10 ms·

Show HN: No-code alternative to Retool, Appsmith, Internal, etc.

123 points by antonsv 5y ago

Hi, founders! We’ve actually launched quite some time ago, but (semi)pivoted a few times along the way. Jet Admin is an app builder for creating internal tools, admin panels, dashboards, external portals, and so on without coding. You can connect to any backend, assemble a UI through the visual builder, and set up data binding, transformations, conditionals, etc. through the point-and-click interface. If you need to, you can create custom HTTP, SQL queries, make data transformations with JS, and embed custom UI components. We believe that product, data, operations teams should be able to build the very tools they use. And with HN being mostly the coder community, it’d be particularly interesting to hear your feedback/thoughts!

bionoid 5y ago
I didn't get past the pricing page to be honest. Podio costs $20/seat for premium, your product costs $48 for pro (with enterprise price not even listed)
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- antonsv 5y ago
  Podio is designed for different use-cases than Jet Admin. What have you built in Podio?
- joenathanone 5y ago
  Far too expensive IMO.
stateableio 5y ago
This is the first of these kinds of products that supports customer portal as a use case. In my opinion, this a HUGE differentiator from the rest of the retool/appsmith type tools and surprised no one has mentioned it yet. I use retool as a client-facing frontend for a niche data ETL product and I’m getting killed on their enterprise pricing.
slowmotiony 5y ago
I don't understand what the product is from the webpage nor from the video - so does the website stay online and hosted on your server? Can I download it and run it myself on premise via docker or something?
- antonsv 5y ago
  What background are you coming from? I'd love to understand what's not clear as we don't hear this kind of feedback often
  - slowmotiony 5y ago
    I am a enterprise consultant, my clients will laugh in my face if I tell them we have to use some other company's server via internet. :-) The reason I asked is because we use metabase, and it was simple to host it because we just pulled the docker files and ran them. (https://www.metabase.com/docs/latest/operations-guide/running-metabase-on-docker.html https://www.metabase.com/docs/latest/operations-guide/runnin...) I dont see any such instructions on your website so that why i asked. Thanks for your time by the way, your product looks very good.
    - antonsv 5y ago
      We do have two options: - hybrid: you can install our open source jet bridge application on your side if you don't want data to run through our server at all, but frontend and project UI settings will be hosted on our side - on premise: we already have option to host all components on your side, but this is available only in Enteprise plans, please let me know if you are interested in it.
  - QuantumYeti 5y ago
    - antonsv 5y ago
      My bad, just got caught up in pondering about the second part. You can choose from 3 deployment options: cloud, on-premise, and hybrid. The first and the last are pretty self-explanatory and in hybrid you can host the open-source backend part(https://github.com/jet-admin/jet-bridge https://github.com/jet-admin/jet-bridge) on your servers and we host the interface
kapsteur 5y ago
What is different from Retool ?
- M4v3R 5y ago
  Or Appsmith for that matter, since I have a bit of experience with it?
  - tluyben2 5y ago
    Seems jetadmin is not open source while appsmith is.
    - antonsv 5y ago
      That's correct
- antonsv 5y ago
  You can build not-so-complex user-cases faster and you can allow your non-tech team members to build and maintain internal tools (which eradicates the bottleneck between tech teams and business teams)
robertlagrant 5y ago
Hello - nice website! Draws you in well. My standard questions as a coder for any tool like this are: - how can I automate tests? - how can I promote software up environments (using automation)? - how can I use source control? - how can I roll back a deployment? Thanks!
- antonsv 5y ago
  Thanks! As for source control, we already have project snapshots (that can be taken and restored manually) and environments merging. So you can do it manually right now, but Git integration with in-ui version control is in our roadmap already. What do you mean by automate tests? What exactly do you want to test?
  - robertlagrant 5y ago
    Thank you - great. A follow-up on Git - is it easy to understand diffs in pull requests? Can you follow what's changed the way you would with handwritten code? On test automation I mean being able to write some fast tests that - say - test calculations and things like that, and medium speed tests that mock out the backend and play through the UI really fast, and slower end to end tests that play through the UI with a backend connected. And being able to do all that on Git commit push via CI is really helpful.
  - aeberhart 5y ago
    > What do you mean by automate tests? What exactly do you want to test? One of our customers in the public sector builds a Low Code app that performs automated plausibility checks on forms submitted by clients. These checks can be quite complex since they reflect legislation. In this case it is crucial that you can mock form input and validate the checks against expected results.
- aeberhart 5y ago
  I agree that once a project gets a bit more complex, these points are very important. In our low code platform (https://github.com/dashjoin/platform https://github.com/dashjoin/platform), you end up writing several JSONata (https://jsonata.org/ https://jsonata.org/) snippets for ETL, actions, and visualizations. These can be tested using junit. All changes to the app can be managed and deployed via GitHub. You can check out our sample app: GitHub: https://github.com/dashjoin/dashjoin-demo https://github.com/dashjoin/dashjoin-demo Live: https://demo.my.dashjoin.com/ https://demo.my.dashjoin.com/
speedgoose 5y ago
Hello, could you consider allowing SSO on all plans ? See https://sso.tax https://sso.tax
- antonsv 5y ago
  We're trying to match feature sets within plans with the company profiles and the stages. It's true we've received quite a few requests to enable SSO in Pro plan, but may you share your use-case or potential use-cases where you need SSO in an early-stage startup?
