Hey Tape community
LowCode is my default for internal apps and workflows — and in many cases it’s exactly what spreadsheets used to be for me, just more structured and more scalable.
That’s why I think the most valuable product feedback isn’t “what works” — it’s the rare moments when we temporarily fall back to older tools. If Tape is replacing spreadsheets for many of us, then these fallback moments are probably the best signals for improving product fit even further.
One example from my side: calculation of interest for one year
I needed to calculate interest over several months.
My first instinct: do it in Tape.
Then I realized I’d need a record per period (or even per day/month depending on the setup), meaning I’d be creating a whole year’s worth of records just to run a quick calculation.
Yes, I could have generated those records via an import or automation — but compared to doing it in a spreadsheet, it felt like too much setup effort for a probably short-lived task.
So I used a spreadsheet just for that moment.
A question that could help product development on the long run
When did you put Tape aside and revert to “old methods” (spreadsheets, scripts, manual workflows…)? What was your “fallback moment” in the last year?
Let’s collect real-world “spreadsheets won for now” cases — because those are probably the most valuable insights for where Tape can win even more.
Hi @dirk_s there are two things that I can think of off the bat:
A budget for a large project - I really wanted to do this in Tape and I did. But honestly, whilst Tape has some definite plusses, it should have been in a spreadsheet. If I’m being honest I probably will end up moving it into one (either that or building some web front-end for it ).
Time based data-sets - I’ve had a number of instances this year where my first instinct has been to put time based data-sets into Tape, only to end up pulling it out and putting it into InfluxDB. Even with the new multiline text field, it’s just not as easy to manipulate and visualise.
A bonus one now I am thinking about it: I’m in the middle of building quite a large system which involves forms, users, organisations and products. I wanted to use Tape as the backend for that but in the end it was simpler to build the whole thing away from Tape. I will say though that I’ve built the system with all the APIs needed so that the operational/admin side will sit in Tape and feed into the system I’ve built externally.
For me that kinda sums up how things should be: Use the tool that is most appropriate for the task at hand, but make them talk to each other and ideally have a central place to control.
Tape fits that central control perfectly. Another example is my Link Shortener - I drop a URL into a Tape form, it creates a record, talks to my Worker, builds a new short URL, creates a QR code so all the information is in Tape, but it’s a Worker that does the redirects etc.
When did you put Tape aside and revert to “old methods” (spreadsheets, scripts, manual workflows…)? What was your “fallback moment” in the last year?
).