3 Best No-Code Business App Builders in Asia in 2024: Jodoo vs. Kintone vs. Ragic
Author: Daniel Lee | Global Growth Product Manager @ Jodoo
Recent Update: January 4, 2024
Introduction: Choosing the Right No-Code Platform for Your Business
Welcome to our comprehensive guide on choosing the right no-code platform for your business. In this post, we'll delve into the features, strengths, and weaknesses of three leading no-code platforms: Jodoo, Kintone, and Ragic.
In the rapidly evolving digital landscape, no-code platforms have emerged as game-changers, enabling businesses to build custom applications without the need for extensive coding knowledge. This post aims to provide an in-depth comparison of Jodoo, Kintone, and Ragic, three of the leading no-code platforms in the market. We'll explore key features such as customized views, workflow editors, dashboard capabilities, document generation, barcode/QR code scanning, and data processing capabilities.
What are Jodoo, Kintone, and Ragic?
Jodoo is a lightweight, no-code app development platform designed to meet the evolving demands of enterprise management. With core features like Form, Workflow Form, and Dashboard, Jodoo allows businesses to quickly build management apps by simply dragging and dropping. Jodoo was founded in Singapore and has gained visibility in Southeast Asia and Taiwan.
Kintone, on the other hand, is a no-code business application platform that allows non-technical users to create powerful apps, workflows, and databases for their teams and departments. It was founded in Japan and is well known in its domestic market.
Ragic is a flexible and easy-to-use online database builder that allows businesses to create customized business applications. It was founded in Taiwan while having abundant learning materials in English.
How to Choose the Right Platform Based on Individual Needs?
Choosing the right no-code platform depends mainly on your business needs and the complexity of the processes you wish to automate. Consider the learning curve, the level of customization you require, the platform's scalability, and support.
Remember, the best no-code platform is not necessarily the one with the most features, but the one that best fits your business needs. As we delve into the specifics of Jodoo, Kintone, and Ragic, keep in mind your unique requirements and how each platform can address them.
Stay tuned as we dive deeper into the world of no-code platforms and help you make an informed decision for your business.
Customized Views with Fine-Grained Permissions
What Are The Purposes of "Data Views" and "Granular Permission Management," and Why Are They Important?
Customized views with fine-grained permissions are a crucial feature in no-code platforms. This feature allows you to create different views of your data based on user roles and permissions. It's a powerful tool for managing access to sensitive information and ensuring that each team member only sees the data relevant to their position. This enhances data security and improves efficiency by reducing information overload.
How Are "Permission & Data Views" Different Within Jodoo, Kintone, and Ragic?
Jodoo: Empowering Users with Personal Data Views
When managing the permission of apps and tables, Jodoo stands out in its approach to customized views with fine-grained permissions. These permissions will then define the viewable and editable data to a specific member accordingly.
Unlike Kintone and Ragic, where only admins can set up predefined views for each role or department, Jodoo empowers individual users to create their personal data views based on the data they have access to. This unique feature allows users to tailor their data views to their specific needs, enhancing efficiency and user experience.
Kintone and Ragic: Admin-Controlled Predefined Views
Kintone and Ragic, while offering robust systems for creating customized views and setting permissions, do not provide this level of individual customization. In these platforms, views are set up by admins, limiting the flexibility for individual users to manage their own data views.
Jodoo: Providing More Data View Options
The available data view options on each platform are also different. Jodoo natively supports Grid(Table), Kanban, Gallery, and Gantt views. Kintone only supports List(Table) and Calendar views. Ragic only supports the List(Table) view. If you want to add more views to data in Kintone or Ragic, you may need to install plugins and be charged for additional costs.
However, Jodoo doesn't support the Calendar view in the form. If you need to view the data in the calendar's format, you can create a calendar in the Dashboard in Jodoo and select the corresponding form as the data source.
Example of How "Permission & Data Views" Can Be Used in Jodoo
Consider a scenario in a sales department where team members need to track different metrics. A sales representative should focus on leads and conversion rates, while a sales manager might need an overview of the entire team's performance.
