Building Super Apps with Templates in No-Code Platforms

Building Super Apps with Templates in No-Code Platforms

With the rise of super app development around the world, software engineering has shifted its focus toward repeatability and scalability. (If you’re new to the concept, here’s a quick primer on what a super app actually is.) At the core of this shift is the growing use of templates—predefined building blocks that streamline how super apps are constructed, whether through no-code tools or traditional code.

Templates are a powerful tool in super app development. They provide clear boundaries, spark creativity, and make your app highly flexible and adaptable to different markets—helping you stay competitive.

At ACENji, our vision embraces this modular, template-driven approach. In this article, we’ll explore how to apply templates effectively when building super apps, how ACENji does it uniquely with tiles, and how other platforms either embrace—or overlook—templates in their development strategy.

• The Big Question: Why Are Templates Important When Building Super Apps?

Today’s super app development often feels like it’s stuck in the Stone Age—hundreds of developers chiseling away at code as if carving forms into marble. But that approach can only scale so far. A new generation of super apps is emerging, powered by low-code and no-code platforms, where templates are central to architecture.(For more on this, check out our breakdown of the core components of a no-code platform.)

Embracing templates doesn’t just speed up development—it transforms your SaaS enterprise strategy and gives you a real edge in the market.

• ACENji’s Architecture: Templates at the Core

When we designed ACENji’s architecture, we made templates a core, built-in component of our development system. In fact, our patent formally defines a template as the foundation of what we call a tile—a first-class citizen in our platform’s building block system. (You can explore the full super app architecture evolution here.)

Simply put: you can’t create a tile without first creating a template.

This structure is intentionally powerful in its simplicity: apply generics, use abstraction, and scale with clarity and control.

Here’s a direct quote from our patent:

“The no-code software development platform of claim 1 wherein users may at least one or more of use a template, create a template, and forgo templates, wherein created templates may further be made available to at least one or more of individuals, groups, and members within an authorization hierarchy, the groups further determined by at least one or more of individual identity, group identity, assignment identity, and geolocation features.”

As you can see, we didn’t just define templates—we embedded them deeply into the authorization and authentication model, ensuring that templates carry not only structure but governed behavior from the very beginning.

• Inspired by Object-Oriented Software Principles

In the spirit of Trygve Reenskaug, the creator of “Working with Objects” and the OOram Software Engineering method, we carried over his object-oriented vision into ACENji’s design. The result is a truly object-oriented no-code architecture, where structure and behavior are modular, scalable, and reusable.

• One Template → Many Tiles → Tile Collections

To clarify the power of our model:

• One tile is always derived from one template.
• That template can then generate hundreds or thousands of tiles.
• These tiles can be assembled into collections—each with behavior, style, and logic—reused across web or mobile interfaces, and even exposed as APIs.

With ACENji, you’re not just building screens—you’re building an ecosystem of smart, reusable objects that make super app nocode development faster, more reliable, and enterprise-ready.

• How E-Commerce Sites Are Built with Tiles—and How No-Code Makes It Better

Take a typical e-commerce site today—whether it’s a global giant like Amazon or Temu—and you’ll find it’s essentially built from collections of tiles. That’s right. At its core, the layout is a repetitive yet scalable structure of modular components.

Let’s break it down:

On the homepage—the most visually important space—you’ll typically see a condensed tile for each product, containing:

• 📸 Product image
• 💲 Price tag
• 🔖 Discount or promotion
• 📈 Units sold so far
• 🔁 Price fluctuation (in percent)
• ⭐ Star rating and number of reviews

This format repeats over and over, row after row. When you click a tile, you’re taken to a more detailed view—still built using the same tile-based logic, sometimes expanded with additional tiles like a shopping cart button, variant selectors, or related items.

• Now Imagine All This Built with No-Code Templates

Now picture this entire system being built using a no-code platform like ACENji, where every tile starts as a template—designed once and reused infinitely.

Here’s how it works:

• A product tile template is created with defined dimensions, styling, and layout, then placed precisely on the canvas.
• Another tile can be placed next to it using the same template or a variation—forming rows, columns, or responsive grids.
• You define clickable events, such as opening a detailed view of the product or sending the user to a shopping cart.
• Every tile has the option to connect to live data sources or be exposed via API, enabling you to scale effortlessly and integrate with backend systems.

This is the future of ecommerce development—modular, scalable, and powered by templates in a no-code architecture.

With ACENji, this isn’t a mockup—it’s production-ready from day one.

Here is more detailed comparison when comes to super app building

• Traditional Code vs No-Code Templates: Building E-Commerce the Smart Way

• The Hidden Power of Templates: Exposing APIs at the Tile Level

In traditional development, exposing an API usually happens at the backend level—developers define routes, build endpoints, secure access, and manually connect UI components to them. This process is complex, time-consuming, and often siloed between frontend and backend teams.

But in ACENji’s no-code architecture, each tile—built from a template—can optionally expose its own API, making it not just a UI element, but a self-contained, reusable, API-enabled microservice.

• Why Exposing APIs from Tiles Changes Everything

9.1 Decentralized Reuse

Each tile becomes a modular unit of functionality. Whether it’s a product card, a user profile, or a map tile, you can:

• Reuse it across pages or projects
• Trigger it via an external call (e.g., /tile/product/123)
• Return structured data like JSON or even HTML fragments

9.2 Faster Integrations

You don’t need to build new APIs every time:

• The API lives in the tile itself, bound to the template’s logic
• It inherits default permissions, structure, and data bindings
• You can plug it into third-party systems, mobile apps, or partner platforms instantly

9.3 Standardized Structure Across Teams

Because tiles are built from templates:

• Every exposed tile API follows a consistent naming and behavior convention
• Your engineering and product teams can rely on predictable output
• Security, logging, and versioning can be centrally controlled via the template

9.4 Super App Marketplace Enablement

Want to open your tiles to partners? API exposure enables:

• A template marketplace where others can install, fork, and invoke tiles via APIs
• Paid or free access, with endpoint limits or scoped keys
• A truly composable super app system with plug-and-play parts

9.5 Real Example: Product Tile API in E-Commerce

Suppose you have a tile template for a product. Once built, it can expose:

Expose api from nocode template

You can call this from:

• A mobile app
• A partner website
• A third-party recommendation engine
• A marketing automation tool

No need to duplicate logic. The tile API handles it.

As far we know no big super app today has built in template architecture. The nocode platforms do have built those. Here are some comparison how nocode and low code platforms apply templates in their work.

• No-Code Platforms That Use Templates (and can build super apps):

Here are top contenders using template-based workflows:

Looking Ahead

We believe that the next generation of super apps will soon adopt template-driven development as a foundational strategy—just as leading no-code platforms already have. In fact, it’s only a matter of time before some of today’s no-code platforms evolve into full-fledged no-code super app builders, empowering users to create scalable, modular, and intelligent applications without writing a single line of code. The convergence of templates, reusable components, and API-enabled tiles is shaping a future where building super apps becomes faster, more flexible, and accessible to everyone.

Thanks for reading

By Ivan Assenov