The world of open-source tools is progressing at lightning speed. We can see the developers generating innovative ideas and new internal tools development platforms open for other programmers to customize for their use. We can see OSS (Open-source software) replacing many old big players in the development and internal tools market. We have Adobe Workfront alternatives, Mavenlink alternatives, virtual event platforms, and many other tools related to every field.
Many promising open-source projects are evolving and proving to support the developer fraternity, such as low-code open-source development environments. Most of the OSS don't need a software license for personal use, but they may charge for business use.
Let us move on and see the fast-growing open-source projects in 2022, how you can incorporate them into your workspace, and how you can contribute to these open-source projects.
1. ILLA Cloud
ILLA is an open source low-code platform for developers. It is a comprehensive development platform with APIs to integrate design, interactions, SaaS, and databases. It supports the developers in integrating the data fetched from the database to the frontend components. These APIs make the overall development and programming very convenient because the programmer can simply call the function to achieve the backend tasks.
ILLA is becoming the most preferred development environment for beginners and experts alike because of the easy learning curve. It has simple API calls and drag-and-drop design elements that help the developers to focus more on the business logic.
Product Features
Responsive UI library
ILLA follows the latest web standards and offers an extensive library of responsive design. You can create custom themes and application templates with responsive touch-based/click-based user interfaces. There is much room for customization for forms, buttons, colors, navigation bars, etc. Integration with JavaScript code is also possible.
Real-Time Collaboration
Real-time collaboration in ILLA builder is done through sharing of links between the developers. They can edit the same code together and communicate the changes to others in real-time. So, it saves both time and effort for the team.
API & Database Integration
You can integrate third-party APIs, databases, and other tools to design a fully functional application using the method calls in the ILLA code. The developer has more freedom and functionality using very less code. Hence, they can focus more on their business logic.
Easy Deployment and Automation
ILLA solutions can be deployed as self-hosted or cloud-hosted solutions using Kubernetes and Docker. ILLA regularly optimizes the cloud-based solution to provide developers with a seamless and smooth experience. In automation support, ILLA allows you to connect and schedule jobs.
Upgrade Features
ILLA has a continuous commitment to evolution and improvement. So, we see new component libraries and features added to ILLA, polishing it with every update.
Pricing
ILLA is open-source software that is free to use, copy, study, and update. However, you will be charged for ILLA cloud hosting for your applications.
Clients & Customers Testimonial
“ILLA is a new experience for my team and me. We decided to use it for a new project and found it very convenient. It covers the whole development process with a 360 view. We are impressed with UI design’s drag and drop feature, seamless API integration, and cloud hosting. ” -Anne Mehta.
“I have used both ILLA Builder and ILLA design for my new project. I will be using ILLA builder again because it saves me a lot of effort, and I can assemble a complete working application within hours. I am a newbie in development.” -Daniel
2. Appwrite
Appwrite is an open-source development platform for frontend and mobile developers, allowing them to build apps faster and focus on the logic rather than the logistics. It simplifies the development tasks through the prebuilt REST APIs for the developers for database, storage, localization, privacy, geo, etc.
Appwrite is packaged as a Docker container allowing the developers to use commands from the terminal on both the local machine and the cloud. The anticipated cloud version will simplify the configuration and development even more.
3. Hasura
Hasura is another open-source GraphQL engine available in internet tools. Technically, it is an open-source real-time GraphQL API engine that provides GraphQL or REST APIs with built-in authorization. It supports Postgres, BigQuery, MS SQL Server, and others. You can integrate business logic with Hasura as both serverless service or self-hosted solutions.
Hasura generates GraphQL API queries, mutations, and subscriptions from a single or several database(s). The database is connected using a database URL. It’s possible to merge the API generated from several databases into a single one.
4. Plasmic
Plasmic is a framework for visual development. It enables even non-developers to build web pages and integrate them into websites and codebases. However, it is much more than just a visual builder. It also has a visual CMS with editors to create and update web page content without any coding work and publish it right away.
Plasmic also gives you full control of the visual end to create complex web applications without graphics expertise and coding.
5. Supabase
Supabase is the development platform that combines the Postgres database, storage for large files, authorization, and auto-generated APIs. It is growing rapidly and going open source in the dashboard. You have a PostgREST to generate APIs, use Go True and handle user registration using the API service at Netlify.
6. Stable Diffusion web UI
Stable Diffusion is an open-source AI art generator that is gaining popularity fast. It is a UI tool to create great art pieces without too much effort and any added cost since it is open-source. It can be integrated into other projects or used standalone. Though other UI and graphic design software are known for high hardware costs, Stable Diffusion has relatively low requirements.
7. AppSmith
Appsmith is an open-source low-code framework with prebuilt visual widgets for connecting to any DBMS, GraphQL, or REST API modules using Javascript. It is a javascript-based internal tool developer to build CRUD apps, dashboards, and admin panels efficiently and quickly.
Developers can easily write business logic code for data manipulation, UI, and trigger workflow by calling libraries like lodash & moment. Also, this tool has a real-time reflection of every edit without compilation.
8. Tooljet
ToolJet is an open-source no/low-code framework internet tool without too much effort from the UI and code developers. Using the connect points, they can connect to databases like PostgreSQL, MongoDB, MySQL, etc. UI widgets in Tooljet to create the front end and connect to Stripe, Slack, Google Sheets, and more.
9. Budibase
Budibase is a low-code framework to create applications using templates to quickly develop User interface modules, business logic, and data handling. It supports many data sources, including MySQL, Rest API, OracleDB, MongoDB, Google Sheets, etc. It has a self-hosting option; deploy it on your service, or use Budibase’s cloud hosting option.
Budibase offers third-party integration with external resources like Zapier etc. Other features include automation options with corn jobs and other options. OAuth login support for data presence for Google and charts, table, and cards.
10. Tinygrad
Tinygrad is an open source deep learning framework. It is a simple neural network framework for training AI models in computer vision and natural language processing. It is very easy to install by cloning the repository. It is essentially a PyTorch alternative.
Conclusion
Open-source software is getting more popular and has become a status that many low-code platforms are now challenging the big leaders. Interestingly developers are having the time of their life because they are contributing to their developer community with free code and platforms to encourage collaborative working. The technology is going so fast that even open-source platforms have alternatives like Retool alternative, Supabase alternatives, etc.
We discussed the top fast-growing open-source development internal tools, including ILLA, Appwrite, Retool, Figma, etc., with each targeting angle. The broad base development platforms like ILLA cover the complete cycle of application development, including UI design, business logic, data retrieval and manipulation, automation, and API access. It also covers part of project management with deployment options, real-time collaboration, and automation processes.
You can check ILLA’s website here at: illacloud.com
GitHub page: github.com/illacloud/illa-builder
Join Discord community: discord.com/invite/illacloud