What kind of applications can you build in Mendix?

Mendix is a low-code platform. When developing your applications you can use ready-made building blocks and a visual builder. That speeds up the development process and means people with less programming experience can build and extend apps too. This way of developing is still fairly new to many people. That is why we are regularly asked what kind of applications you can build with Mendix. In this article we will show you.

You can build almost anything in Mendix

The fact that so much is standardised in Mendix does not mean you cannot build complex things with it. Mendix is built out of HTML, CSS, JavaScript and Java. Anything you can build in those programming languages, you can add to Mendix as well. The good news: in those languages you can build almost anything. On top of that, Mendix is very easy to connect to other applications.

Even so, Mendix suits some applications better than others.

The applications Mendix is best suited to

Applications with Excel as their basis

Many companies run into the limits of Excel at some point. Working together in a single Excel file with several users is awkward, and sometimes there is a wish to make the application available online. We are then often asked to turn the Excel file into a Mendix application. Mendix is very good at collecting data and doing calculations. Exactly the things Excel is often used for in the first place. We have built a lot of financial applications in Mendix, for example. We wrote this blog article about that earlier.

Several applications that have to talk to each other

A big advantage of Mendix is that it is very easy to connect to other applications. Including applications that were not built in Mendix. That lets you make processes flow seamlessly into one another. We recently built a Mendix application in which employees can control several other applications, so they only have to log in in one place and do not have to keep switching between applications.

The combination of a mobile app and a web application

To build a web application you usually use different programming languages and different logic than for building a mobile application. Do you need both? Then that usually means double the work. It also often means having to bring in several parties, because each application requires different knowledge. With Mendix it works differently. You can build both your web app and your mobile app in Mendix, so you can use the same programming languages and logic. On top of that, you can use the same data sources for all the applications. That saves you a lot of time and money.

Multi-tenant applications (one application for several clients)

A multi-tenant application means you let several clients use one application. They log in to the application and land in their own environment, in which they only have access to their own data. The styling of the application can differ per client too. Mendix is very well suited to this kind of application, because it makes it possible to keep data separate within a single database.

Commercial platforms and portals

Commercial platforms and customer portals are also very well suited to Mendix. For Transporting Highway, for instance, we built a platform that brings together companies that want cars transported and the transport operators themselves. We needed a lot of elements for it. Think of geo, complex calculations, a back office and generating documents. All things that can be arranged very well in Mendix.

Questionnaires

There are, of course, all kinds of simple tools for sending out questionnaires. Google Forms, for example. But if you want to integrate those questionnaires into an (automated) process, Mendix is very well suited to it. For TeamGrow, for example, we made sure periodic questionnaires are sent to employees automatically. The answers are collected automatically and turned into a report. That report is then automatically shared internally as well.

Microservices

Mendix is not only powerful for full application development, it is also excellent for creating microservices. Such a microservice could be a calculation, for example, like a mortgage calculation. Other applications can then use that service, even if those applications were not built in Mendix.

Surprising things you can do with Mendix

As we said: you can build almost anything in Mendix. Among other things, we have had Mendix convert the handwriting on scanned documents into digital text, and control a robot.

Geo is easy to work into Mendix applications too. We have created interactive maps for various clients that can exchange data with the rest of the application. You can read more about this in this blog.

In the future we expect AI and Augmented Reality to play an ever larger role in the applications we build too. The combination of geo and Augmented Reality, for instance, can be a very powerful one. A great deal is already possible in that area.

For websites, webshops, social platforms or games we would not recommend Mendix

Mendix is mainly suited to process-oriented applications. That is why we would not recommend it if you want to develop a website, webshop, social platform or game. It can be done, by adding a lot of traditional code to Mendix, but it is not what Mendix is fundamentally good at. What we would recommend: combining your website or webshop with Mendix. Build your website in WordPress, for example, but build your customer portal in Mendix and connect the two.

Curious whether Mendix is suitable for your application too?

We are happy to help you think it through. Get in touch.