5 Appsmith alternatives to rapidly scale your internal tooling in 2024

If you are an Appsmith user or prospect who is excited about the capabilities of an internal tooling platform, but are dissatisfied with Appsmith's functionality or performance limitations - then this article is for you.

‍

We’ve thoroughly evaluated the top alternatives to Appsmith for 2024 by performing in-depth customer interviews and research, focusing on key decision criteria commonly used by enterprises such as product functionality, generative AI capabilities, extensibility with code, enterprise-readiness, pricing, maintenance costs, security, and customer support.

5 best Appsmith alternatives & competitors in 2024

The market for internal tooling platforms is rapidly evolving, with vendors constantly advancing their application builders as well as introducing new features around automated workflows, AI, extensibility, and more. 

‍

In our analysis of the market, these platforms stood out as the 5 best Appsmith alternatives in 2024:

1. Superblocks - Best enterprise-grade solution to build any internal app or automated workflow
2. Retool - Good for teams needing basic business logic and comfortable with full on-prem deployments
3. UI Bakery - Good for smaller teams 
4. DronaHQ - Good for organizations on a tight budget 
5. Budibase - Good for companies looking for an open-source no-code development platform
6. ‍

What is Appsmith?

Appsmith, founded in 2019 and headquartered in India, is an open-source low-code platform that enables developers to create internal dashboards and applications. Appsmith offers a library of drag-and-drop components for building user interfaces and integrates with diverse data sources including databases, APIs, and third-party services.

Appsmith strengths

• Component library: Appsmith has an extensive component library, allowing developers to easily craft UIs using drag-and-drop.
• Frontend JavaScript: Developers can write JS on the frontend in Appsmith for dynamic behavior and data manipulation. 
• Integration library: Appsmith integrates with various tools and software, including databases and APIs, aiming to simplify the process of connecting businesses with their data sources.
• Open-source codebase: Developers have full access to review and contribute to Appsmith's entire codebase, ensuring transparency and trust. 
• Active community collaboration: Due to its open-source nature, Appsmith features a vibrant community of developers who benefit from mutual support, shared contributions, and knowledge exchange.
• Customizable component styling: Developers using Appsmith have the flexibility to change the appearance of components using various styling properties for a look and feel tailored to their organizations’ bespoke needs.
• User-centric pricing: Appsmith adopts a usage-based pricing model tied to end-users of its applications. This approach is intended to allow businesses to pay only for actual usage without additional costs for developers who create applications within the platform.

Appsmith limitations

Appsmith caters to organizations seeking a low-code solution, particularly those with a strong preference for open-source software. However, businesses considering Appsmith should be prepared to compromise on performance, extensibility, and support compared to other solutions in the market. When considering Appsmith, it's essential to take into account the following key limitations:

• Lackluster performance: In Appsmith, data processing and business logic are coded in JavaScript, running directly in the browser. This architecture confines performance to browser memory and CPU, leading to suboptimal performance when scaling.
• Limited extensibility with code: Appsmith solely supports client-side JavaScript, restricting developers' capability to extend the platform with custom logic and functionalities beyond JavaScript. In addition, Appsmith's offering of custom components is confined to an iframe widget, rendering only raw, sandboxed HTML.
• Absence of workflows & scheduled jobs: Appsmith lacks a built-in workflow feature, requiring businesses to engage with another vendor to manage programmatic server-side workflows.
• Legacy on-premise deployment for self-hosting: Keeping sensitive data in your VPC with Appsmith requires installing the entire platform on-premises. This deployment method results in elevated ownership expenses, encompassing dedicated infrastructure, DevOps resources, and downtime for upgrades.
• No US-based support: Appsmith is based in India and does not have US-based support, which is crucial to US-based enterprises.

‍

The 5 Best Appsmith Alternatives in 2024

In 2024, among several alternatives to Appsmith, Superblocks stands out as the premier choice, surpassing rival vendors with its extensive feature set, code extensibility, self-hosted agent architecture, enterprise-readiness, scalability, and innovative AI capabilities. Retool, UI Bakery, DronaHQ, and Budibase are also alternatives to Appsmith which may be suitable for certain businesses, each with its own advantages and drawbacks.

‍

For a feature-by-feature comparison of each vendor, see the matrix below.

1. Superblocks

Superblocks, the #1 Appsmith alternative, is an enterprise-grade low-code platform for building custom internal applications, automated workflows, and scheduled jobs effortlessly. Developers have the power to infinitely extend Superblocks with code, expedite development through an AI Copilot, self-host with ease, and deploy high-performing applications at scale. 

