←back to thread

Ask HN: Anybody used Retool for production, user-facing app?

50 points bootstrpppin | 2 comments | 14 Nov 24 00:26 UTC | HN request time: 0.56s | 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.

Show context
jameslk ◴[19 Nov 24 05:52 UTC] No.42180407[source]▶
I spent a lot of time looking at options in this space for a similar need 1-2 years ago. I really wanted to use Retool but Retool’s pricing and lock in at the time just wasn’t appealing. A few other options I looked at were:

* Plasmic (open source)

* Jet Admin (proprietary)

* Budibase (open source)

* Appsmith (open source)

And a few others. Most had limitations around our need of multi tenancy/team oriented backend, or were too oriented towards internal tools, and I was worried about data lock in with the proprietary ones.

Ultimately I chose to go with Rails with Bullet Train. But this was right before LLMs became kind of the norm to hack stuff together. If I were to choose today, I’d probably pick Plasmic with some LLM hacked together TypeScript backend for a good balance between low effort dev velocity and future proofing, maybe with a BaaS like Supabase+Auth0. All the LLMs seem to be trained on a TypeScript-shaped shallow stack, and static typing gives a bit more protection against LLMs chasing the dragon.

replies(1): >>42181279 #
1. foxbee ◴[19 Nov 24 08:50 UTC] No.42181279[source]▶
What were your thoughts on Budibase?
replies(1): >>42184572 #
2. electroly ◴[19 Nov 24 15:32 UTC] No.42184572[source]▶
I use Budibase for a few projects. I chose it after deciding I couldn't accept Retool's pricing and that I wanted something open source. I have only a few minor complaints:

- The SQL Server plugin is a little halfbaked. It doesn't work properly with failover clustering and I had to punch in the IP address for a specific primary node, which then breaks when the cluster fails over to a different primary node. The "port" field is broken and you have to leave it blank or you get a type conversion error in their connection code. Going through a REST API seems to be the more well-trodden path.

- Google login in the open source edition is clunky, and there's no good way to tell users to use it. There's a separate pair of login/password textboxes on the same page that draws the user's attention; we have to teach users to click on the Google login button which then opens in a new window. In our case we don't even need authentication, but there's no way to remove it and offer a login-free experience.

- You can't really hide that you're running in Budibase. Despite my best efforts, my users call all my apps "Budibase" instead of the actual name that I gave to them. And nobody knows how to pronounce "Budibase"--native speakers tend to come up with "bootybase" instead of "buddybase."

The development experience is delightful. I really like it. I wish I could design all my full-code UIs in Budibase rather than having it attached to a low-code platform.