Just what is ScaffoldHub?

ScaffoldHub is a full-stack web application generator. You pick and choose your entities, relations, fields and validations. You select your front end framework. And just like that, you have a functioning web app. And the code is yours to edit as you want, too. This is approximately a two-month task for a full stack developer, working at 50$/hour. ScaffoldHub does it in 15 minutes, saving you incredible amounts of time and money.

Right out of the box, it comes with features enabling to handle your payments and paid subscriptions securely, over Stripe, authenticate users, manage their permissions and secure your site, send automatic emails, create audit logs that jot down every action taken, easy-to-customise forms, already created based on the entities you’ve created. Furthermore, it also looks handsome in mobile devices, and comes with I18n multi-language package.

Why you should use it?

Prime selling point of scaffoldhub is simple. Efficiency. Creating entities, building relations between them and making sure each of them work as intended is a massive chore. Scaffoldhub does it all for you. It’s easy to get started with the scaffoldhub. Its back end is written on node.js, and for the front end it offers a choice between AntDesign, Material UI, Bootstrap, ElementUI, and Angular Material. Afterwards, you choose whether to host it on SQL or MongoDB. Create your entitites and done.

It automatically handles authentications (signing in with google and the like requires a little customization, but it is there) and sets up permissions and most importantly, security.

If you’d like to kick-start an application, and have 7 hours to spare, you can find a very handy tutorial video here.

It’s code base is very neat and tidy. Starting with such a well-crafted structure makes a good jumping point for further developments. For me, the initial stages of developing are the hardest. Deciding what goes where, how to structure your code, then running into a problem and changing it manually with everything you’ve accomplished so far.

ScaffoldHub comes with all those steps completed. And once you understand how it functions, further additions are a breeze.

What are the cons?

The application it generates functions, and does it well. But it requires tinkering before it comes close to anything user friendly. Exploring the code base can be cumbersome. Well, you’re essentially taking someone else’s project and trying to adapt.

Adding further entities is tedious, given their interconnectedness. And there will be a serious effort required before you familiarize yourself with the ScaffoldHub completely.

All this is being developed by a single person. As a result, new updates are slow, the code is somewhat rigid and getting support can be challenging. Currently, all it has in the way of a community is a Discord server. It has only one channel, doesn’t appear to be run at all. Just going with the bog standard #general. There are usually 10–15 people online, most of whom are developers trying to get their own code working.

There is a documentation page, and it is useful, as long as everything goes according to the plan.

Once you get the product, you’re mostly on your own.

Final words

Product you are getting is doubtlessly worthwhile. It gets you started on your web app with months of progress already done. But if you wanted to be able to use it out-of-the-box, ScaffoldHub might not be for you.

It used to be, that you get to create 3 project for a very affordable price and give it a go, see how it clicked. But currently, that system is gone and replaced with a more common, pay a sum, use it forever. The total is still affordable, compared to the developing costs, but it is on the harsh side if you wanted a trial use.

In my opinion, an open-source work model would solve a good amount of the problems you could potentially run into. Getting the community support behind your back could both enable the ScaffoldHub to reach further than ever before, and provide the users with a portal where they can search and find solutions for their problems.