The following intro is a paid product review for Retool, a platform that provides a fast way to build internal tools.
Like many startups and development teams today, you may have built a company-facing tool or user interface to help with some kind of organizational matter, business relations, data collection, or other task worked on internally. In some cases, that process may have been tedious.
Retool is a platform that offers drag-and-drop components, ready-made templates, and other powerful features, to help you easily build custom internal tools connected to just about any data source.
In this review, I'll talk about four primary features of Retool that many teams have found practical and useful in building their own internal tools:
When you first set up your account, you'll have the option to start building based on an existing data source. You can select from dozens of databases and APIs.
Retool's Data Integrations
A commonly selected data integration is Google Sheets. The Retool docs have an
excellent guide to get up and running with a Google Sheets-based app in minutes. I was able to set up one of my sheets as a data source for an example app quickly and easily.
Integrating Google Sheets as a Data Source
With a data source in place, I can start to incorporate any of the 50+ components available to customize my app.
In the dashboard, I can create a new blank app or use one with a data source (e.g. Google Sheets, as shown above). From there I have access to components that I can drag and drop into my newly created app.
Retool's Drag-and-drop Components
I can drag any of these components into the "Main" or "Header" area to include them as part of my tool's UI. Once I have components in place, I can click a component, then choose "Inspect" to adjust settings depending on the type of component being edited.
In my example Google Sheets app, I was able to instantly generate a table with my sheet's data simply by dragging the Table component into my work area. Retool automatically populates the Table component with my selected data source – which is a cool feature!
As mentioned, the components library offers dozens of components, including various types of inputs, buttons, presentation components, containers, forms, and more.
Another incredibly useful feature of Retool is a library of ready-made app templates that you can choose from that cover many common use cases.
Retool's Ready-made Templates
The templates include admin panels, CRMs, and common data integrations from sources like Stripe, GitHub, Amazon S3, Slack, Salesforce, and more.
Creating an App from a Template
You can build your app from scratch using Retool's component library, or use one of these starting templates. Either way, you can customize the app to your own needs and write logic using JavaScript or SQL. Retool's home page includes a 4-minute video that demonstrates how SQL queries can be written along with JavaScript.
This ability to customize and hack your own tools is where Retool really stands out. Here's an example of a line of code you might write, similar to one of those used in the demo video:
select * from users where f_name ilike {{input1.value}}
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This is an SQL query but also includes some JavaScript, which you can see between the double curly braces. This opens up unlimited possibilities for logic within your apps. You're not limited to what a pre-built template or component includes, but you can customize your apps to whatever you want to build.
Many well-known brands have used Retool to build their own tools, some of which are outlined on Retool's Customers page. These and other customers have found that Retool's features can fit just about any internal use-case.
Retool has Customers across many industries
The docs are a great place to start to get a feel for all the features I've discussed above, which I've only scratched the surface of. As outlined on Retool's pricing page, they offer a really good free plan (cloud or self-hosted), team & business plans, and a self-hosted starter plan.
I'm sure you can think of a million ways you can utilize Retool's platform – measuring efficacy of marketing materials, organizing sales leads, product analytics, managing client contracts, and more. You can build just about anything useful for both small and large companies.
So try out Retool today if you want an easy way to build internal apps and user interfaces that help your team get more stuff done in an organized and efficient manner.
Now on to this week's tools!