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Alternative to PowerApps:
MintData

Alternative to PowerApps: MintData
For an alternative to PowerApps, consider MintData, a no-code enterprise application development platform.
As a PowerApps alternative, MintData provides a better way to create both internal and external applications:
  • Application complexity: create vastly more complex applications
  • Visual quality: substantial freedom to control the user experience (UX)
  • Real-time collaboration: more efficient development – the whole team simultaneously edits an application
  • Maintenance: a better facility to debug & maintain applications
  • Cost: lower total cost of ownership (TCO)
The results are higher quality applications when compared to all PowerApps alternatives.
Below you’ll find a detailed review of MintData, and why it’s a great alternative to Microsoft PowerApps.

Main issues with PowerApps

People are reaching for PowerApps alternatives due to a number of issues:
  • Poor collaboration for application creation
  • Lack of environments to test in
  • Maximum application complexity possible
  • Unstable Microsoft pricing that changes
  • PowerApps total cost of ownership
Main issues with PowerAppsMain issues with PowerApps

Considering an alternative to PowerApps?

You’re already using PowerApps

For the current business processes and workflows covered by PowerApps, we’ll analyze what’s working well and what isn’t.
For parts where MintData would serve as a better PowerApps alternative, we’ll often conduct a proof-of-concept (PoC) to ensure this is the case. For qualified buyers, this is often at no cost.
Get in touch

You’re not using PowerApps

We’ll show you not only MintData, an alternative to PowerApps, but also a large number of low-code and no-code vendors.
Because MintData has been on the market for close to a decade, we’ll show you the pitfalls and benefits of each vendor’s approach.
You can then decide what’s best for your organization. If appropriate, we’ll conduct a proof-of-concept (PoC) to show how MintData transforms business processes and workflows as a PowerApps alternative. For qualified buyers, this is often at no cost.
Learn no-code landscape

An alternative to PowerApps: MintData

PowerApps
MintData
Pricing
Performance
Collaboration
Environments
Future Proof
Speed of Application Creation
Quality of Resulting Applications
Ease of Debugging Applications
Maintenance & Support

Join organizations who use an alternative to PowerApps: MintData

Verizon
Yahoo! Japan
Nasdaq
Nyse
GraphScience
Fluential
Hightail
Aa

Best alternative to PowerApps: MintData

App builder experience

PowerApps
MintData
PowerApps
MintData
Collaboration / multi-user support

Only one person can work on creating the application at a time.

PowerApps has
zero collaboration.

A PowerApps alternative is recommended.

Multiple users can work on developing the same application simultaneously.
The application development process is substantially faster, making MintData a great PowerApps alternative.
Speed of application development
Only one app creator can work on developing an application at a time.
Poor code reuse facilities, leading to wasted time.
Unlimited collaborators work together in real-time to speed up application development.
Faster development and code reuse enabled by the unique features of MintData.
Flexibility of UX
Mostly for creating pre-canned apps with a fixed UX.
No support for an adaptive design layout.
One of the few no-code and low-code development platforms that provide pixel-perfect freedom to create award-winning designs.

Supports both responsive and adaptive design.
Ease of use by non-technical staff
Fairly easy to create primitive applications that require no coding.
More coding skills will be required as the complexity grows.

Hardly suitable for citizen developers (a PowerApps alternative will be required in some cases).
Perfect for citizen developers, with an intuitive canvas and spreadsheet interface. Formulas work exactly the same way as traditional spreadsheets, reducing the learning curve for non-technical staff.
Data source limitations
Need to set up a connector to connect a data source.
The Excel table connected to an application must not contain any formulas.
Extra charges for SQL and Azure SQL connectors.
Can connect to any data source out of the box—no special connectors needed.

Connects to REST APIs and databases, queues, files systems, ERP, CRM, and other systems via MintData Cloud Flows.
No extra charges imposed.
Ease of debugging applications
The preview experience has a few differences from how the published version of the application behaves.
The editing experience always reflects the final application. This makes it easier to debug because you’re working with the finished application at all times.
Versioning
Lacks versioning at the published application level.
Versioning at both the design and published app level
Environments


It's not possible to publish an application to multiple environments.

How will you roll out & test beta features of the application with PowerApps?

You have an option to publish your app straight to a production environment or to a staging environment (for testing or debugging purposes).
PowerApps lacks collaboration
PowerApps
MintData
PowerApps
MintData
The PowerApps low-code development platform lacks the ability for two or more people to work on an application simultaneously, which is hard to imagine in 2021.