  - superice 5y ago
    It's just a security measure. As a founder of a currently 4-person company, I want SSO everywhere I possibly can. It reduces attack vectors, and makes it so much easier to ensure nobody has access when they leave the company. Every product we use that doesn't offer SSO has to be added to our onboarding/offboarding checklists. It comes down to this: Don't assume companies are incompetent at proper dealings around employee access to products they use just because they're small. These things tend to be correlated, but it hurts small companies trying to deal with this correctly. Edit - Let me phrase it like this: By locking away account management and security tools you're implicitly stating only large enterprises should care about security.
    - Sahbak 5y ago
      Don't expect this to change. Most companies realize they can't provide any value for enterprises in that price tier, so they lock SSO behind the most expensive tier. Drives me mad but that's the industry.
      - atonse 5y ago
        Yes, and I find it absolutely ridiculous. But I have found a couple companies that do a sort of "middle-ground" – SSO via SAML2 locked behind some "call us" enterprise BS, but Google Auth available to all. MailGun does this, and so does Linear. Atlassian charges extra for SSO (via Atlassian Access) but it's just $30 a month or something, so seems totally reasonable even if extra. This feels like a decent middle ground for smaller companies since it requires zero extra config.
samanator 5y ago
The "request an integration" button doesn't work on mobile (chrome or firefox). I wanted to request a Database connection through SSH since our databases are all behind a firewall and we access them through SSH tunnels.
- antonsv 5y ago
  Do you have any adblocker? This button should open up Intercom through google tag manager. Btw, SSH for databases is in our road map already
  - samanator 5y ago
    Nope, there are no adblockers on chrome mobile that I'm aware of. I'm on a Samsung Galaxy S10+. Good to hear about SSH being on your roadmap!
debarshri 5y ago
Looking at the landscape of lowcode/nocode platform popping up recently, I can't help to notice that these platforms have started becoming very commoditized. Premise of all the tools is that, building UI is hard and you should use the tool. But if 100s of companies are doing the same, then I'll question the premise. Also, why would you build these solution yourself and not buy a point solution. For eg. CRM, why would you build your own crm when you can just buy a saas that does it for you. It is not that I'm against tools like this. Just some thoughts as I'm venturing into this space. Would love to hear some arguments.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- gherkinnn 5y ago
  > Also, why would you build these solution yourself and not buy a point solution. For eg. CRM I suppose because you can build a CRM, a time tracker, analytics boards, and an admin dashboards for another service with one and the same tool. Whether it is a good idea to do so, I don’t know.
- kfk 5y ago
  Data and Integrations. Applications are mostly a way to produce and transform data. When you buy a lot of applications all trying to keep data locked in their systems, you cannot easily build BI, ML, AI or simply Automation models because data is all over the place. On the other hand, these low code tools don't make data easier because they don't enforce proper API designs, the SQL on top of React components is fun for a while but not everything is UI. Said that, I always prefer to buy or use open source solution when there is one, as long as they have a good API and an easy way to get data out of them.
- jsmith99 5y ago
  Most companies demand an enormous amount of customisation from their ERP and CRM systems and will not change their processes to match the system. Many popular SaaS like Salesforce are more like platforms for building a solution.
- robjeiter 5y ago
tomp 5y ago
Can anyone suggest a tool that is similar to Retool / AppSmith / JetAdmin BUT for programmers? I.e. I don't care about "no code" (happy to code myself, in fact I think it's best to be able to customize things in code) but that takes care of things like backend-frontend sync (ideally push-based), permissions, etc. is fast (looking at you, AppSmith) and ideally also automates some tasks (e.g. auto-generating the GUI from SQL schema, similar to the original Django Admin)? Just my wishlist... Edit: another way of describing what I want: I would like to be able to edit the SQL database (or whatever data backend) via an interface that can be Excel-like (just a list of rows), custom (just a GUI of custom components) or a mix (e.g. rows with search, or grouped by some key, or multi-editing several rows, or displaying foreign key relationships ("parent" row and "child" rows)).
- LCHK 5y ago
  Hi there, throwing my hat into the ring. :) We're developing a language-independent "low-code" environment that's very much made for coders. Website is www.five.co To give a few examples: 1. For your database, you can either import an SQL dump, or you can create the tables, relationships, etc. in point-and-click. We're using MySQL by default, but are database-agnostic. 2. You can write queries in SQL and use the result of these queries for things like charts, tables or dashboards. 3. You can write JavaScript, TypeScript and C# to create functions or processes used by your app. In the future, any language that can be compiled to WebAssembly can be used inside Five. We use Google's V8 engine for this. We also support libraries and plug-ins. 4. The GUI is provided by Five. All you've got to do is give it a theme in CSS or point-and-click. The GUI is responsive. We use Material UI. 5. Each app comes with three environments (dev, staging, production). All apps are containerized. We're using K8. Our idea is to give developers a tool that let's them code as much as they want to, but provide "no-code" options for the more tedious tasks of development. We don't have a trial on our website yet, but feel free to contact me and I can give you access to a training account.
- reilly3000 5y ago
