You have developed a new front end to collect further customer information. Whether it's an application, website, or desktop software, you've put in a lot of effort to building it out and getting it ready.
Finally, you have a rudimentary database where you're feeding everything into it, and you feel that it will be enough for the time being. However, manually searching the records and managing the business operations from a pure database is not sustainable in the long run. So it's always a good idea to build out a proper overlay such as an Admin Panel.
This kind of interface helps provide a concise way to run all necessary administrative tasks, from customer support maintenance to resetting and creating internal user access levels.
But, of course, there are a few different ways to approach this and many different ways to do this the wrong way. It all depends on your in-house level of expertise and how many resources you want to dedicate to building out a simple yet fully functional admin panel.
The admin panel is the final connector between your tables and databases and the new external information. Due to this, it's maybe best to go with something easy to integrate.
Starting from scratch
You may think your tech stack needs to be pure in the sense that everything is built from the ground up. There are a few important reasons to do that. Simply put, you have complete control over all the code you've written.
However, at the same time, that ends up being a double-edged sword as that knowledge could be lost if specific developers leave. At the same time, building it from the ground up leaves it prone to being outdated sooner as the development was done slowly, with minimal external collaboration.
Additionally, there are steps and design work to build an admin panel from the ground up. Regardless of the help you get with some pre-defined templates. Finally, as with all development work, introducing new code into a system may lead to system breakage and more errors to review, fix, and handle.
Using the power of open source
Again, if you want to take the task upon yourself to handle the development and creation of an admin panel, then an open-source solution may also be something to consider.
You can head right on over to GitHub, which cleanly points you in the direction of where to find the best open source admin panels available. So whether you're looking for Bootstrap help or want to use Django, there's an extensive library that's out there to help.
But remember, that's all it still is. It isn't a plug-and-play solution or framework but a library of code to use on your site. It may not be as system-breaking as building from the ground up or as tricky, but it will still have a steeper learning curve than you might have time for in this fast-paced world of development and IT.
Use a turnkey solution from the get-go.
How about taking the option not to have to develop it. Eliminate the need for development, QA, testing, and bug fixing, and choose an already working option. StationDB has an offer that will give you a stable admin panel ready to use as soon as you sign up and integrate it with your existing system architecture.
Despite not being the same as a spreadsheet, it comes packed with a host of features that include the latest admin panels on offer—for example, creating, editing, updating, or deleting fields directly from the administration platform without the cumbersome need to build out queries. In addition, user access can be done quickly for both tables and fields as is needed giving you the flexibility for permissions and rights.
The best part is that there's an excellent free option for developers to get started with, as well as a low-cost solution targeted towards startups, where we handle the heavy lifting. So you can focus on growing your startup, and we can take the backend worry of an admin panel.
This bonus is precious as since this is a managed service option, there's always developer and customer support available if there are any issues while using our platform. In addition, we regularly update our system, meaning that you won't have to worry about your admin panel getting stale relative to the rest of the tech stack you're running or considering running.
These upgrades include the ongoing fees, which help you budget accordingly. Regarding our prices, they will be considerably lower than the development costs of creating an admin panel from either the ground up or with an open-source library to work with.
In the end
Regardless, an admin panel is essential as that aggregator of your data points. However, it needs to have a fraction of design behind it to ensure that it is easy to use for non-tech-savvy users and boasts a set of useful features to reduce complexity and improve efficiencies.
Since there's data involved, additional security layers will need to be considered and put into place beyond a simple password for server access. These are adding more workload to developers that are probably already nearing capacity as they work and focus on other feature lists, bug fixing, and QA.
Even if you have an army of developers and extensive resources, it still doesn't mean it's necessary to build an admin panel. The core functionalities of admin panels are relatively the same, hence the plethora of free open source code out there to utilize. That's not where the high costs come from, but from the human resources needed to implement it. Remove those costs today when you sign up with StationDB.
