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

50 points bootstrpppin | 2 comments | 14 Nov 24 00:26 UTC | HN request time: 0.426s | 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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gervwyk ◴[19 Nov 24 20:32 UTC] No.42187793[source]▶
We’ve built Lowdefy to address this use case and more, check it out https://lowdefy.com

Happy to answer some questions and show you what we’ve built with Lowdefy - It’s very powerful and easy to get started with and maintain. gvw at lowdefy.com

replies(1): >>42187912 #
bootstrpppin ◴[19 Nov 24 20:46 UTC] No.42187912[source]▶
Looks like it'll be incredibly fast if we stay within the bounds of the framework, but very hard if we want to do something unexpected?
replies(1): >>42187982 #
1. gervwyk ◴[19 Nov 24 20:53 UTC] No.42187982[source]▶
not really. Depends on what you mean by in the framework. The plugin system allows you to create npm plugins for blocks, actions, operators, connections and even auth adapters and providers. So it’s usually as simple as creating a react component or writing a js function. with an pnpm monorepo setup, you dont even neep to publish it to pnpm to use the plugin in your project.
replies(1): >>42187994 #
2. bootstrpppin ◴[19 Nov 24 20:55 UTC] No.42187994[source]▶
ohh understood, thx