  I think what you are looking for is retool plus a nice SQL client. Its really flexible and takes away a lot of pain from the front end. I wish it had an integrated DB editor.
anothernewdude 5y ago
The thing I love about dev/ops tools, is that they replace no code crap with code that can go into source control. The whole No code movement is backwards.
- antonsv 5y ago
  That was uncalled for and unneceserally rude. If you have constructive criticism, you're still welcome
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
text2db 5y ago
A bit of off topic but I created a small tool which converts simple text to database script, It reduces development time to create database tables and foreign key relationships. https://text2db.com/ https://text2db.com/
d4rkp4ttern 5y ago
One thing I am always curious about the headline pitches of most of these tools is — they say that they are for building INTERNAL tools. Are these not suitable for building an external SaaS web-app? What exactly is the limitation that makes them not suitable for a world accessible SaaS app?
- swyx 5y ago
  not being able to customize every little thing about branding and UX, not needing to have the same security/privacy standards, not having to work on mobile or on old browsers, etc etc. and thats just on the user side. on the builder side, you can expose more confidential/internal data since you can safely assume the person and intended audience are only employees. you can move faster if you assume away requirements that dont really matter in contexg.
  - dustingetz 5y ago
    does retool even have hyperlinks and routing yet?
    - vailripper 5y ago
      Yes, it has a link component that allows routing to other Retool apps or external pages.
- ozim 5y ago
  I would say from business perspective it is really bad idea. You become reseller of the "low code tool" and now what are you providing to your customers that they could not do themselves? There is also problem that anything goes wrong and you are not able to properly support your customers. With SaaS you have the code you have the team, you built the tool that you support and features are providing value. I don't think you can do "multi tenancy" on "low code" platforms you would have to make separate account per customer. Which means you only repeat the work as you probably won't be able to build once and provide stuff for multiple companies. GDPR where you are not side in processing might be nice as you ditch responisbility - but then your customers need to know who has their data. If they know what is stopping them from simply using "low code" on their own.
beton 5y ago
It would be nice to define what counts as a payed user. Everyone, who is using the sdk+tools or everyone who is using the apps built with the tools? Same question for customer apps. Does the pay plan scale with the #admin users (AKA the dev team building the apps) or with the #customers?
- antonsv 5y ago
  Atm we count everyone who has access to an app as a user. Internal and external users scale separately within their pricing buckets.
HatchedLake721 5y ago
Who's your target persona?
- antonsv 5y ago
  That's a great question. I'd say we have to buckets that stay on quite the opposite sides of the ARPU-CAC spectrum: the SMBs+, which are typically operationally-heavy(daily usage patters) and the early-stage startups/entrepreneurs who want to protoype or are tired of manually querying a DB and want something more flexible and user-friendly
pdr94 5y ago
What are you advantages over Bubble, Appsheet, Retool, Appsmith etc?
- antonsv 5y ago
  Those are all different, so it's hard to explain in one sentence. Broadly speaking, Bubble is not that great for internal tools as you have to use add-ons for UI components and integrations. Appsheet is not suited well for complex multi-page workflows and is limited in integrations wheres in Jet you can consolidate data from lots of resources in one app + it's easier to set relations, drill-downs and pass and transform values to create complex interactive apps. Compared to Retool and Appsmith, we're faster to build standard use-cases and those can be build without coding.
anujoy 5y ago
I'm a heavy user of retool. It has saved me a lot of dev time/money when creating internal tools for ops and marketing teams. I see you have put some effort into making nice UI for creating external apps - def one for me to explore. There are two things I noticed on your page that I like already - support for more than 2 environments and SQLite support.
- antonsv 5y ago
  Thanks, mate!
VoidWhisperer 5y ago
A nitpick: it might be helpful to have some more specific information on integrations - currently the description of each integration is more or less the same thing with the name of the integration replaced... from a user perspective, if they are all effectively the same description wise (as it currently appears), you could move that description somewhere where it wont be repeated and just show the individual integrations
- antonsv 5y ago
  A nitpick but a valid point nevertheless, thanks!
bradwood 5y ago
My biggest bugbear with these tools is poor git support. If someone dragged and dropped their way through the UI, I want to be able to reliably commit that to a branch and recover to it using standard git workflows. Most don't do this, or do it in such a brain-dead way that I am forced to use a branching model that is all wrong (eg a branch for each environment)
- xefttree 5y ago
  retool does support github integration
- antonsv 5y ago
  We already have project snapshots (that can be taken and restored manually) and environments merging. Git integration is in our roadmap already.
- kobieyc 5y ago
  Yeah, at my company we spent a ton of R&D time adding first class git support in conjunction with drag and drop UI, WITHOUT introducing a DSL. Non-trivial problem but it can be done.
  - mikeshi42 5y ago
    How do you avoid a DSL in that case? Is it the problem class allows you to represent the UI state as regular code?
- arey_abhishek 5y ago
  Since you mentioned about git, I wanted to point out that Appsmith supports git sync. You can follow a standard git workflow. https://docs.appsmith.com/core-concepts/git-sync https://docs.appsmith.com/core-concepts/git-sync I'm a co-founder of the project, so forgive my shameless plug.

