Zapier Interfaces is a relatively new addition to the Zapier suite of apps. It helps extend Zapier’s popular workflow automation capabilities into the realm of no-code app development.

You can use Zapier Interfaces to build custom front-end interfaces, such as client portals, and dashboards that integrate seamlessly with Zapier's automation tools.

In this review we’ll look at the platform’s features, interface and ease of use, integration and extensibility, deployment and maintenance, pricing and documentation, and how it stacks up against its peers.

Zapier Interfaces: Features

Zapier Interfaces provides a visual, drag-and-drop interface builder that you can use to create layouts, and add all kinds of components, without writing code.

You can throw in components such as forms, Kanban boards, link cards, AI prompts, chatbots, and more into your apps. Each of these components can be easily customized, and you can also adjust the layout, colours, and fonts to align the look and feel of your apps to your brand.

The platform also offers pre-built templates that cater to several common business use cases. You can start with these templates, and then customize them as per your needs to help save time. There are templates that’ll help collect customer feedback, capture leads, build client portals, onboard new employees, and more.

The core strength of the platform lies in its seamless integration with existing Zapier Zaps. You can easily use Interfaces to connect the various components to Zap triggers and actions, and create automated workflows to power your custom apps.

Zapier Interfaces also integrates with Zapier Tables to help manage and display data. For instance, you can use the platform to create a form to capture customer information, which upon submission triggers a zap to create a new record in a Zapier Table to store the data.

Also, apps created with Zapier Interfaces are responsive, and work across various screen sizes whether viewed on desktops, tablets, or smartphones.

Zapier Interfaces: Interface and Ease of Use

Zapier Interfaces has an intuitive interface that’s easy to get started with.

There are two broad categories of interfaces you can create with the platform. Forms capture information, and Customer Portals, which can be public, or require login. You also have the option to start with a template, or from scratch.

If you start from scratch, the platforms will ask you to select a component to build your first page.

Remember, you can have multiple components on a single page. Besides components that gather or display information, you can also add decorative components, such as media, and dividers to the pages.

Components in a page are displayed on the left-side of the platform’s builder. You can click on a component to edit it in the right-hand pane.

Depending on the tye of component, it’ll have various settings for you to adjust and tweak, such as its appearance and behavior. For instance in the Text component you can use markdown to format the text, adjust the component’s width, and change alignment of both the text, as well as the component itself.

Interactive components, such as Forms, give you more customization options, which will vary depending on the type you use. These are usually divided into three tabs. If you add a Form component, you can add and remove fields from the Content tab.

You can also point the form to an existing table, or create a new one from under the Data tab. Then there’s the Actions tab under which you define the action that takes place when something happens on the component.

For instance, in the Form component, an action can be triggered when the user hits the submit button, such as displaying a confirmation message that the form has been submitted. This is also where you create a Zap, or point to an existing one, to automate workflows.

Every page also has a Page Options button on the top that you can use to alter the page’s name, meta title, and even the URL.

In the left sidebar of the builder, you get more options to further personalize and manage different aspects of your interface, such as its theming, and branding, and more.

Zapier Interfaces: Integration and Extensibility

A standout feature of Zapier Interfaces is its deep integration with Zapier's extensive ecosystem, which supports thousands of popular apps. This integration allows you to build apps that interact with a wide range of services, including CRM systems, marketing automation platforms, and productivity tools.

You can also link your apps to Zapier Tables to store and retrieve your data. Click the Linked Assets button in the sidebar to see a list of all the connected Zaps and tables in a particular page.

Zapier Interfaces also allows you to build apps that accept payment via Stripe. The platform also has a chatbot component that you can use to create a ChatGPT-powered AI chatbot.

The component is currently in beta, but it worked flawlessly for us. You give it a directive on how it should respond to users. Very helpfully, the platform already adds a detailed directive that you can tweak as per your needs.

Zapier Interfaces: Deployment and Maintenance

As it is with no-code apps, deploying apps built with Zapier Interfaces is pretty straightforward.

Click the Settings icon in the left sidebar, where you get the option to specify your own custom subdomain for your app. You can also publish the app to your own domain by heading to the Custom domain option in the sidebar.

By default, all apps are accessible to anyone with the URL. However, you do get the option to control who can view your app by heading to the Access & Users option in the sidebar. Here you get a couple of options to restrict access. You can either lock access with a password, or to a specified set of users.