With Jodoo, each user can create a personal view highlighting the most relevant information. The sales representative can set up a view that prioritizes lead data, while the sales manager can create a view that provides a comprehensive overview of the team's performance.
This level of customization is about more than just convenience. It's about empowering users to work in a way that suits them best, ultimately driving productivity and efficiency.
Visualized Approval Workflow Editor with Quick Workflow Actions
What Is The "Approval Workflow" and Why Is It Important?
In essence, an approval workflow is a sequence of approval steps that a document or a set of data must go through before it is considered approved. Each step in the workflow represents a stage of approval, and each stage can have one or more approvers.
The concept of an "approval workflow" is essential for providing a structured, efficient decision-making process, ensuring transparency, accountability, and compliance within an organization. It's a fundamental tool for effective management, speeding up processes, and maintaining control over critical business operations.
What Are The Differences of Jodoo, Kintone, and Ragic's Workflow Editors
Kintone and Ragic: Manual Setup and Technical Expertise Required
The difference is apparent when comparing Jodoo's workflow editor with those of Kintone and Ragic. While Kintone and Ragic offer workflow editors, they lean more on the traditional ERP system's approach, which often requires manual setup for certain actions and working back and forth within several setup forms. This can be time-consuming and requires a certain level of technical expertise.
Jodoo: User-Friendly and Efficient Workflow Creation
Using Jodoo is completely another experience. Jodoo’s workflow form lets you set up all of the processes. Its drag-and-drop workflow editor is a game-changer for businesses looking to streamline their approval processes.
On the one hand, adding multi-step approval flows only takes a minute to complete by dragging and dropping nodes and assigning approvers to the nodes. It visually displays all the approval steps and flows, allowing users to easily create and manage workflows by simply dropping nodes and connecting them through dragging flows.
On the other hand, Jodoo supports easily creating conditional workflows based on field data. This eliminates the need for complex and time-consuming setup, unlike traditional ERP systems, which usually need technical expertise, making Jodoo a more efficient and effective solution for managing approval processes.
Furthermore, Jodoo's workflow editor comes with many predefined workflow actions, like "Return" or "Save as Draft," which can be easily added to the steps with just a few clicks. This not only saves time but also makes the process of setting up workflows more efficient and user-friendly.
And that's not all. In Jodoo's workflow form, the approver can easily add a signature, making the approval even more formal and dramatically decreasing the time of all approvers signing for approval.
The field permission for editing and viewing can be set at the node level, allowing only the relevant information to be presented to the approver at each node and preventing data from being altered by mistake.
Example of How "Workflow Forms" Can Be Used in Jodoo
In a marketing agency, a campaign proposal begins with the creative director. Using Jodoo's approval workflow form, the proposal is submitted and automatically directed to the finance department. If the budget is within limits, the finance manager approves it. If not, Jodoo's conditional flow feature sends it to the CFO for special approval. Each stage requires a digital signature, ensuring accountability.
Field permissions are set so that each approver can only edit their relevant fields. For instance, the finance manager can edit the budget field, not the creative content. Once the budget is approved, the proposal moves to the account management team. They review the campaign details and timeline, making necessary adjustments. The final stop is the CEO, where the proposal gets the ultimate approval.
This entire process, which could have taken weeks or even months, is streamlined and automated with Jodoo's approval workflow and can be proceeded within a week.
Customized Dashboard and Chart
Why Do We Need A Dashboard in A No-Code Platform?
Customized dashboards and chart capabilities are essential in any data management platform. They allow users to create personalized views of their data, making it easier to understand, analyze, and make informed decisions. Dashboards provide a centralized location to monitor all your data at a glance, while charts offer a visual representation of your data, making complex data sets more straightforward to understand. These features are crucial in data visualization as they help to simplify data, identify trends, and provide actionable insights.
Comparison of Jodoo, Kintone, and Ragic’s Data Visualization Features
While platforms like Kintone and Ragic offer data visualization capabilities, they fail to deliver a customizable dashboard experience.