When a second person tries to help with creating an application, they will get a notice that it’s locked by the first person.

PowerApps lacks collaborationTaken from the PowerApps official site.

This results in reduced productivity, as colleagues cannot help each other when creating, improving, and debugging applications.
If you’re already thinking of a PowerApps alternative, try MintData.

MintData, a no-code development platform, allows an unlimited number of users to work on creating an application at the same time.

Everyone can see each other’s changes in real-time (mouse cursor movement, changes to the spreadsheet, and anything else a creator is doing), making collaboration much more effective.

On MintData, a team can work on an application together at the same time. While one person works on the UI, another can work on the logic of your application.

And you can always tell who is editing the application and see the changes they make.

By working together, teams can create better applications much faster on MintData, considered as the best Microsoft PowerApps alternative.

MintData
Speed of application development
PowerApps
MintData
PowerApps
MintData
These PowerApps issues can have a negative impact on application development speed:

  • PowerApps doesn’t support two or more users working on developing an application at the same time
  • The application development experience with PowerApps is likely to produce a lot of repeated code as the complexity of an application grows

Also, note a number of technical issues reported by the PowerApps community:

  • PowerApps not loading
  • PowerApps login problems
  • PowerApps authentication issues
  • PowerApps delegation issues
  • PowerApps rules not working
  • PowerApps date issues

These issues might also substantially affect the speed of application creation. If you’re already looking to try a PowerApps alternative, try MintData.
MintData allows multiple users to work on creating an application simultaneously, which can dramatically reduce application development time.

MintData’s unique features such as the spreadsheet, repeater, action cells, and data binding, substantially speed up an application development process.

In addition, having the UI of your application, data and the logic (formulas) right in front of you, on the canvas and in the MintData spreadsheet, enables you to see the full picture, which makes application development on MintData a rapid intuitive process. You can quickly see which UI component is linked to which formula and reuse existing formulas.

So, when it comes to the speed of application creation, MintData is a fascinating alternative to PowerApps.
UX flexibility
PowerApps
MintData
PowerApps
MintData
PowerApps seems to be intended mostly for creating pre-canned applications with a fixed UX.
While PowerApps has the ability to implement a responsive design (e.g. the “Stretch to fit” option), adaptive designs are not supported: the UI of a PowerApps application cannot be changed partially or completely as the screen size changes. To implement an adaptive design, you need an alternative to PowerApps.
MintData provides an advanced layout system and UI components that let you create award-winning designs that work both on mobile and desktop screens. With dynamic content from APIs, you can build polished and interactive applications that not only look good but also work well.
In terms of UX flexibility, MintData, with its pixel-perfect design freedom and innovative features, can be regarded as the best alternative to PowerApps.
Ease of use by citizen developers
PowerApps
MintData
PowerApps
MintData
PowerApps is primarily intended for advanced users or software developers, and it will be quite difficult for non-technical staff (citizen developers) to develop even very simple applications.
So if your application creators are mainly citizen developers, look for an alternative to PowerApps.
MintData provides a spreadsheet interface familiar to the majority of citizen developers. The spreadsheet is used to bring in data from remote sources and define the application behavior.
Together with the drag-and-drop simplicity of the MintData canvas, it makes it easy to build fairly complex applications for both citizen developers and more advanced users.
MintData is definitely worth trying as an alternative to PowerApps.
PowerApps: data source limitation
PowerApps
MintData
PowerApps
MintData
Each time you want to use a data source in PowerApps, you have to set up a connector. Apart from the fact that it requires more effort, some connectors (SQL, Azure SQL) may require premium licensing.
Additionally, when you connect to an Excel workbook to use it as a data source, the tables must not contain any formulas.
These limitations may have some consider a Microsoft PowerApps alternative.
Taking into consideration some other PowerApps alternatives, with MintData, you can instantly connect to any data source.

This is because MintData has first-class primitives for talking to any REST API, database, queue, file system, CRM, ERP, and other source system. No connector is required to both read or write from/to the original enterprise system.
PowerApps charges more for useful data sources
PowerApps
MintData
PowerApps
MintData
PowerApps charges additional fees for connecting to useful data sources, like a database in the cloud. No wonder many people are looking for a Microsoft PowerApps alternative as using it becomes cost prohibitive.
There are no additional fees for using any data source,

There are no additional fees for the volume or frequency of data consumed or written.