123 points by antonsv 5y ago

bionoid 5y ago

I didn't get past the pricing page to be honest. Podio costs $20/seat for premium, your product costs $48 for pro (with enterprise price not even listed)

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
antonsv 5y ago
Podio is designed for different use-cases than Jet Admin. What have you built in Podio?
joenathanone 5y ago
Far too expensive IMO.

stateableio 5y ago

This is the first of these kinds of products that supports customer portal as a use case. In my opinion, this a HUGE differentiator from the rest of the retool/appsmith type tools and surprised no one has mentioned it yet. I use retool as a client-facing frontend for a niche data ETL product and I’m getting killed on their enterprise pricing.

slowmotiony 5y ago

I don't understand what the product is from the webpage nor from the video - so does the website stay online and hosted on your server? Can I download it and run it myself on premise via docker or something?

antonsv 5y ago
What background are you coming from? I'd love to understand what's not clear as we don't hear this kind of feedback often
- slowmotiony 5y ago
  I am a enterprise consultant, my clients will laugh in my face if I tell them we have to use some other company's server via internet. :-) The reason I asked is because we use metabase, and it was simple to host it because we just pulled the docker files and ran them. (https://www.metabase.com/docs/latest/operations-guide/running-metabase-on-docker.html https://www.metabase.com/docs/latest/operations-guide/runnin...) I dont see any such instructions on your website so that why i asked. Thanks for your time by the way, your product looks very good.
  - antonsv 5y ago
    We do have two options: - hybrid: you can install our open source jet bridge application on your side if you don't want data to run through our server at all, but frontend and project UI settings will be hosted on our side - on premise: we already have option to host all components on your side, but this is available only in Enteprise plans, please let me know if you are interested in it.
- QuantumYeti 5y ago
  - antonsv 5y ago
    My bad, just got caught up in pondering about the second part. You can choose from 3 deployment options: cloud, on-premise, and hybrid. The first and the last are pretty self-explanatory and in hybrid you can host the open-source backend part(https://github.com/jet-admin/jet-bridge https://github.com/jet-admin/jet-bridge) on your servers and we host the interface

kapsteur 5y ago

What is different from Retool ?

