How Rentlingo saved thousands switching to no-code

An inside look at the product rebuild that propelled Rentlingo’s business.

5 min read

Feb 24, 2022

If you’ve ever lived in a city, you know how hard it is to find a good apartment. That’s where Rentlingo comes in. Rentlingo is an apartment listing site focused on high-quality, easy-to-consume listings. Working with local experts, they provide in-depth reviews that help take the frustration out of apartment search. Today, the Rentlingo team consists of twelve people led by Jared McKinney.

While Jared’s background is in growth marketing, at Rentlingo he’s taken an active role in product development. Beginning with a more traditional approach, he worked closely with a team of software developers to build the product. While the development-heavy approach worked initially, it eventually became inefficient and costly.

“I was highly motivated to grow the product, but developer time was very expensive and no matter what we did, there was still a bottleneck.”

As a self-described tool fanatic, Jared had previously been exposed to the power of apps like Airtable and Webflow. Taking a hard look at Rentlingo, he realized he could rebuild the same functionality with no-code tools and cut out expensive software development costs. Jared set out to make the transition but first needed to nail down his no-code stack.

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The Challenge

Jared quickly settled on Airtable as a backend and Webflow as a frontend for his new no-code build. The big question was whether he could actually sync data between the two. With up to 10,000 record updates per week, Rentlingo needed a powerful connection layer. His first thought was to use Zapier, but after extensive testing, he realized he had a problem.

“I'd built the whole thing in Zapier, but it didn't work. Zapier isn't fast enough. It's really built for one-off automations.”

Trying tool after tool, Jared spent over 100 hours searching for the right solution but was continually disappointed. He eventually hired an automation specialist to make an attempt but found similar results. While the cost-saving promise of no-code tools was enticing, an actual solution seemed just out of reach.

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The Solution

Despite the initial frustrations, Jared's perseverance eventually led him to Whalesync. With real-time updates, Jared was finally able to hook up Airtable to Webflow completing the transition to no-code.

“With Whalesync, you make an update on one end and it's done in seconds on the other end. That was really the level of responsiveness we needed for this application to launch thru no-code tools.”

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The Results

Using Whalesync, Jared was able to move 90% of the Rentlingo product over to no/low code tools. In total, he estimates the switch has saved his team roughly 50 hours and $10,000 per month in developer time. Additionally, Jared’s been able to cut Rentlingo’s SaaS spend from $1,500 per month down to $300.

“Rebuilding all of this with no-code tools is probably saving us $10,000 per month.”

While he was initially concerned there might be limitations to the new stack, the result has been the opposite.

“It’s just as secure as it was before and we actually have a higher degree of flexibility and customization. I can add new sections to pages across 8,000 listings in a couple of hours and I can do that myself with zero technical background or coding.”

Jared’s ability to continuously seek out the best tools has paid major dividends for Rentlingo. We’re thrilled Whalesync was able to play a part in the upgrade.