Zapier Interfaces also lets you invite and collaborate with other users using the Share button in the top-right corner.

The sharing interface also has an Embed tab that you can use to embed pages from your app inside another website. You’ll be able to select the page you wish to embed, and adjust its height and width.

Zapier Interfaces: Pricing and Documentation

Zapier Interfaces offers a free tier that provides you with access to enough components and features to explore the platform.

For advanced features, such as custom branding, custom domains, access to OpenAI models, components like Stripe, and more, you can opt for one of the paid plans.

The $20/month Pro plan unlocks access to all components and lets you create a maximum of five apps with up to 20 pages. But to publish apps to custom domains, you’ll need to switch to the $100/month Advanced plan, which also increases the number of publishable apps to 20, with up to 50 pages in each.

In terms of documentation, Zapier Interfaces has a handful of tutorials that’ll help you familiarize yourself with the platform. You’ll find step-by-step guides to create and manage apps, as well as on using the various components.

Zapier Interfaces: The Competition

In the no-code app development space, Zapier Interfaces competes with platforms like Bubble, and Adalo, which offer more extensive development capabilities.

These platforms offer more functionality, and allow for greater customization, but have a steeper learning curve than Zapier Interfaces. Also, while most of its competitors excel at building general purpose web apps, Zapier Interfaces distinguishes itself by its seamless integration with the Zapier ecosystem.

Zapier Interfaces: Final Verdict

Zapier Interfaces provides a versatile platform that you can use to create client portals, dashboards, or internal tools that can enhance your business processes, without writing any code.

However, it's important to recognize its limitations in terms of customization, and extensibility as compared to other general purpose no-code platforms. Its main selling point is its close integration with Zapier workflows.

As we’ve said before, Zapier Interfaces is not designed to be a full featured web app development platform. Instead look at it as a platform to add custom user interfaces to your existing Zapier workflows.

If you want to build apps that automate and interact with data from Zapier's integrated apps, the platform is a wonderful option. Its ease of use and tight integration with the Zapier ecosystem makes it a good choice to help design, deploy, and manage custom web apps that complement your automated Zapier workflows.

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Codev is a no-code platform that relies exclusively on Artificial Intelligence (AI) to help transform natural language descriptions into web apps. In this review we’ll delve into its features, interface, ease of use, integration and extensibility, deployment and maintenance, pricing and documentation, and compare it with its competitors.

Codev: Features

Codev is one of the simplest no-code platforms, which also makes it one of the easiest to get started with, even for first timers.

As we’ve mentioned, Codev is one of the growing number of no-code platforms that leverages AI to create apps. The use of AI makes it dead simple for non-developers to create web apps without writing a single line of code.

All you need to do is describe your app idea in regular English, and Codev will take care of the rest. The platform will analyze your input to build your app together with all the necessary components, styling, and functionality for the app.

You can then again use AI to keep refining the app. Very helpfully, the platform will keep track of all the iterations of the app, and you can revert to any previous version with a single click.

You can also upload images to the platform, which you can then ask it to use in the app. This is helpful for things like app logos, custom headers, product images, and such.

Besides AI, the platform also lets you customize the broader look, and feel of your apps with just a few clicks. You can, for instance, change the primary color to align the app to your brand, adjust the corner radius, and switch between light or dark modes.

Codev can work with the open source Firebase-alternative, Supabase, which uses PostgreSQL to add databases to your apps. You can also use it to roll in authentication services, like user sign ups and logins.

By default, all Codev apps are responsive, which means they can adapt to different screen sizes and devices. This ensures that your apps provide a consistent user experience across desktops, and smartphones.

When you are done, you can also transfer your project to a GitHub repo, which is a helpful feature if you need to make manual code edits to your apps.

Codev: Interface and Ease of Use

Thanks to its limited number of features, Codev has a simple, and straightforward interface, unlike many of its peers. This makes it very approachable, especially if you are new to no-code app development platforms.

Once you’ve entered the prompt, the platform will start building the app, and detail each and every step.

Remember however, that you can only add authentication services, and databases to your app at the start of the app creation process.

One of the good things about Codev is its verbosity. The platform details each and every step in the app creation process. For instance, it’ll tell you how it’s going about putting together the backend (the database structure), and assembling the frontend (user interface).

