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Summary – Rapid digitalization of a business flow or MVP appeals to SMEs, but Glide’s no-code platform, built on Google Sheets, quickly hits limits in data volume, performance, security, and complex integrations. Glide turns a spreadsheet into a mobile PWA in a few clicks, offering instant prototyping, a mobile-first interface, visual components, granular permissions, and real-time sync without native app deployment. However, reliance on Sheets’ quotas and data model hinders growth and GDPR compliance. Solution: start with Glide to validate the concept, then migrate to a modular, open-source architecture with a secure API and dedicated cloud, guided by Edana to ensure scalability and ROI.
Glide lets you turn a simple Google Sheet into a professional mobile app in just a few clicks. This promise appeals to SMEs and project stakeholders seeking speed and agility to digitize an internal process or test an MVP without a dedicated development team.
Yet behind this simplicity lie structural choices and inherent limitations of no-code architecture. This comprehensive guide walks IT and operational decision-makers through each stage of the cycle: from defining the use case to structuring the Google Sheet, from visual customization to testing, up until the point where it becomes strategic to move to a custom solution to meet performance, security and scalability requirements.
Understanding Glide’s Foundations
Glide converts Google Sheets into a database and pairs it with a ready-to-use, mobile-first interface. Hosting, updates and multi-screen compatibility are managed automatically, without deploying to an app store.
Basic Principle and Simplified Architecture
At the core of Glide, each row in a Google Sheet becomes a structured record and each column a property available in the app. This approach shifts the backend into Google Sheets, ensuring rapid setup and almost instant onboarding.
Unlike traditional architecture, there’s no dedicated server, relational database or container to manage. Users focus exclusively on the spreadsheet’s structure while Glide handles the presentation layers, near-real-time synchronization and production of a Progressive Web App (PWA) installable from a browser.
This simplification reduces time-to-market and lowers initial costs. However, reliability and performance remain tied to Google Sheets’ capabilities, especially regarding data volume and advanced business logic.
Key Strengths of the Solution
Prototyping speed is undeniable: a functional interface can appear in under ten minutes after connecting to the Google Sheet. Glide offers a range of visual components (lists, cards, detail views, forms) that automatically adapt to mobile mode.
Role and permission management is built in via visibility conditions, providing granular control over data access. Computed columns enable simple operations (concatenations, sums, conditions) without writing any scripts.
Finally, publishing as a PWA occurs without external approval, avoiding the delays and constraints of app stores. Users share a link, the app opens in the browser or installs on the home screen like a native app.
Illustration in Switzerland
A Swiss logistics SME without a dedicated IT team used Glide to replace a manual booking process with a customer portal. In less than two hours, they structured a Google Sheet into “Clients,” “Services” and “Bookings” tables and set up an interface for appointment scheduling and real-time tracking.
This implementation demonstrated Glide’s ability to digitize a simple business flow quickly. Managers could focus their efforts on optimizing data rather than development, validating the concept with end users before considering a more robust evolution.
The example shows that with under 200 daily records and moderate changes, the no-code approach delivers agility without compromising service reliability.
Getting Started with Glide: Structuring Your Project
The success of a Glide app depends on clearly defining the use case and the quality of the data model in Google Sheets. A coherent structure ensures stability and scalability, regardless of processed volumes.
Defining the Use Case
Before opening Glide, it’s essential to delineate the app’s functional scope. Identify the specific business problem to solve, the target users and the primary workflow to avoid overloading the prototype and creating a confusing interface.
A service booking system, a customer portal or an internal dashboard each require specific data models and screens. Focusing on a single flow initially enables rapid iteration on delivered value.
Decide early whether the app will remain internal or open to external users to guide permission settings and the publication mode (private authenticated or public).
Structuring Your Google Sheet Intelligently
Each table should correspond to a separate tab: main entities (Clients, Products, Projects) and junction tables for complex relationships. A column should contain only one uniform data type to facilitate Glide’s automatic filtering and sorting generation.
Using consistent formats for dates, amounts and identifiers ensures reliable interpretation. Explicit column names simplify view and action creation while easing maintenance.
Anticipating relationships (for example, a “Booking Details” tab linking Clients and Services) reduces the proliferation of computed columns and improves model clarity.
Customizing the Interface and Logic
Once the structure is in place, Glide automatically generates a mobile-first interface. Simply adjust the components: dynamic lists, illustrated cards or forms, based on the business context. Styles (colors, typography) can be set in just a few clicks.
