An exploration of the the future of Pyro and AshAdmin

I’ve been playing with ash _admin.
from my point of view, pyro and ash_admin try solve the same “technical” problem.

But allow me to describe a market perspective:

Solution Space Perspective

In web frameworks (Laravel and Django) the problem is called admin panel
In ERPs (Odoo, Frappe) it’s called interface builder

Sexy Sass - have the best looking UI

in most ‘Sexy SaaS’ (think AirBnb, Spotify, Netflix) admin panels are not customer facing . and are mostly used for back-office. Mostly because the UI is branded and the UX is crafted starting from figma, and designers like to have more freedom building their design system.
I would tag ‘Sexy’ any saas where the business decision is to have appeal as key success factor.
In a UI design project, appeal is achieved by 2 factors:

• beauty : this can be subjective but human are naturally drawn to ‘harmonious’ designs.
• and uniqueness. if something is beautiful but not rare, it becomes less appealing

Sexy SaaS is mainly built using Figma and custom design system from the ground-up (examples: https://storybook.js.org/showcase/projects)

ERPs interface builder - are well architectured and are implementation complete

In ERP Interface Builders is what is used to build customers facing screens. In an ERP it is common to have a few thousands screens.

So Interface Builders are more battle tested and more feature complete than ‘admin panels’

So personally as an engineer I like to ‘steal’ from Odoo because their GUI paradigms are old and ahead of everybody else IMO.

But as product designer, ERP can be ugly to my eyes (even if Frappe and Microsoft dynamics doesn’t look bad)

Admin panels from web frameworks - are junior Interface builder

The architecture paradigm on admin panels from web frameworks is the the same as ERP interface builders.

And the best looking admin panels don’t inspire me either.
IMO an interesting approach is retool.com
retool was a backend agnostic admin panel, I just rechecked to day I see they pivoted to a low-code app builder. wow. I will revisit them.

No-code / low-code App Builders have the best ergonomics

So where I do find better (ergonomics and looks) Interface builders. Well it’s in No-Code solutions. My benchmark and inspirations are Fibery and DirectUS (I have to recheck retool)

Gartner Style magic quadrant.

So here is my opinionated summary

• Sexy Sass - have the best looking UI
• ERPs interface builder - are well architectured and are implementation complete
• No-code / low-code App Builders have the best ergonomics

I don’t have a “magic quadrant” yet. And there are more than 2 axes of classification:

• Sex Appeal
• Coverage
• Ergonomics
• Backend Agnostic

But regardless of targeting a niche or mass markets, I feels that these criteria can segment the space pretty well.

Disclaimer: This is an opinionated post, not a study. Ash is great.

What about Tools and Skills

• Sexy SaaS: World class Designer in Figma, mastery of graphic design. (Design System), Handoff to Front-End engineer (a JS fanatic most of the time haha). The output is a Design System that can be shared to the public.

• ERP Interface builder: Just compose the interface in a “Studio tool”, the old school way, with drag and drop. Or use an XML syntax, well documented. No graphic design skills necessary. But Just good copywriting and good common sense. High level knowledge of UI design is welcome. The Design system is build once, and reskinned every few years. But most of the time it’s locked in the past. Opportunities for Redesign are rare.

• No-code: they target entrepreneurs. So these tools have the best ergonomics and are the easiest to use. These tools can make a lot of money (can be billions$)

• Admin panels from web frameworks: these are built using DSLs by nerds like you and me. People who enjoy vim or vscode. Most of us are bad ui designers and prefer keyboard to mouse. These tools are mostly free or make a few money < 10M$

Is it Business Opportunity for Ash ?

What about a product called “Ash Studio” similar to retool.com / fibery.io / directus.io
I would call it just Ash (one word) and rebrand the framework as “Ash Framework”. The UI DSL will stay open-source and free forever. Nerds like me will stay happy
The UI code will be payed for, open-source, with hosting options. The UI code can be self hosted and hosted on our cloud, and does connect to your backend.
Nerds hate making good UI so they can ask their boss to pay for UI.
I did pay for tailwind UI and I am happy.

With an open core model. This will bring more money to the core team, and thus allows for a better velocity and exposure while still staying small.