Show HN: Bootstrapped Alternative to Airplane.dev
Yesterday, when we learned that Airplane.dev was shutting down, we decided it might be the time for our first post on HN. We hope to assist Airplane customers in migrating to our platform (https://uibakery.io) to minimize the impact of this unfortunate event.
UI Bakery is a bootstrapped company and has not taken any VC investments. My co-founders and I, all software engineers, funded this business with the profits from our previous software services business. In the early stages of our previous venture, we developed several popular open-source projects (admin dashboard template, Angular UI kit). Thus our client projects often included admin panels, dashboards, and portals. As a result, the idea of building a platform that would allow faster delivery and also support a subscription-based business model was a no-brainer. Eventually, we made the risky decision to fully commit to UI Bakery. After a period of searching for PMF, we built a small and effective team (10 people, growing now), and became profitable.
UI Bakery can help build both internal tools and external-facing apps (in fact, some of our clients embed UI Bakery on public websites). Our users can: - Connect to 30 data sources (SQL and NoSQL, HTTP APIs, and 3rd-party services like Salesforce and Stripe). - Use the Drag and Drop UI builder with 75 components to build responsive web apps based on your data. - Create simple and sophisticated business logic with Actions that can read/write data from data sources on UI interactions and as scheduled jobs/webhooks. - Generate code/SQL with AI code generation and Chat with UI Bakery documentation Assistant to build apps faster
Alongside features similar to competitors, UI Bakery enhances the developer experience with multi-step actions, varied workflows, and multi-page applications. Our pricing is also tailored to be competitive. A distinctive feature is our Shared Permission Groups, enabling unlimited end-user access at a fixed fee for identical permission sets, adding value and scalability.
We believe UI Bakery can be a good alternative to Airplane and other internal tool builders in the current economic environment. Most of these products are VC-funded, and investors are more likely to further invest in AI than low-code platforms. Therefore, their founders may face tough decisions: shut down their business (like internal.io did), sell it (as Airplane did), or buy out shares (a rare move like Gumroad). Previously, I have heard concerns during the demos about our lack of fundraising, but now I believe the tables have turned. Having a bootstrapped and profitable vendor seems like an advantage for a large number of businesses.
Feel free to share your feedback, and let us know what you think about UI Bakery.
Thanks!