Custom actions (adding rows, sending emails, conditional navigation) address simple flows without code. Computed columns enable dynamic statuses or generate contextual text directly within the app.
This rapid customization enables a rich prototype ready for internal stakeholder testing before any broader deployment.
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Testing, Publishing and Evolving Your PWA
A poorly tested Glide prototype can be as fragile as a hastily coded solution. Rigorous testing ensures a smooth experience and rapid user adoption.
Testing Strategies
Plan scenarios covering normal usage, edge cases and input errors to verify app robustness. Test handling of empty fields, incorrect values or unauthorized access attempts to reveal breakage risks.
Involve end users in validation sessions to highlight navigation friction and unmet expectations. Their feedback guides adjustments to menu structure, button placement and error messages.
Simulating slow connection conditions and verifying HTTP latency handling confirm PWA stability, especially for mobile teams or sites with limited coverage.
PWA Deployment and Sharing Modes
Glide publishes the app as a web link installable on a smartphone’s home screen, bypassing app stores. This mode simplifies both internal and external distribution, ensuring instant updates with each Google Sheet change.
The choice between public or private access is configured via authentication: restrict to a specific domain, limit by email or open with no barrier. Administrators can adjust these settings at any time from the Glide console.
This flexibility adapts to SMEs’ real needs: rapid rollout to a small team or launching customer portals without regulatory store constraints.
Maintenance and Evolutions
Extending the app to new use cases often requires adding tables or columns in the Google Sheet. Glide syncs these additions without manual redeployment, reducing production lead times.
For frequent updates, maintain concise documentation of the structure and internal processes to ease onboarding of new contributors or external vendors.
Finally, monitoring performance (row counts, load times, sync errors) helps anticipate when to transition to a dedicated solution as volumes or complexity exceed no-code capabilities.
Glide’s Limits and Custom Solution Path
Beyond a certain data volume, business logic or security requirement, no-code architectures become restrictive. A custom, modular and scalable solution then guarantees performance, control and deep integration with existing systems.
Technical Limits and Data Volume
Google Sheets isn’t designed for more than a few tens of thousands of rows per tab. Response times degrade, filters throttle and the PWA may freeze under heavy synchronization.
Complex queries, aggregations or multi-step workflows can’t be handled in Glide without constant back-and-forth with the spreadsheet. Real-time calculations or advanced reporting then demand an API and an optimized database.
When the app serves hundreds of simultaneous users, monthly quota limits or plan-based user caps hinder growth and balloon the no-code budget.
Security, Compliance and Integration
Compliance requirements (GDPR, industry standards) sometimes mandate strict data controls, audit trails and encryption-at-rest policies. Glide, via Google Sheets, doesn’t always offer the required level of governance.
Integrating existing business systems (ERP, CRM, single sign-on) requires dedicated connectors or middleware. A custom architecture supports secure APIs, granular encryption and real-time event orchestration.
For mission-critical services, on-premises or private-cloud hosting better addresses sovereignty and certification needs—something a standard no-code PWA cannot provide.
Case Study: Transitioning to a Dedicated Architecture
An event management organization started with Glide to centralize registrations and schedules. With over 5,000 annual participants and integrated billing modules, limitations quickly appeared around PDF generation, advanced segmentation and asynchronous workflows.
They decided to migrate to a custom solution built on microservices, a PostgreSQL database and a React front end. The open-source approach preserved flexibility, avoided vendor lock-in and guaranteed scalable growth at a reasonable cost.
This case shows that Glide accelerates concept validation while custom engineering takes over to industrialize the service and fully integrate it with existing systems.
Glide: A Springboard to a Custom Mobile Solution
Glide offers unparalleled prototyping speed and ease of use to quickly digitize an internal process or launch an MVP. Its Google Sheets configuration, automatically generated mobile interfaces and code-free actions make it a powerful tool for simple use cases.
However, growing needs in data volume, complex business logic, security and integration soon reveal no-code limits. That’s when you call in engineers to design a modular, scalable and secure architecture combining open source and custom services.
Our Edana experts guide organizations through this transition: from auditing your existing Glide setup to implementing a hybrid or bespoke solution focused on ROI, performance and long-term business value. They can assess your situation, define a roadmap and steer the industrialization of your mobile application.
