Compare Betty Blocks vs. OutSystems
So, you’re considering a low-code or no-code platform. That’s great! There’s a lot of choice out there on the market and we are happy to guide you whether you are looking to bring one app to market at record speed, get ahead on the cutting edge of mobile technology or launch a full digital transformation.
To build applications rapidly, you need a high-productivity and user-friendly platform. Between Betty Blocks, a no-code platform, and OutSystems, a low-code platform, there are some key differences depending on your goals, who will be using the platform, pricing, and features (we’ll try to be as neutral and objective as possible, but of course we are biased!).
Do you know which platform is right for you?
What Challenges Do You Face?
You may be experiencing difficulty innovating because your fresh business ideas fall to the end of IT’s backlog, and it takes too long to see results. Maybe your business is even suffering from the shortage of professional developers. Do you find yourself with ideas that are too big for your budget?
Whether you’re focused on a single application or a complete digital transformation, it’s important to know which platform can provide you with the best features and service depending on your needs so that you can survive the new era of application development.
You might be searching for:
- A way to increase collaboration between business and IT.
- A tool to influence a culture of innovation throughout entire organizations, by starting small and scaling up step-by-step.
- A platform that “just works:” Fully cloud-based with real-time deployments, supported by any and all web browsers. All you need is an internet connection.
- Automatic updates to the platform that ensure you never have to worry about security, migrating apps to the newest version, or managing servers yourself. We take care of everything.
- Real-time deployment of with no configuring, updating, or waiting.
If that’s the case, then you might be searching for Betty Blocks.
Who Will Use the Platform?
Betty Blocks No-code platforms like Betty Blocks close the gap between software needs and available developers by creating a new kind of developer: the citizen developer. This class of developers are eager to innovate, bring about new ideas and build quickly without needing to code. Because of the platform’s ease of use, a professional developer is not needed on every project.
OutSystems On the other hand, low-code platforms like OutSystems requires knowledge of coding, specifically proficiency with .NET, to build applications. Professional developers are often OutSystem’s target audience. OutSystems in particular is ideal for teams of .NET developers to use to speed up project time to delivery.
What Problems Can You Solve?
Betty Blocks is fast and flexible, yet powerful, secure, and scalable enough to embed within enterprise-level application strategy. A network of Betty Blocks-built web and mobile applications can facilitate a full digital transformation within your company. You can also easily (and rapidly) develop prototypes to test on a small-scale, collect feedback, optimize, re-test, through constant iteration, bringing greater agility to your organization--meaning even large enterprise organizations can operate with the agility of startups.
Additionally, because Betty Blocks is designed with the citizen developer in mind, you can close the gap left by a shortage of professional developers by making it possible for more of your workforce to contribute applications--on a platform that can be fully monitored and governed by IT, and that supports collaboration between teams of developers.
Because OutSystems does require a professional developer who can code, it does not address the developer shortage problem. While it allow developers to work 2x faster, there is a limit to the degree that a low-code platform can reduce IT’s backlog.
Pricing
Betty Blocks is committed to offering a range of flexible and competitive pricing to suit a variety of business needs, and to help you best leverage your company’s resources. We base our pricing on the complexity of the applications, so you pay for only the number of components you need. And you never have to pay more, no matter how many end users your application(s) support.
view pricing plansOutSystems boasts a complex platform with many, many functionalities, and that is reflected in the cost--whether or not you need or use most of them. Pricing is also complex based it is based on the number of end users for the apps you build as well as hosting impact. Licensing fees may also change significantly, so when considering OutSystems, make sure you ask about pricing increases after the first year.
For example: Let’s say you need an enterprise project approval or expense reporting application for your company, which will support 5600 users. With Betty Blocks pricing based on the number of Building Blocks needed to build the application, the app would cost €12,000/year. The same app would be 10x more expensive with OutSystem’s pricing model based on number of users, running over €100,000.
Enterprise-grade Applications
Critics claim that no-code platforms are not capable of building applications with real business value. With a sophisticated architecture built from Kubernetes containers and the Elixir language, Betty Blocks is uniquely powerful and able to navigate the complexity that enterprise-grade applications demand, both web-based and digital. Because of customizable components, experienced developers can also insert HTML and Javascript customizations in areas of the platform like the UI Builder, for example. The possibilities are limitless.
Who We Are
Our Betty Blocks company culture is something we’re quite proud of. People are at the center of everything we do, and we believe that the future of innovation lies in the hands of humans, not systems. We want businesses to be able to optimize their human potential by giving more employees the tools to develop applications. Our big, hairy, and audacious goal? That by 2023, anyone can build an application.
| Betty Blocks | OutSystems | |
|---|---|---|
| Cloud Capabilities | As a 100% cloud-based platform, Betty Blocks requires absolutely no downloads or user updates. No plug-ins, no versioning updates- all you need is an internet connection. | To fully use the OutSystems platform, you will need to download Windows OS based software. This also means that you are responsible for installing all future updated versions of the platform yourself, and that you must migrate all of your applications to the updated version to avoid malfunctions or security risks. |
| Ease of Use | All developing with Betty Blocks can be done through visual modeling and a drag-and-drop interface of application logic, completely suitable for citizen developers. | OutSystems requires proficiency in .NET to operate. |
| Platform Updates | Betty Blocks performs platform updates automatically, while all user applications are running. Because there is no versioning, users are always accessing the most current version and never have to migrate data. | With every new version of the platform that is released, users must update, test, and migrate all applications themselves or risk that they will not work on new versions. |
| Security | Betty Blocks is the first no-code platform to be ISO27001 certified. . In addition, since all customers automatically work from the same, and most updated, version of the platform, the most demanding customer sets the bar for platform security--and all users benefit from the same protections. | Because the OutSystems platform is not fully cloud-based, users are responsible for downloading and installing updated versions, and migrate all applications. If they don’t, they will encounter major security risks. |
| Micro-app Architecture | With the Blocks Store, users can install pre-configured blocks of Webservices and UI Components with one click, based on an architecture of micro-apps. Users can also share these components and make them available to all users in their organization, essentially saving and reusing whole blocks of applications across multiple apps. | OutSystems uses an architecture of microservices which cannot function as complete high-level applications, making it impossible to re-use Blocks of code. As a consequence, the platform loses RAD functionality because microservices are not able to integrate as fluidly with backend and UI services. |
Don’t Just Take Our Word For It... Check out our demo video to see the platform in action. Or get up close and personal and try it yourself with a demo of your own.
Inside the Mind of: John Rymer, Forrester Research VP and Lead Analyst
Betty Blocks CEO Chris Obdam and John Rymer, Vice President and Lead Analyst at leading global research and advisory firm Forrester have a conversation about how no-code platforms are changing the landscape of application development by providing a solution to “one of the classic problems in IT,” according to Obdam.
Watch the full video here (preview below) to learn what your leadership needs to stay ahead of the game in the changing era of app development.