You have the freedom to use data sources and destinations as you see fit.
In this regard, MintData is the best Microsoft PowerApps alternative.
Ease of debugging applications
PowerApps
MintData
PowerApps
MintData
The preview experience has a few differences from how the published version of the application behaves.
The code used to define the logic of your application is stored within the UI items, so you have to go from item to item to debug the app. Because of code duplication, changing a formula in one place might require you to do the same in several other places.
It might be worth trying a Microsoft PowerApps alternative to see the difference.
The editing experience always reflects the final application. A published application looks and behaves absolutely the same as viewed in the Preview mode.
All the formulas used to create the logic of your application are laid out in front of you, in the spreadsheet, so you don’t have to select a UI component each time you want to see the code.
MintData, the best PowerApps alternative, makes the debugging process smooth and intuitive.
PowerApps publishes to only one environment, making app testing difficult
PowerApps
MintData
PowerApps
MintData
Among known PowerApps issues, lack of the ability to publish an application to multiple environments is quite disappointing.

It means you can’t roll out and test beta features of an application that is in production. You can only test the new features yourself using the preview mode in the designer.
So this is obviously a point to consider in your search for an alternative to PowerApps.
Unlike PowerApps, MintData provides the ability to publish to multiple environments, which can be critical for collaborative work, testing, or debugging apps built on an application development platform.

For example, say you want to add a feature to a production app, but before publishing it to the production environment, you want to test it first on a limited number of users—and that’s exactly what a staging environment is for.
In this regard, MintData can be considered as the best PowerApps alternative.

Created applications

PowerApps
MintData
PowerApps
MintData
Share outside your organization
Limited and incurs additional fees (when using PowerApps Portal).
No restrictions. You have the option to share your application with internal users only, users with the link, or anyone (public access).
Visual quality of application
Often not suitable for customer-facing digital experiences.
Complete pixel-perfect freedom.
Performance
Unless you use special techniques and features, which make sense only to very advanced developers, applications made with PowerApps in many cases are considered pretty slow.
PowerApps applications run only on the Microsoft shared infrastructure.
Real-time stream processing engine, millions of events per second.

On-premise deployment option, guaranteed to run on your dedicated cloud or physical hardware.
Maximum complexity possible
Limited
The complexity of an application created on the PowerApps platform must stay pretty low to be maintainable.
To build and maintain a complex application, an alternative to PowerApps should be considered.
Unlimited
MintData is a great Microsoft PowerApps alternative in this regard. MintData provides a spreadsheet interface that allows you to clearly organize your data. In addition, it provides the ability to avoid code duplication by reusing formulas.
Want to share outside of your organization?
PowerApps makes this difficult & expensive
PowerApps
MintData
PowerApps
MintData
Sharing a PowerApps application with external users may be costly if you’re using PowerApps Portals or restricted in other cases: The external users might require access to underlying data sources (e.g. SharePoint) and you’ll need to add such users one by one.
In this respect, MintData is your best alternative to PowerApps: sharing your MintData app with other people, regardless of whether they’re internal or external users, is free and unrestricted—just give them a link to your web application.
Visual quality of applications
PowerApps
MintData
PowerApps
MintData
All applications look the same, and are often not suitable for customer-facing digital experiences.

On MintData, the best Microsoft PowerApps alternative, you have complete pixel-perfect freedom when creating the design of your application. Apart from working well, the resulting application can look aesthetically beautiful too.
Performance
PowerApps
MintData
PowerApps
MintData
Among PowerApps known issues reported by the community, PowerApps performance issues are mentioned very often. Unless you use special techniques and procedures, most of which can be implemented by advanced developers, applications made with PowerApps in many cases are considered quite slow.
PowerApps applications run only on the Microsoft shared infrastructure, no dedicated hosting is offered at the moment, which can also affect the performance as the available capacity is shared among all the users.
On MintData, we’ve got a real-time stream processing engine, which processes millions of events per second.
As a Microsoft PowerApps alternative, MintData offers an on-premise deployment option, guaranteed to run on your dedicated cloud or physical hardware.
Maximum complexity possible
PowerApps
MintData
PowerApps
MintData
PowerApps is a good solution for building very simple applications. As the complexity of a PowerApps application grows, it becomes very hard to maintain it. Even a minor change can break the application.
So, if you’re looking to build and maintain a complex multi-page application, consider a PowerApps alternative.
Because of the way it works, MintData, on the other hand, allows you to build an application of any complexity:

  • MintData provides a spreadsheet interface for defining the application logic and driving the appearance of your application. It allows you to clearly organize your data and easily maintain it later on.

