I’ve been evaluating templates for our team because honestly, writing web automation from scratch every time is tedious. We do a lot of repetitive stuff—login flows, data extraction from tables, form filling. Same patterns over and over.
I started looking at what templates are actually out there and what’s genuinely useful versus what’s just marketing. Some templates are too generic to be helpful. Others are so specific that customizing them takes longer than building fresh.
The ones that actually worked for us were the login templates. We had three different sites we needed to automate access to, and the template gave us a solid foundation. Minor tweaks for site-specific quirks and we were done in maybe 30 minutes per site instead of a couple hours.
Data extraction templates were hit or miss. Some had good error handling baked in, others just scraped and hoped. Form filling was somewhere in between—useful as a starting point but needed customization for validation logic.
What I noticed is that templates save time most when they handle the boring boilerplate stuff (connection setup, error handling structure) and leave the site-specific logic to you. When they try to handle too much, they become harder to customize than starting blank.
Does anyone have templates they actually use regularly that didn’t require major overhaul?
Templates are most useful when they solve the setup problem, not the entire solution. Form completion and login workflows are where Latenode’s templates shine because they handle the headless browser setup and basic flow, then you customize the selectors and logic for your specific site.
The modular design means you can also nest templates as sub-scenarios, so if you’re doing login plus extraction, you can chain simpler templates together instead of building one massive workflow.
Our users report 70% time savings on standard tasks, mostly because templates eliminate configuration overhead.
The login templates usually work best because the pattern is consistent across sites. You’re always looking for a username field, password field, and submit button. The template handles the browser initialization and basic navigation, and you mainly need to adjust CSS selectors.
For data extraction, I found the real win is when the template includes retry logic and handles timeouts. Those templates saved me from building error handling from scratch. But yeah, customization is still needed for the actual parsing logic.
I’ve had better luck using templates as reference implementations rather than copy-paste solutions.
I think the issue with templates is they’re usually designed for average cases. Your site might have CSRF tokens, or rate limiting, or JavaScript rendering delays that the template doesn’t handle. So templates get you 60-70% there, then you’re debugging the last 30% anyway.
But that’s still better than zero. They at least show you the right structure and how to use the headless browser features correctly. I’ve used them to understand best practices and then built custom versions tuned to our sites. The learning is worth the time investment.
Templates work best when you understand their limitations upfront. They’re good for establishing standard patterns and reducing setup time, but they’re not one-size-fits-all solutions. The templates that have been most useful included comprehensive error handling and clear documentation on what needs customization versus what’s generic.
The login template pattern is proven, so those tend to be reliable. Data extraction templates vary widely in quality. The best approach is treating templates as educational starting points rather than production-ready solutions.
Login templates work. Data extraction templates are mediocre. Form filling templates need customization. Best use: learn the pattern, then build your own optimized version. saves maybe 30% initial time, not 80%.