Kintone: Limited Customization Options with Predefined Designs
Kintone's approach is more rigid, focusing primarily on chart creation with limited customization options. This restricts users in their ability to visualize and interact with their data in a way that best suits their needs. In Kintone, the user can put charts from each app together in a space, but can not create dashboards to organize different charts for different communication purposes.
Ragic: More Customization Options with Predefined Designs
Ragic, while offering a variety of chart types in its "dashboard report," provides a predefined design, limiting users' flexibility in layout and chart selection.
How Jodoo’s Dashboard and Charts Offer Customizability?
In contrast, Jodoo stands out with its fully customizable dashboards.
Jodoo's customized dashboard and chart capabilities allow users to visualize their data in a way that best suits their needs. Users can select from a variety of chart types, including detail tables, pivot tables, line charts, bar charts, radar charts, pie charts, Gantt charts, and more. These charts can be used to display insights such as data trends, comparisons by category, percentages of different segments, and project progress.
Users can select the chart types that best suit their needs and arrange them in a way that makes the most sense for their data. The drag-and-drop interface makes creating and modifying dashboards easy, even for users with no technical background.
Examples of How Cross-Table/Cross-App Data Can Be Displayed in Jodoo
One of the standout features of Jodoo is its ability to display cross-table and cross-app data. For example, a user could create a dashboard displaying sales data from multiple apps or tables in a single view. This could include a line chart showing sales trends over time, or a bar chart comparing sales by category. If revenue data can be calculated across different apps, use the data factory to calculate and retrieve the data stream for display on the dashboard.
This feature is handy for businesses that use multiple apps or tables to manage different aspects of their operations. With Jodoo, they can get a comprehensive view of their data without switching between various apps or tables. This saves time and makes it easier to identify trends and make data-driven decisions.
Document Generation with Custom Print Template
Why Do We Need The Custom Print Template and Its Role in Creating Professional Documents
Customizing print templates is a feature that allows users to design and format their documents for printing. This feature plays a crucial role in creating professional documents as it provides the flexibility to tailor the layout, design, and content to suit specific business needs. It can be used to create purchase orders, invoices, reports, contracts, and other business documents, ensuring they are presented professionally and consistently.
Comparative Analysis of How Jodoo, Kintone, and Ragic Handle Print Templates
How Jodoo’s Custom Print Template Streamlines Document Generation
Jodoo offers a robust print template customization feature. Users can select from a variety of fields, including form fields and field QR codes, and arrange them as needed. When the user selects specific data and clicks "Print," the data will display as designed in the template. This flexibility allows users to create print templates that reflect their business needs.
Kintone: No Such Feature
Kintone, on the other hand, doesn't offer a print template customization feature. Kintone only allows users to print data from web pages, which limits the ability to generate formal documents.
Ragic: Limited Flexibility with Customizable Templates
Ragic offers a similar print template customization feature to Jodoo, allowing users to add fields and arrange them as needed in Word or Excel files. After users upload the template to Ragic, they can select the specific data to be printed based on the uploaded template. However, Ragic's approach is less intuitive than Jodoo's, which may make it more challenging for users to create and modify print templates. Furthermore, Ragic doesn't support adding images to the print template, potentially decreasing the document's legitimacy as the company logo and signatures can not be added.
In contrast, the user in Jodoo can add a company logo and company stamp to the document print template, streamlining the document-generating process.
Examples of How a Document Can Be Generated in Jodoo
In Jodoo, for instance, a user could create a custom invoice template by selecting the necessary fields (such as customer name, invoice number, order details, and total amount) and arranging them in a professional layout. This customized print template can then be used to print invoices that are consistent with the company's branding and professional standards.
Barcode/QR Code Scan Support
Why Do We Need to Scan Barcode or QR Code?
Barcode/QR Code scanning is a feature that allows users to input data quickly and accurately by scanning barcodes or QR codes. This feature is particularly useful in industries such as manufacturing, retail, logistics, event management, and marketing, where large amounts of data need to be processed swiftly.