M4v3R 5y ago
Or Appsmith for that matter, since I have a bit of experience with it?
- tluyben2 5y ago
  Seems jetadmin is not open source while appsmith is.
  - antonsv 5y ago
    That's correct
antonsv 5y ago
You can build not-so-complex user-cases faster and you can allow your non-tech team members to build and maintain internal tools (which eradicates the bottleneck between tech teams and business teams)

robertlagrant 5y ago

Hello - nice website! Draws you in well. My standard questions as a coder for any tool like this are: - how can I automate tests? - how can I promote software up environments (using automation)? - how can I use source control? - how can I roll back a deployment? Thanks!

antonsv 5y ago
Thanks! As for source control, we already have project snapshots (that can be taken and restored manually) and environments merging. So you can do it manually right now, but Git integration with in-ui version control is in our roadmap already. What do you mean by automate tests? What exactly do you want to test?
- robertlagrant 5y ago
  Thank you - great. A follow-up on Git - is it easy to understand diffs in pull requests? Can you follow what's changed the way you would with handwritten code? On test automation I mean being able to write some fast tests that - say - test calculations and things like that, and medium speed tests that mock out the backend and play through the UI really fast, and slower end to end tests that play through the UI with a backend connected. And being able to do all that on Git commit push via CI is really helpful.
- aeberhart 5y ago
  > What do you mean by automate tests? What exactly do you want to test? One of our customers in the public sector builds a Low Code app that performs automated plausibility checks on forms submitted by clients. These checks can be quite complex since they reflect legislation. In this case it is crucial that you can mock form input and validate the checks against expected results.
aeberhart 5y ago
I agree that once a project gets a bit more complex, these points are very important. In our low code platform (https://github.com/dashjoin/platform https://github.com/dashjoin/platform), you end up writing several JSONata (https://jsonata.org/ https://jsonata.org/) snippets for ETL, actions, and visualizations. These can be tested using junit. All changes to the app can be managed and deployed via GitHub. You can check out our sample app: GitHub: https://github.com/dashjoin/dashjoin-demo https://github.com/dashjoin/dashjoin-demo Live: https://demo.my.dashjoin.com/ https://demo.my.dashjoin.com/

speedgoose 5y ago

Hello, could you consider allowing SSO on all plans ? See https://sso.tax https://sso.tax

antonsv 5y ago
We're trying to match feature sets within plans with the company profiles and the stages. It's true we've received quite a few requests to enable SSO in Pro plan, but may you share your use-case or potential use-cases where you need SSO in an early-stage startup?
- superice 5y ago
  It's just a security measure. As a founder of a currently 4-person company, I want SSO everywhere I possibly can. It reduces attack vectors, and makes it so much easier to ensure nobody has access when they leave the company. Every product we use that doesn't offer SSO has to be added to our onboarding/offboarding checklists. It comes down to this: Don't assume companies are incompetent at proper dealings around employee access to products they use just because they're small. These things tend to be correlated, but it hurts small companies trying to deal with this correctly. Edit - Let me phrase it like this: By locking away account management and security tools you're implicitly stating only large enterprises should care about security.
  - Sahbak 5y ago
    Don't expect this to change. Most companies realize they can't provide any value for enterprises in that price tier, so they lock SSO behind the most expensive tier. Drives me mad but that's the industry.
    - atonse 5y ago
      Yes, and I find it absolutely ridiculous. But I have found a couple companies that do a sort of "middle-ground" – SSO via SAML2 locked behind some "call us" enterprise BS, but Google Auth available to all. MailGun does this, and so does Linear. Atlassian charges extra for SSO (via Atlassian Access) but it's just $30 a month or something, so seems totally reasonable even if extra. This feels like a decent middle ground for smaller companies since it requires zero extra config.

samanator 5y ago

The "request an integration" button doesn't work on mobile (chrome or firefox). I wanted to request a Database connection through SSH since our databases are all behind a firewall and we access them through SSH tunnels.

