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Show HN: Open-source alternative to Retool

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Re: Show HN: Open-source alternative to Retool

#71

Post by foxbee »

barnabee wrote: post #64
foxbee wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried Budibase? For reference, I am the cofounder of Budibase and we're planning 2023 so I am super-eager for feedback. https://github.com/Budibase/budibase

Some feedback, as you asked for it and I signed up for both OpenBlocks and Budibase cloud versions today to try them out: (NB: If I like either or both of them I’ll self host, as I have no interest in SaaS, indeed it’s what’s stopped me from using things like Retool despite missing RAD tools ever since Delphi stopped being a viable solution for me.) OpenBlocks dropped me quickly into its pretty snappy app (literally…

Thanks for the feedback. I really appreciate it. You don't have to go through that flow. You can just use the docs and run it using digital ocean, docker, linode, kubernetes...

But! We are updating our onboarding to be quicker. In re to app perf, it's a little surprising. It's an area we don't get much neg feedback on so I'm happy you reported it. I'll feed this back to the team.

Re: Show HN: Open-source alternative to Retool

#72

Post by ianyanusko »

amendegree wrote: post #39

This looks super promising. We've been looking for a good all in one internal tool builder, gonna invesitage this now. Anyone have any other alt's they found useful?

Founder of Bracket, YCW22 (https://www.usebracket.com/) here. You can use us to set up internal tools in Airtable, G Sheets, or Notion using 1-way and 2-way syncs.

Re: Show HN: Open-source alternative to Retool

#73

Post by barnabee »

foxbee wrote: post #71
barnabee wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some feedback, as you asked for it and I signed up for both OpenBlocks and Budibase cloud versions today to try them out: (NB: If I like either or both of them I’ll self host, as I have no interest in SaaS, indeed it’s what’s stopped me from using things like Retool despite missing RAD tools ever since Delphi stopped being a viable solution for me.) OpenBlocks dropped me quickly into its pretty snappy app (literally…

Thanks for the feedback. I really appreciate it. You don't have to go through that flow. You can just use the docs and run it using digital ocean, docker, linode, kubernetes... But! We are updating our onboarding to be quicker. In re to app perf, it's a little surprising. It's an area we don't get much neg feedback on so I'm happy you reported it. I'll feed this back to the team.

Thanks for the response. I'll definitely give it a proper look and try out self hosting. It's actually quite nice that you have a "Budibase DB" option which might come in really handy compared with OpenBlocks.

And yeah, I realise I could just self host immediately but I wanted to use the cloud version to decide whether to make that effort and that was where the flow sort of got in the way (though I wonder now if there might have been an option to cancel it earlier or skip it that I missed…).

Re: the perf, I honestly don't think it is all that bad, but interactions just felt a bit less instant straight after using OpenBlocks. It might even just have been the animations in the UI giving that feeling :)

EDIT: actually, a couple of examples of the performance difference I have just noticed are:

1. The speed the selection outlines of the components follow the mouse hover in the designer.

2. The speed of updates of the designer when properties are changed, for example OpenBlocks both updates the text of a text element in real time and does it nearly instantly, whereas Budibase waits for pressing enter (which I think is fine) and has a noticeable delay. The delays seems to be there with all property edits. It feels like perhaps a server round trip vs optimistically updating the display locally, but is definitely noticeable.

Re: Show HN: Open-source alternative to Retool

#74

Post by [deleted] »

alexarena wrote: post #63
amendegree wrote: post #39

This looks super promising. We've been looking for a good all in one internal tool builder, gonna invesitage this now. Anyone have any other alt's they found useful?

Founder of https://interval.com here. We're somewhere in-between Retool and Windmill which was mentioned on this thread. Like Windmill, Interval is heavily code-focused. Our model lets you define tools in your existing TypeScipt/JavaScript codebase. Like Retool, you can use Interval to build complete internal dashboards that handle the "view stuff" side of things, not just the script/workflow "do stuff" pieces.

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Open-source alternative to Retool

#76

Post by chachra »

Looks promising for sure! I know its hard to fund etc. but it'd be nice if truly 100% open-source options existed! Even the ones that are open-source, then have pricing for SSO etc. which is disappointing. I see the same in the headless CMS space where tools like Strapi, make it very hard to adopt without paying $$$.

Re: Show HN: Open-source alternative to Retool

#77

Post by glutamate »

amendegree wrote: post #39

This looks super promising. We've been looking for a good all in one internal tool builder, gonna invesitage this now. Anyone have any other alt's they found useful?

Hi, I'm the lead dev of Saltcorn (https://saltcorn.com), I built it around the relational data model and it may fit your use case. Some people are finding it useful!

Re: Show HN: Open-source alternative to Retool

#78

Post by krithix »

barnabee wrote: post #64
foxbee wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried Budibase? For reference, I am the cofounder of Budibase and we're planning 2023 so I am super-eager for feedback. https://github.com/Budibase/budibase

Some feedback, as you asked for it and I signed up for both OpenBlocks and Budibase cloud versions today to try them out: (NB: If I like either or both of them I’ll self host, as I have no interest in SaaS, indeed it’s what’s stopped me from using things like Retool despite missing RAD tools ever since Delphi stopped being a viable solution for me.) OpenBlocks dropped me quickly into its pretty snappy app (literally…

(I work at Retool.) We offer a self-hosted version of Retool if you're interested: https://retool.com/self-hosted/ The self-hosted option is also free for teams of up to 5 people under our new free plan.

Re: Show HN: Open-source alternative to Retool

#79

Post by antonyl »

datalopers wrote: post #57

Can I import my JSON config export from Retool?

I'm a Retool user and going to try writing a script now...

Edit: hmmm, it's pretty hard. I was trying to export a pretty simple app but it looks like there's a ton of features not supported here. (I guess it's pretty hard to build a full development environment with GUIs.) For example, I have a simple table in Retool where I'm doing inline editing. Unfortunately Openblock's table is read-only. So I guess I'll have to manually add a form. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to easily add validations to the form, and it seemed a bit buggy when submitting it too (maybe not properly debouncing?). Also, it looks like the permissioning system is much more rigid, and doesn't support, for example, showing different things in the app depending on the user group?

Looking forward to seeing it mature, but it does feel like there is a lot of surface area. I've tried a few other OSS builders, and I think Retool still comes out ahead when it comes to building actual production use cases. Like another comment said, I do wonder whether there will ever be a true OSS version? Seems like everything is "free for now, will charge for enterprise features later". At that point you might as well just use Retool, since the product is a lot better?

It’s great to see more options out there, though...

Re: Show HN: Open-source alternative to Retool

#80

Post by tylersgordon »

amendegree wrote: post #39

This looks super promising. We've been looking for a good all in one internal tool builder, gonna invesitage this now. Anyone have any other alt's they found useful?

Tooljet IMO is the most promising of the open-source Retool competitors. It has a great UI, is easy to use, plugs into everything, and is super flexible. If you haven't checked out out lately, I highly recommend it.
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