Jodoo, Kintone, and Ragic: A Comparative Analysis
How Jodoo’s Barcode and QR Code Scanning Enhances Data Entry Efficiency
Jodoo supports both barcode and QR code scanning, providing a comprehensive solution for data entry. With Jodoo's Android and iOS apps, anyone can easily turn the phone to the scanner. Supporting both types of code allows Jodoo to cater to various use cases and industries.
Kintone: Supported by Third-Party Services
Kintone, on the other hand, does not natively support barcode or QR code scanning. Users need to rely on third-party apps or customizations to add this functionality, which could potentially add risk or complexity to their workflows.
Ragic: Supports Barcode Only
Ragic supports barcode scanning, which can be beneficial for specific industries. However, it does not support QR code scanning, which could limit its applicability in scenarios where QR codes are commonly used.
Practical Applications of Barcode/QR Code Scanning in Jodoo
In Jodoo, the barcode/QR code scanning feature can be used in various ways. For instance, for equipment maintenance, scanning each equipment's unique code leads to retrieving its history and specs, speeding up processes, and reducing errors. In inventory management, warehouse staff can instantly scan product codes and update stock levels. This streamlines tracking and prevents stock issues. In essence, Jodoo's scanning capabilities enhance efficiency and decision-making in business operations.
Advanced Data Processing Capabilities
Why Do We Need to Do Complex Data Processing
The data processing capability allows businesses to aggregate scattered, disorganized, and non-uniform data for enhanced analysis and decision-making. By integrating and transforming data, it enables complex computational models to be solved, thereby driving efficiency and accuracy in business operations.
Comparison of Jodoo, Kintone, and Ragic in data processing
Kintone and Ragic: Limited Data Syncing and Processing Capabilities at the Table Level
Regarding data processing, Kintone and Ragic primarily support data syncing at the table level, meaning they can pull data from individual tables (or Apps in Kintone's terminology) and sync it across your system, processing the data with formulas.
However, data syncing in Kintone and Ragic is limited to retrieving data within an app.
How Jodoo’s Data Processing Features Unleash The True Power of Database
Jodoo also supports data syncing between tables and formulas. On the other hand, Jodoo’s Data Factory, powered by the cross-app feature, takes it a step further by supporting data processing at the database level. This means Jodoo can extract data from multiple forms across your entire Jodoo workspace, not just tables within an app. This provides a more comprehensive and integrated view of your data. It also means that Jodoo can be considered the most scalable no-code tool for building business software, as it allows data modeling with higher complexity.
Data Factory operates similarly to an ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) tool, but it's important to note that it's not a standard ETL tool. The Data Factory is designed to work within Jodoo's apps, allowing you to extract data from various forms within your Jodoo apps, process it according to your needs, and then load the processed data into a new, secondary table.
This is a unique feature that Kintone and Ragic currently don't support. The secondary table can be retrieved in dashboards and forms, providing a dynamic and updated overview of your processed data.
Example of How a Secondary Table Can Be Created and Used in Jodoo?
Consider a scenario where you're managing a complex project with multiple teams. Each team has its own set of tasks, deadlines, and progress reports. With Jodoo's Data Factory, you can extract data from all these different forms across your Jodoo database, process it to highlight the information you need, and then load it into a secondary table. This table can then be used in your project dashboard, providing an up-to-date overview of the project status. This level of data integration and processing can streamline your project management process, making it easier to monitor progress and make informed decisions.
Conclusions
In conclusion, Jodoo, Kintone, and Ragic are three leading no-code platforms that offer various features to help businesses create custom applications. At the current stage, we can confidently say the three platforms are all solid enough to solve various managerial problems.
However, Jodoo stands out with its superior capabilities in customized views, workflow editor, dashboard and chart, document generation, barcode/QR code scanning, and data processing. Jodoo provides a more flexible, user-friendly, and integrated solution for data management, making it the best choice for businesses looking to streamline their workflows and optimize their operations.
If you want to learn more about Jodoo and how it can help your business, visit our website or request a demo today.