antonsv 5y ago
Do you have any adblocker? This button should open up Intercom through google tag manager. Btw, SSH for databases is in our road map already
- samanator 5y ago
  Nope, there are no adblockers on chrome mobile that I'm aware of. I'm on a Samsung Galaxy S10+. Good to hear about SSH being on your roadmap!

debarshri 5y ago

Looking at the landscape of lowcode/nocode platform popping up recently, I can't help to notice that these platforms have started becoming very commoditized. Premise of all the tools is that, building UI is hard and you should use the tool. But if 100s of companies are doing the same, then I'll question the premise. Also, why would you build these solution yourself and not buy a point solution. For eg. CRM, why would you build your own crm when you can just buy a saas that does it for you. It is not that I'm against tools like this. Just some thoughts as I'm venturing into this space. Would love to hear some arguments.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
gherkinnn 5y ago
> Also, why would you build these solution yourself and not buy a point solution. For eg. CRM I suppose because you can build a CRM, a time tracker, analytics boards, and an admin dashboards for another service with one and the same tool. Whether it is a good idea to do so, I don’t know.
kfk 5y ago
Data and Integrations. Applications are mostly a way to produce and transform data. When you buy a lot of applications all trying to keep data locked in their systems, you cannot easily build BI, ML, AI or simply Automation models because data is all over the place. On the other hand, these low code tools don't make data easier because they don't enforce proper API designs, the SQL on top of React components is fun for a while but not everything is UI. Said that, I always prefer to buy or use open source solution when there is one, as long as they have a good API and an easy way to get data out of them.
jsmith99 5y ago
Most companies demand an enormous amount of customisation from their ERP and CRM systems and will not change their processes to match the system. Many popular SaaS like Salesforce are more like platforms for building a solution.
robjeiter 5y ago

tomp 5y ago

Can anyone suggest a tool that is similar to Retool / AppSmith / JetAdmin BUT for programmers? I.e. I don't care about "no code" (happy to code myself, in fact I think it's best to be able to customize things in code) but that takes care of things like backend-frontend sync (ideally push-based), permissions, etc. is fast (looking at you, AppSmith) and ideally also automates some tasks (e.g. auto-generating the GUI from SQL schema, similar to the original Django Admin)? Just my wishlist... Edit: another way of describing what I want: I would like to be able to edit the SQL database (or whatever data backend) via an interface that can be Excel-like (just a list of rows), custom (just a GUI of custom components) or a mix (e.g. rows with search, or grouped by some key, or multi-editing several rows, or displaying foreign key relationships ("parent" row and "child" rows)).

LCHK 5y ago
Hi there, throwing my hat into the ring. :) We're developing a language-independent "low-code" environment that's very much made for coders. Website is www.five.co To give a few examples: 1. For your database, you can either import an SQL dump, or you can create the tables, relationships, etc. in point-and-click. We're using MySQL by default, but are database-agnostic. 2. You can write queries in SQL and use the result of these queries for things like charts, tables or dashboards. 3. You can write JavaScript, TypeScript and C# to create functions or processes used by your app. In the future, any language that can be compiled to WebAssembly can be used inside Five. We use Google's V8 engine for this. We also support libraries and plug-ins. 4. The GUI is provided by Five. All you've got to do is give it a theme in CSS or point-and-click. The GUI is responsive. We use Material UI. 5. Each app comes with three environments (dev, staging, production). All apps are containerized. We're using K8. Our idea is to give developers a tool that let's them code as much as they want to, but provide "no-code" options for the more tedious tasks of development. We don't have a trial on our website yet, but feel free to contact me and I can give you access to a training account.
reilly3000 5y ago
I think what you are looking for is retool plus a nice SQL client. Its really flexible and takes away a lot of pain from the front end. I wish it had an integrated DB editor.

anothernewdude 5y ago

The thing I love about dev/ops tools, is that they replace no code crap with code that can go into source control. The whole No code movement is backwards.

antonsv 5y ago
That was uncalled for and unneceserally rude. If you have constructive criticism, you're still welcome
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

text2db 5y ago

A bit of off topic but I created a small tool which converts simple text to database script, It reduces development time to create database tables and foreign key relationships. https://text2db.com/ https://text2db.com/

d4rkp4ttern 5y ago

One thing I am always curious about the headline pitches of most of these tools is — they say that they are for building INTERNAL tools. Are these not suitable for building an external SaaS web-app? What exactly is the limitation that makes them not suitable for a world accessible SaaS app?

