Hi Graeme.
Codeless automation tools do come up as a topic often, and as a coder- turned- tester, I have the advantage of having helped a few manual testers learn to code. Why? It’s much more efficient and all of the codeless tools out there are not only expensive but they often fail to scale beyond a few dozen test cases/screens. My own experience got painful once I hit around 100 test cases in a certain popular tool that advertised being codeless.
Once you encounter a need to “re-use”, these codeless tools start to require a load of organizational work on your part. You end up with many little “recordings” and things like structuring how you proceed gets critical. And if all that ever changes in your app is the login screen, all of your recordings can become firewood if you did not use the codeless tool correctly. I’m not saying they don’t work, just that they are not cheap, and I’m not talking just money. But do get some budget commitment early and allow for 2 users of the tool in your budget estimate.
Please do a google of these forums to pull out gems from old threads. Codeless automation tools are a great way to learn about test automation though, so not a bad thing too look at using on a small scale if you only want 10 or so test cases as smoke tests. Your mileage will also improve if your developer team do step in and assist you though.