Conclusion: Superblocks is the #1 alternative to Appsmith and remains the only vendor offering a fully-featured low-code internal tooling platform without limits. Notable benefits of Superblocks compared to Appsmith include:

• Complete extensibility with code: Superblocks supports React, JS, Node, & Python and provides full extensibility with React. Appsmith’s custom components rely on a single HTML file, with web-based imports limited to an iframe.
• Scalable architecture and better performance: Application front-ends in Superblocks are multi-threaded for smooth UI rendering, while back-end queries scale elastically with on-demand cloud compute. Appsmith JS queries are executed in the browser, and are limited by browser CPU & memory, resulting in high latency for large apps.
• Drastically less overhead when self-hosting: Superblocks offers a lightweight on-premise Agent, that is simple to deploy and provides access to new features instantly from the cloud. Self-hosted Appsmith offers legacy on-premise deployment, requiring dedicated infrastructure and DevOps upgrades with required downtime to address bug fixes or new features.
• Production monitoring & observability: Superblocks integrates natively with observability providers including Datadog, Splunk, and New Relic, to provide visibility into metrics, traces, and logs from internal tools within users’ preferred provider. Appsmith does not have native observability integrations, leaving users blind when errors arise.
• Support for real-time streaming apps: Superblocks has native integrations with streaming platforms like Kafka, Kinesis, Confluent, OpenAI, making it easy to build apps for real-time fraud alerting, live gameplay dashboards, best-in-class AI chatbots, and more. Appsmith lacks support for streaming, preventing organizations from utilizing real-time insights.
• Best-in-class customer support: Superblocks offers exceptional support across all tiers - customers consistently highlight responsiveness and dedication to customer satisfaction in G2 testimonials. Appsmith is based in India and does not offer US-based support - often critical to US-based enterprises.

2. Retool

Retool was founded in 2017 and is headquartered in San Francisco. Retool offers products to build internal web apps, automated workflows, and native mobile applications. Retool also supports embedding web apps into external websites, as well as a hosted PostgreSQL database.

Conclusion: Retool’s offering to build web apps is competitive with Appsmith’s, and its workflow features, AI capabilities, and US-based team may make it preferable for US-based enterprises. However, like Appsmith, Retool struggles with performance issues from browser-based execution as well as limited extensibility in code, posing roadblocks to developers. Additionally, the legacy on-premise deployment model when self-hosting Retool may make it prohibitively expensive to own and operate. Budibase emerges as an alternative to Appsmith, particularly for organizations that prefer open source but are also seeking a stronger out-of-the-box and no-code approach. It offers an extensive component library and templates that let users get started right away.

3. UI Bakery

UI Bakery was founded in 2018 and is headquartered in Lithuania. UI Bakery secures the third position. Besides an application builder, UI Bakery offers comprehensive support for workflows and scheduled jobs. With its backing for multi-step application APIs, businesses can develop intricate business logic seamlessly. The UI Bakery team, consisting of approximately 10 employees, is based out of Lithuania.

Conclusion: UI Bakery is a basic low-code solution with strengths in cost, automated workflows, multi-step APIs, and Python support for enhanced flexibility. However, it faces limitations such as no support for real-time data streaming, reliance on a less flexible legacy on-premise deployment model, limited resources for enterprise-level support, and lack of US-based customer service. These factors position UI Bakery as a feasible option for certain scenarios, while also presenting challenges for larger, more dynamic enterprise environments.

‍4. DronaHQ

DronaHQ was founded in 2007 and is headquartered in India. Claiming the fourth position, DronaHQ offers a specialized set of features at a lower price point. DronaHQ offers an application solution with a variety of built-in components, along with a workflow and scheduled job builder. Notably, DronaHQ's pricing structure adopts a flat-rate model, treating developers and end-users alike.

Conclusion: DronaHQ offers an alternative internal tooling platform with an app builder, automated workflows, and scheduled jobs support. However, it's not as feature-rich as Appsmith and is seen as less user-friendly. While its pricing doesn't differentiate between developers and end-users, DronaHQ's flat per-user cost makes it a budget-friendly option for organizations with more developers than end-users.

Conclusion: Budibase emerges as an alternative to Appsmith, particularly for organizations that prefer open source but are also seeking a stronger out-of-the-box and no-code approach. It offers an extensive component library and templates that let users get started right away.

Feature Breakdown by Low-Code Vendor

Superblocks - The #1 Appsmith Alternative

Superblocks is the top alternative to Appsmith, providing the only fully-featured low-code internal tooling platform without limitations. Unlike Appsmith, Superblocks enables businesses to enhance tools with custom code, self-host efficiently, build real-time streaming apps, and deliver high-performance apps at scale – all while ensuring cost-effective scalability across the organization. Start your app development journey with Superblocks today!