swyx 5y ago
not being able to customize every little thing about branding and UX, not needing to have the same security/privacy standards, not having to work on mobile or on old browsers, etc etc. and thats just on the user side. on the builder side, you can expose more confidential/internal data since you can safely assume the person and intended audience are only employees. you can move faster if you assume away requirements that dont really matter in contexg.
- dustingetz 5y ago
  does retool even have hyperlinks and routing yet?
  - vailripper 5y ago
    Yes, it has a link component that allows routing to other Retool apps or external pages.
ozim 5y ago
I would say from business perspective it is really bad idea. You become reseller of the "low code tool" and now what are you providing to your customers that they could not do themselves? There is also problem that anything goes wrong and you are not able to properly support your customers. With SaaS you have the code you have the team, you built the tool that you support and features are providing value. I don't think you can do "multi tenancy" on "low code" platforms you would have to make separate account per customer. Which means you only repeat the work as you probably won't be able to build once and provide stuff for multiple companies. GDPR where you are not side in processing might be nice as you ditch responisbility - but then your customers need to know who has their data. If they know what is stopping them from simply using "low code" on their own.

beton 5y ago

It would be nice to define what counts as a payed user. Everyone, who is using the sdk+tools or everyone who is using the apps built with the tools? Same question for customer apps. Does the pay plan scale with the #admin users (AKA the dev team building the apps) or with the #customers?

antonsv 5y ago
Atm we count everyone who has access to an app as a user. Internal and external users scale separately within their pricing buckets.

HatchedLake721 5y ago

Who's your target persona?

antonsv 5y ago
That's a great question. I'd say we have to buckets that stay on quite the opposite sides of the ARPU-CAC spectrum: the SMBs+, which are typically operationally-heavy(daily usage patters) and the early-stage startups/entrepreneurs who want to protoype or are tired of manually querying a DB and want something more flexible and user-friendly

pdr94 5y ago

What are you advantages over Bubble, Appsheet, Retool, Appsmith etc?

antonsv 5y ago
Those are all different, so it's hard to explain in one sentence. Broadly speaking, Bubble is not that great for internal tools as you have to use add-ons for UI components and integrations. Appsheet is not suited well for complex multi-page workflows and is limited in integrations wheres in Jet you can consolidate data from lots of resources in one app + it's easier to set relations, drill-downs and pass and transform values to create complex interactive apps. Compared to Retool and Appsmith, we're faster to build standard use-cases and those can be build without coding.

anujoy 5y ago

I'm a heavy user of retool. It has saved me a lot of dev time/money when creating internal tools for ops and marketing teams. I see you have put some effort into making nice UI for creating external apps - def one for me to explore. There are two things I noticed on your page that I like already - support for more than 2 environments and SQLite support.

antonsv 5y ago
Thanks, mate!

VoidWhisperer 5y ago

A nitpick: it might be helpful to have some more specific information on integrations - currently the description of each integration is more or less the same thing with the name of the integration replaced... from a user perspective, if they are all effectively the same description wise (as it currently appears), you could move that description somewhere where it wont be repeated and just show the individual integrations

antonsv 5y ago
A nitpick but a valid point nevertheless, thanks!

bradwood 5y ago

My biggest bugbear with these tools is poor git support. If someone dragged and dropped their way through the UI, I want to be able to reliably commit that to a branch and recover to it using standard git workflows. Most don't do this, or do it in such a brain-dead way that I am forced to use a branching model that is all wrong (eg a branch for each environment)

xefttree 5y ago
retool does support github integration
antonsv 5y ago
We already have project snapshots (that can be taken and restored manually) and environments merging. Git integration is in our roadmap already.
kobieyc 5y ago
Yeah, at my company we spent a ton of R&D time adding first class git support in conjunction with drag and drop UI, WITHOUT introducing a DSL. Non-trivial problem but it can be done.
- mikeshi42 5y ago
  How do you avoid a DSL in that case? Is it the problem class allows you to represent the UI state as regular code?
arey_abhishek 5y ago
Since you mentioned about git, I wanted to point out that Appsmith supports git sync. You can follow a standard git workflow. https://docs.appsmith.com/core-concepts/git-sync https://docs.appsmith.com/core-concepts/git-sync I'm a co-founder of the project, so forgive my shameless plug.