  • You can avoid code duplication by linking multiple UI components with the same data to the spreadsheet, thus effectively reusing the formulas.

This makes MintData a clear winner among the best PowerApps alternatives.

Working with PowerApps vs MintData

PowerApps
MintData
PowerApps
MintData
Support with creating applications
Support is limited to the official support channel, which can be slow.
Individual approach to each request. MintData support team will sit with you to help you create applications.
Support with creating applications
PowerApps
MintData
PowerApps
MintData
Looking for support or experiencing a technical issue with PowerApps?
In the case of PowerApps you’re limited to the official support channels from Microsoft, which can be fairly slow to respond and primitive in the depth of their answer.
Making matters worse, Microsoft support can be challenging to reach at peak hours, and varies by the support contract of your organization.
MintData focuses solely on no-code application development and your organization’s success. You will have the full attention of MintData support staff while creating applications, with help available for not only technical issues but also application construction and coaching on best practices.
A 24x7 production support plan is also available for enterprise customers for an additional fee. This makes MintData a powerful contender as a PowerApps alternative.

Total cost of ownership (TCO)

PowerApps
MintData
PowerApps
MintData
Pricing
Per end-user
The Microsoft PowerApps license cost is based on each end-user who uses the created applications.
Per application creator
MintData pricing plan is based on the number of persons who create no-code applications.
Extensibility
Embedding SDK
SDK to write custom spreadsheet functions, cloud blocks, and UI components (React)
Maintainability
Difficult to maintain a fairly complex application due to a lot of repeated code. When you update the logic in one place you have to remember to do the same in several other places.
Easier to maintain because the application logic and behavior of web and mobile applications are defined using the MintData spreadsheet.
Scalability
Runs on a shared infrastructure.
Runs on a dedicated or shared infrastructure, depending on the pricing plan.
Future proof technology
Updates may break existing production apps.
Pricing can be changed.
Features or even the platform itself may be abandoned.
Example: Access Web Apps.
Always backwards compatible at the design and published application and SDK levels.
Security

Data is fully encrypted in motion and at rest.

Data is fully encrypted in motion and at rest.
Pricing
PowerApps
MintData
PowerApps
MintData
Microsoft PowerApps licensing is based on each end-user who uses the created applications. Depending on the PowerApps pricing plan, the number of created applications also needs to be factored in. For medium to large organizations, this pricing often proves prohibitive.
Also, extra fees are charged for using SQL Server and Azure SQL connectors, which drives the PowerApps cost of ownership even higher.
MintData pricing plan is based on the number of persons that create no-code applications (application creators). No license is required for end-users that use your application. And MintData doesn’t charge any extra fees for using any data sources.

MintData is a viable PowerApps alternative in terms of pricing.
Extensibility
PowerApps
MintData
PowerApps
MintData
The PowerApps Embedding SDK allows you to embed PowerApps applications into other (custom) applications.
SDK to write custom spreadsheet functions, cloud blocks, and UI components (React).

Embedding is also available into other systems and in the reverse direction (other systems into MintData) via an iFrame component.
Maintainability
PowerApps
MintData
PowerApps
MintData
One of the known PowerApps problems is a lot of repeated code. Because of the code duplication, PowerApps applications are difficult to maintain. Changing code in one place requires you to do the same in several other places.
On MintData, one of PowerApps alternatives, applications are easier to maintain because the application logic and behavior of web and mobile applications is defined using the MintData spreadsheet.
Scalability
PowerApps
MintData
PowerApps
MintData
Applications run on shared infrastructure.
Applications run on a dedicated or shared infrastructure, depending on the pricing plan.
Future proof technology
PowerApps
MintData
PowerApps
MintData
Microsoft is known for retiring a lot of their products. For example, Access Web Apps was the predecessor of PowerApps. When Access Web Apps was retired, people could no longer run applications made with Access Web Apps.
One of the known PowerApps update issues is the risk that a PowerApps update can break existing production applications.
So, if your applications are critical and long-term, you really should consider an alternative to PowerApps.
No risk of abandoning the MintData platform.
MintData is always backward compatible at the design, published application, and SDK levels.
What you will get?
Ideal for citizen developers
Rapid application development
Pixel-perfect applications
Real-time collaboration
Low TCO
High quality technical support
Secure and scalable architecture
100% browser-based

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