Glide

For a long time, businesses and individuals have faced adversity in building custom digital tools, which is due in large part to the complexity and expense tied to traditional software development. The demand for quick, flexible, and inexpensive software development and tools drove and continues to fuel the growth of the no-code movement — and Glide is in the driver's seat propelling the change. 

Glide, led by CEO David Siegel, is a no-code software platform that allows people to create powerful web and mobile applications from a simple spreadsheet — without coding a single line of code! By leveraging existing data from sources like Google Sheets, excel, Airtable, or their own tables, businesses can build fully functional applications designed specifically to the needs of the organization. Glide's mission is to make software creation accessible to everyone ranging from one-person start-ups to enterprise level teams to provide solutions for real world problems using custom digital tools. When you start with a data source, Glide automatically builds an "app" - it is up to the user to customize the app with a drag-and-drop builder. Interactive lists, forms, calendars, charts, check boxes, etc. The other features the service offers include user authentication, easily managing role-based access, and real-time sync between data and app. All of these features are essential to making the app safe and efficient to use. There are integrations with Zapier, Make, and webhooks for automation, and Actions gives you app logic and workflows built-in to apps based on user input.

The company has added AI-oriented capabilities to mediate automation and personalization even more without friction. One-third of their revenue now comes from teams actively utilizing their AI integration demonstrating very strong customer interest in intelligent features that automate app building and increases productivity for teams. Glide is a SaaS business that operates as a subscription tiered public company with plans such as a Free Plan, Starter Plan, Pro Plan, Team Plan, and Business Plan, which offers features, limits for use, and customization options as you move up the plans depending on the subscription and brand. Pricing is based on the number of users, data storage, depth of the app, and brand customization. Glide also has usage-based billing and generates income by charging its customers for extra rows of data usage for data, file storage and advanced integrations. This modular approach allows all sizes of business to freely scale their usage and it has helped drive the strong revenue success the company has achieved to date.

Glide experienced a financial spike when they secured $20 million in Series A funding in April 2022, led by Benchmark, with participation from Y Combinator, First Round Capital, and SV Angel. The round brought their total funding to over $27 million and gave them a post-money valuation of ~$100 million. By 2025 Glide reported $15 million in annual revenue—a sizable climb from $2.3 million just two years earlier. Although profit was not disclosed, the growth trajectory and increasing number of users suggest a significant move toward continued profitability for the firm. In 2023, more than 1 million apps had been built using their services, for over 100,000 companies, and they served as diverse as logistics dashboards to customer portals and classroom apps to HR applications across many hundreds of industry segments. Staff continued to scale with venues, as Glide now has over 114 team members across all six continents including North America, Europe, and Asia, allowing them to offer swift support, local service, and informed expansion decisions.

In the crowded no-code space, Glide competes with the likes of Softr, which is known for its ease of use when developing web portals utilizing Airtable or Google Sheets; Appy Pie, a no-code suite for websites, and apps, and chatbots, and workflows; AppSheet, Google’s no-code option where users can build data-driven apps from a spreadsheet or database; Bubble, all about deep customization and fully responsive web applications; and Airtable - which is a hybrid spreadsheet-database that also has app-like views and workflows. Nevertheless, Glide has a strong niche with its spreadsheet-first approach and preference for clean user interfaces with very little learning curve. This product is especially popular among small-to-medium businesses, and responsive teams needing functional apps to be delivered quickly without traditional development storied schedules and resource commitments. 

As we look ahead to the future of Glide, they have plans for deeper AI integrations, expanded third party connectivity, and also more advanced backend offerings—with all of this increasing the power of what users can do, while Fidelity of use. As CEO David Siegel explains, "We see software development needing to be as easy and accessible as editing a spreadsheet. That's the future Glide is building." With an increasing user base, strong backers, and a focus on accessibility and efficiency, Glide will soon play a much bigger role in the no-code revolution. As the need for custom software continues to rise across industries, their unique and inclusive approach to app development is helping to redefine how they build technology as a global community.

Click here to access Glide's website.