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50 points bootstrpppin | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.417s | source

Bootstrapped founder here.

I'm planning to build a SaaS product loosely in the B2B logistics space - it needs to be relatively low cost to build/maintain, look slick and be extensible.

It would be customer facing, meaning each customer would need a login/account (or perhaps many, if a whole team is using our product).

I've looked at Retool and it looks quite epic but it looks like it's designed primarily for internal apps.

Has anybody used, or attempted to use Retool for a production, user-facing app?

Would really appreciate advice, war stories or recommendations.

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thrw42A8N ◴[] No.42131875[source]
If you're bootstraped, does that mean you already have something? What is it and why do you want to replace it? Beware of large greenfield remake projects, these often fail spectacularly.
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bootstrpppin ◴[] No.42131924[source]
Hey thrw42A8N,

I've done a large greenfield rebuild before, which was a success - but I will never do that again. It ate my life.

I do have a bootstrapped product already in the market, but this is a second, unrelated product for a different audience....a new project entirely.

First project is Node + React but considering Retool for a v1 for this next project.

replies(3): >>42131968 #>>42189255 #>>42201976 #
thrw42A8N ◴[] No.42131968[source]
PayloadCMS was recently front page

Can't speak about Retool but I wouldn't want to go away from standard software development life cycle with version control, release management and testing... And I definitely would want to avoid a proprietary platform. Isn't there an open source alternative?

replies(2): >>42132009 #>>42180070 #
1. bootstrpppin ◴[] No.42132009[source]
Thanks for that - I hadn't come across PayloadCMS.

Retool seems to support basics like version control, release mgt etc but the platform risk of a proprietary platform is certainly a concern.

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2. lurker_72 ◴[] No.42180133[source]
I would also recommend looking at Directus (https://directus.io).

We evaluated PayloadCMS to drive the backend of a mobile app and eventually settled on Directus because it supported heterogeneous collections which was something we had to have.

Directus also has a template for a multi-tenant app which sounds like something you might need.