It’ll also list all the features it has implemented, like contact listing with search, contact creation with form validation, and such. Codev will also list all that you can do with the app in simple language. Finally, the platform will also offer suggestions on how you can improve the first iteration of the app.

Once it’s done building the app, you can preview it on the left side of the screen. By default, the preview shows the desktop view, but you can also switch to the mobile view.

You can also optionally rate the output as well, based on how closely the app meets the requirements you specified in the AI prompt. The platform keeps track of all iterations of the app above the preview. Interestingly, you can switch, and preview any version, before you decide to revert to an older instance.

There’s also a button to view the error log, in case it ran into any during the build. If you do get an error, you can use the Attempt Fix button to let the platform resolve the issue on its own.

Unlike many of its peers, Codev doesn’t include a designer to help fine tune the various elements in your app, such as the titles. However, you can use the Select Element option to hover, and mark the elements you want to refine. You can then describe how you’d like to modify these elements to Codev’s AI.

Codev: Integration and Extensibility

Codev relies on the Next.js framework to power its apps. The platform also does

Server-Side Rendering (SSR) and Static Site Generation (SSG) to pre-render the web apps on the server, which helps improve its initial load times, and SEO ranking.

The platform also uses the Prisma Object-Relational Mapper (ORM) to simplify database interactions, and make it easier to build data-driven apps.

As we’ve pointed out earlier, Codev gets its database from Supabase. Earlier, the platform offered a code download feature, but you can now hook it up with your GitHub account, and ask it to transfer your web app to a GitHub repo.

This is especially useful for advanced users who want to manually make changes to the code, or perhaps collaborate with other developers. Remember though, there’s no provision to upload the exported code back into Codev.

Codev: Deployment and Maintenance

Once your app is ready, you can publish it with a single click. By default, the platform will publish the latest version of the app. However, you can publish any of the earlier versions as well.

As with its peers, Codev too publishes apps to its own subdomain. The advantage of this is that you don’t have to distract yourself with the nitty-gritties of web hosting. That said, you do have the option to deploy the app to your own custom domain.

Remember however, that any changes made to the app will not be reflected in the deployed version automatically. Instead, you’ll have to manually republish the app, while ensuring you select the latest version of the app.

Codev: Pricing and Documentation

Codev's pricing model offers flexible options in order to cater to a wide range of users, from startups to larger businesses.

The Free tier offers a limited number of features, but is good enough for exploring the platform. You can use it to query the AI 15 times a month, with a maximum of five messages a day.

If that number’s too low for you, there’s the $19/month Lite plan that offers 50 additional AI queries per month, with no daily limits. You can have up to five private projects in this plan, and publish projects to a custom domain as well. This plan also lets you transfer the code for your app to your GitHub repo.

If you are looking to publish more than one app, switch to the $49/month Pro plan, which allows you to publish an unlimited number of apps to an unlimited number of custom domains. The plan also offers an additional 150 AI messages, gives you early access to new features, and access to the platform’s developers.

In terms of documentation, Codev has a handful of tutorials that cover best practices for writing effective prompts, supabase setup, and authentication. The share update, and details about new features via their official blog.

Support is dispensed through Codev’s Discord channel, and Pro users can also seek support from the platform’s developers.

Codev: The Competition

Codev competes against three other platforms, all of which make extensive use of AI to democratize app development.

First up, is the newly launched Hostinger Horizons, which offers more integration like payment gateways. And while it won’t send code to your GitHub repo, it does let you download and edit it offline. Also, unlike its peers, you can interact with Horizons AI using several non-English languages, as well as through voice prompts.

Then there’s Lovable, which can do everything you can with Codev, and then some. For instance, it offers two-way sync with GitHub, pre-built templates, a Figma-like visual editor, and more.

Codev: Final Verdict

Codev’s best feature is its use of AI to design, and debug the app, which makes the platform usable by non-programmers as well.

However, Codev has a limited set of features, as compared to its peers. It also doesn’t have a visual GUI editor, nor any templates to jump start the app creation process. The platform also can only make web apps, and not mobile apps, or even progressive web apps (PWAs).

All things considered, Codev comes across as a barebones AI-powered no-code platform that offers the bare minimum features you need to spin up a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) with minimal effort.

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