Caspio is super easy to use for a basic application and then when you go under the covers, you can do almost anything with it. We've done some highly complicated UX stuff with it - not as much complex DB stuff but it has all the expected SQL functionality. There is a REST API which we are just starting to use. Overall love the product. We were able to bring on inexperienced developers and get them up to speed very fast using the Caspio community forum, help documentation and online chat support.
3 things. 1) the pricing for the HIPAA compliant environment is a little high and may price smaller projects out of the market. 2) Their professional services stay in their lane and what I mean by that is they have some really cool stuff but they want you to buy their services instead of sharing their insights, if it were my company I'd offer that as an incentive to use the product. 3) Security is by 3rd party cookie (as is almost everyone else in this space) - they'll need to figure out a way to adopt that as Google Chrome moves away from supporting that. I think (hope) that Google continues to drag their feet. Apple already does this on Safari so to make use of native Caspio you have to instruct Safari uses to explicitly enable 3rd party cookies.
We've built a business application that tracks medical procedures enabling a large practice to better comply with HEDIS standards. We built a couple of different scheduling apps - some of them requiring HIPAA level privacy. We built a complex provider selection application that supports a group of businesses that self-insure. This enables their employees to get discounted surgical, imaging, lab and PT services. Saves money for both employer and employee. The big benefit for us was economically building applications. We think we saved over $1M in labor costs building out 6 applications over 2 years if comparing to a similar quote on a native cloud platform.
You can get things done, fast, with very little knowledge of coding that would normally be much more time-consuming and\or expensive to achieve.
Only downside is that the only payment option is credit card. As a UK customer, I get charged FX fees as well as the credit card fees.
Caspio allows me to develop some fairly sophisticated databases for a small number of customers who are totally dependent on them to run their service.
The ability to build a functioning piece of software with very little to no coding knowledge
some capabilities are not yet available. but I trust they will be eventually
we were able to build our teacher registration platform in a few months. to facilitate licensing
Caspio's platform is well designed and provides pretty much everything you need to quickly create database-centric apps. If you are not an SQL whiz they got you covered with powerful click & drag elements that allow to build pretty complex SQL commands. We have never had a problem with deployment on our sites and it provides fast DB access. Just be sure to normalize your database! The ability to embed JS and HTML within HTML BLOCKS has been a tremendous benefit for us as well. With these options there really is very little you can't accomplish within your datapages.
Caspio's trigger and task development environment can be challenging when you begin to develop beyond basic DB tasks. We have found that variables are not your friend in this environment as they tend to really "bog" down the performance of development. Caspio places limits on how many cascading "triggers" can occur within each script and this has caused us some headaches in working around this limitation. An update to the task and trigger environment last year improved performance tremendously but subsequently, there are quirks now in the interaction of the canvas. For instance - after working within the trigger or task canvas for a while a shadowy blur will begin to cover areas that you have worked on. While this does not prevent you from continuing it is very distracting. Regarding the overall management of your assets, you cannot create folders for any of your assets except for datapages. It would be beneficial to be able to organize all of your assets into folders as larger apps will encompass dozens of tables, views, localizations, styles, etc. You also cannot create dynamic global variables. They have to be static only. This means you cannot set a variable in one trigger and access it from another. This could be a limitation of SaaS development but for us, old school developers, it has been frustrating.
We have developed a Scheduling and Resource management system for the medical industry using the Caspio platform. While it has had its challenges we feel this platform was a good choice for us even with its sometimes head-scratching limitations, as you really can get things done quickly. it is a low-code environment and those imitations do get in the way sometimes but we have been able to work around most of these. On the other hand, it is the low-code design that has allowed us to get many functions completed much quicker in addition to having less experienced developers assisting us. Once you get used to the concepts and get over the realization that you have to develop within a very structured environment, there is very little you could not accomplish. Support - While the user community support forum is hit or miss on getting assistance, Caspio's support team has always been very responsive with the exception of just one issue that they keep telling us "they are working on". That issue is not affecting our development efforts, however. Product Management is responsive and pricing, while cleverly designed to get the most $ out of you as possible, is still reasonable IMO.
Caspio genuinely cares about your project. The team utilizes a hands-on approach and includes the client in every aspect of the process. I feel valued as a client, more like a partner in development and deployment of my application.
Location of business. I live in another state. If Caspio had an office in my state, in-person meetings would be possible and more prevalent.
Inefficiencies and Processes that are within my operations space. Caspio simplifies problems with practical solutions that produce profitability for all parties involved.
The clickable interface and flexible tools are easy to use. There are many online resources available to learn how to use the Caspio tool. Most questions can be answered through the online help.
The formatting, if you really pay attention to stylistics (fonts, sizes, positioning) still requires some degree of coding. I was able to develop a workable database but struggled on the final 20 percent of formatting the output as I needed coding assistance.
I am developing a database for subscription. Caspio is flexible and extremely cost-effective in helping to make the data available to a wider audience with ease and simplicity
Powerful Caspio capabilities can be utilized by any company with limited resources. The process of building is very logical and streghtforward, making the whole process seem like fun rather than work.
The pricing model might be a little bit confusing. It would be nice to have more explanation about the components of the price.
Caspio serves excellent as a customer relationship management tool. We also use Caspio as a marketplace for our partners and potential customers.
Our app has been on Caspio for about 5 years- there's a lot to like: The platform itself: Easy to use to quickly get a web app live. Fast rollouts of updates for your users. Endlessly customizable with javascript and css and a REST api that can connect to the outer internet. Lots of helpful features beyond the basic database and its forms and reports (scheduled tasks for data, import/export data, Stripe and PayPal integration, AWS and Zapier integration, etc.). Caspio is a fully featured platform that can be as easily or complexly developed as your needs require. The company: Excellent account and technical support (at least for corporate accounts, which is my only experience). I feel like Caspio is part of my business's team--I can count on them to quickly address issues as they come up and find solutions I'm sometimes unable to see myself. Their ticket support is the best I've seen on any platform.
There's not a lot to dislike, but I do wish the pricing was more flexible, depending on what kind of business and app is used.
Caspio makes it possible to create a fully realized web app with paying customers, with minimum investment. We can also scale capabilities as our business scales. Being able to tailor our resources to the speed of our actual development keeps our business's overhead low.