Simply put - Their people and their platform, both of equal value and importance. How adaptable and relatively easy to use their Low Code platform is. I tested more than 10 other products over a 2 month period, and was feeling quite hopeless until I stumbled across Zudy. The closest matches in our testing were outsystems and appsheet (for our particular needs), both of those options were far too costly for a start up. I was particularly fond of appsheet for its ease of use but, struggled to get a response from their sales team, and then learned of the $15k per year sql cost. Vinyl was a perfect match for our needs and future growth needs. Beyond the product itself, the people and support are amazing. They are a shining example of how every new customer onboarding experience should be with a software platform. I have 20 years experience in ERP/CRM and backend systems and their process was by far the best I've ever experienced.
It's been a fresh and pleasant surprise to find this company, no issues at all in the first 3 months. I received help daily from their support team. They even setup a dedicated slack support channel where I can tap into their support team for random questions.
Building out a custom CRM and customer portal that taps into our backend data. Their tools allow for easy integration to a ton of backend data sources.
We were promised a compressed time frame (4 months) and reduced customization costs to achieve MVP status. Zudy delivered on time and within budget. We are now ready to use the system for production applications and look forward to the continued development of additional features and functionality.
We have not yet encountered any disappointing features or surprises.
Supports faster and lower-cost integrations to 3rd party applications up and downstream. We were also are able to develop a wide range of features and functionality without significant development cost and long lead time.
It's hard to pick just one thing. The training videos are first-class. Their training course teaches database design in the context of their graphical development tool, which was intuitive for me as someone who does not have a computer science degree. The training platform allows you to follow along hands-on at your own pace. The database design just makes everything else in Vinyl come together automatically. No coding. As a programmer for 20 years, I always found myself deep in the code, re-coding things I had coded many times that should not require any code. Your resulting application has a clean, fresh look that anyone would be proud of. Vinyl includes an enterprise-grade Backend as a Service and a frontend development tool, both of which use Zudy's graphical editor that seamlessly transitions between back-end and front-end development. All of the plumbing and infrastructure is handled for you, and the front-end creation is just configuration and logic. I looked at every no-code/low-code option on the market before going with Vinyl. They all had one of two failings: 1) All of these systems need guardrails and someone who can provide some talent to extend functionality. Some of these systems create their own language, and some are incomprehensible. Vinyl extends with C# and Javascript, which means it is easy to find someone to assist you with extending the application. 2) Every other no-code/low-code platform had prohibitive pricing. With Vinyl, you pay one price and have unlimited users and applications.
Zudy has a strange way of marketing. It is more like word of mouth, so It's the best well-kept secret in the industry. If they had done more marketing, I would have been freed from my 3GL existence years ago.
I work in the travel and logistics space. Vinyl allows me to create robust applications that would have been a daunting effort in a traditional 3GL environment.
I was amazed by Zudy's ability to rapidly deploy value-add applications and communicate with our preexisting ERP system in real-time. This type of application development is a total game changer when it comes to solving everyday business workflow needs.
So far, I only have positive things to say. One thing to keep in mind is that it forces you to really understand your business process before you build your application. Overall this is a good thing, but definitely takes some time in terms of understanding what your needs are.
Financial Reporting; CRM; Inventory Management; Fleet / Vehicle Management; Workforce Efficiency; Human Resource; Employee On-Boarding; (just to name a few)...
In my experience, I really appreciate Vinyl's ability to connect to multiple sources and consolidate the information in a succinct and valuable manner. I also appreciate accessing Vinyl via a web browser, and hence it's platform flexibility. The API integration is very helpful when interfacing with numerous other applications and extracting information for consumption. Leveraging HTML, CSS, and other formatting options, the possibilities are endless in regards to the look and feel of Vinyl, which is great for customers. Vinyl can be highly customized and personalized down to the user. Avoiding the need to code is not just less troublesome, it is also makes development a lot quicker, which is of utmost importance for customers who's time is of utmost importance. And all customers want a quick turn around, in my experience.
There are two major functions I believe would make the usability and overall perceived and realized value of Vinyl increase: a better visual representation of the sql processes (tables, joins, etc.) and the ability to input raw sql code and have Vinyl build DO's, sub Qs, etc. These are small request compared to what I can already do.
As a developer, I have been solving many different types of problems including order review and tracking, scheduled workflow emails, customer management, business intel, and scheduling to name a few. I anticipate and hope to leverage the platform to perform other tasks like automated ordering, inventory management, and more complicated workforce management.
Vinyl is highly flexible and customizable making it the perfect solution to integrate into our unique global business. Through the Vinyl platform, our team members can architect and deploy turn-key applications that enable them to work more productively and spend time on value-added tasks.
We are a happy customer at this point in time.
Vinyl has helped our organization solve problems across Accounts Receivable, Internal Controls, Sales, and Financial Reporting. A huge benefit of the Vinyl platform is it aggregates data and information from multiple solutions and shapes it into a format that is easy to digest and use by the end consumer. In addition, our organization has become less reliant on managing our business through MS Excel spreadsheets which in return has enabled our employees to work more efficiently as the applications are tailored to their day-to-day operations.
As someone with previous SQL experience but no direct programming experience, Vinyl took some time to get used to but now feels like second nature. The beginner training provided by Zudy gave us a solid conceptual foundation of how Vinyl works and got us kickstarted with our project early. The learning curve was pretty linear, so even a basic working knowledge of Vinyl enabled us to start meaningful development work on our project. Essentially every time we've asked ourselves "I wonder if Vinyl can do X?", we've discovered the answer is "Yes!". Connecting to external data sources via API has allowed us to integrate and automate many of our business processes that were previously manual. We have a lot of control over our UI, user base/security, and the ability to build complex reports for our clients - all of which is unavailable with our preexisting software solution. Far and away my favorite part of working with Zudy is their outstanding support. Our consultants at Zudy are unfailingly knowledgeable and helpful, and have immensely contributed to the success of our project. I love the fact that Vinyl is adding new features and capabilities all the time, so we will be able to continuously improve our application and benefit our clients by taking advantage of those features.
The written documentation/knowledge base for Vinyl exists but it a little difficult to sift through. Since our Zudy counterparts are so responsive, this tends to not be a direct issue because we always get the answer or solution we are looking for from them, but they could spare their people some time by having documentation easier to search through.
Vinyl has made it much more efficient for us to perform extract/transform/load processes on external data. Setting up parsing rules for a new data source is much faster than our previous software solution. We are always expanding the data we synthesize for our clients, so this provides a continuous benefit. In addition, our Vinyl app will enable our organization to provide new product offerings to our clients because we can continuously develop new functionality within our apps and scale up our user base very easily.
The usability is exceptional. The support you receive from Zudy is top notch. They are easy to do business with and honest, ethical people. Ultimately it is the problems that Zudy resolves for my organization that I like best!!
There is nothing about Zudy that I dislike. Even the price was reasonable and something to feel good about.
Our databases are now able to talk to each other. We are able to get at data that was impossible for us to see. We are able to automate static reports that were old the day we received them and required much labor to create and replace them with a live Zudy report that is not old and once built requires no more man power to create. We are making smarter, more informed decisions because of Zudy.