can link an API if you have intensive copy needs or specific features that require depth.

 9. Show data dashboards on your product using Metabase embed API instead of custom building visualisations.

 10. Build feature flagging using LaunchDarkly instead of building infrastructure from scratch.

 11. Implement A/B testing infra with Google Optimise instead of building yourself. Connect to your API and Webflow for max testing.

You shouldn’t build any of these ☝️ yourself. Even if they have a pricing tier, it will cost far less than the engineering/ design price, AND they are better than whatever you’ll build. Only go bespoke if it’s core to your value prop OR if you scaled (and proved) enough to be too expensive to integrate. But that is a good problem to have 🙂