Rapid dashboards for real-time IoT control have accelerated MVP delivery and team collaboration
What is our primary use case?
I used Retool in one of my projects a few months ago. The project involved making a monitoring real-time IoT system for IoT devices, and we used Retool as an internal dashboard. We had a stack of a FastAPI that handled the live data streams coming from the devices via MQTT, so we used Retool to monitor and control IoT devices in real-time.
We used Retool for checking how the data flow was working by connecting it to our backend through API to visualize how our data flows in real-time. It served as a control layer on top of our backend; we did not want to make a full custom UI from scratch, so we decided to go with Retool.
Eventually, we built up our UI dashboard as we wanted, but there were some limitations in customization. When we have new projects, we try to use Retool internally for creating internal dashboards and checking our APIs, not in the public cloud.
What is most valuable?
Retool is great for internal operations and rapid development. If you do not want to create everything from scratch and build a custom UI, you can go with this tool, and it is easy because it is low code, significantly reducing development time for dashboards and admin interfaces.
The best feature that Retool offers is the ability to create a UI dashboard very quickly, and I can make an internal dashboard easily. I also appreciate the feature that integrates APIs very easily.
I appreciate how easy it is to integrate APIs; you can drag and drop tables and buttons, and everything is low code, so you do not need to worry about the internal logic.
With the help of Retool, we saved a lot of time. For instance, we made a similar project before that took two to three weeks to implement the same features, but with Retool, we could check our API right away very quickly. We saved around twenty percent of our time before checking how our API works, visualizing it, and seeing where the drawbacks were, allowing us to make changes to our FastAPI backend. Retool is a great tool, especially for startups and for people looking to develop an MVP very quickly.
Through using Retool, team collaboration improved because we had fewer friction points. For instance, we encountered fewer bugs at the backend, and when the frontend and backend teams collaborated, the backend was more aligned for the frontend APIs, resulting in fewer bugs and smoother collaboration during the building stage.
Retool is very stable.
What needs improvement?
Retool has some drawbacks, including limited customization; of course, it has limitations compared to React, where you can customize it as you want, but with Retool, there is limited customization.
Retool is more suited for startups, but it can get messy at scale. If you want to increase the number of API routes or add more features, it can become complicated.
Retool needs more customization options, as it should not be limited to a few customization features; it should be broader, with more features available for users to utilize.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working in the current field since 2019, which means it has been almost seven years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Retool is very stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Retool is more suited for startups, but it can get messy at scale. If you want to increase the number of API routes or add more features, it can become complicated.
How are customer service and support?
The customer support is amazing; overall, AWS customer support is very professional and fast. We had a few cases where we faced issues with features, and their response time was great in assisting with billing issues, which I appreciated very much.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Retool was the first solution that we used. Retool was recommended by one of the senior developers, who had experience with it in his previous workplace, so we started with Retool; it was our first choice.
How was the initial setup?
I purchased Retool through the AWS marketplace.
What about the implementation team?
We do not have any other relationships with this vendor apart from being a customer.
What was our ROI?
We definitely saved significant time on engineering, which saved us money. We had fewer front-end resources, and while developing with Retool, we did not need many front-end team members, which saved on salaries. Overall, it also helped reduce time spent on maintenance, saving over a thousand euros because we did not hire additional front-end developers. Retool cost thirty euros for a month, so the return on investment was very positive.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I found it affordable regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Retool was the first solution that we used.
What other advice do I have?
If you are a team looking to develop the first MVP of your project quickly without spending time on creating a custom admin panel or dashboard, Retool is a great tool that can save time, and the customer support is great. I rate Retool an eight out of ten; it helped a lot for our startup and was a great tool for saving time.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Retool Streamlines Product Uploads and Speeds Up Publishing
What do you like best about the product?
I like Retool because it streamlines the way we prepare and upload products for our online store. It makes managing product data straightforward, helps reduce errors, and speeds up the publishing process, which ultimately improves our overall efficiency.
What do you dislike about the product?
One downside of Retool is that it can feel limiting when you’re trying to handle more complex workflows or bulk product uploads, and it sometimes ends up requiring extra manual steps. It also depends heavily on how well everything is set up: if the underlying data structure isn’t clean, you can run into errors, slowdowns, or general inefficiencies.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Retool helps us avoid slow, manual product management by providing a central place to prepare, manage, and upload product data for our online store.
Perfectly Implemented and Super User-Friendly
What do you like best about the product?
This feature has been implemented perfectly for the work we do. I use this over 10 times a day and never have any issues. Super user friendly.
What do you dislike about the product?
There isn't anything I dislike about the product.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I use Retool for a variety of tasks, including sales data input and KPI monitoring.
Retool Streamlines Backend Product Management for Faster Launches
What do you like best about the product?
I like Retool because it streamlines our backend product processes and makes it easier to manage and prepare products so they’re ready for customer-facing platforms.
What do you dislike about the product?
The system can feel slow when many users access it at the same time, which can delay getting products online for a large team of 500+ users.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
By making information, images, and features instantly accessible when a consumer clicks, Retool solves the issue of maintaining and organising product data. This helps us by speeding backend procedures and producing a seamless and engaging customer experience.
Retool Supercharges App Development with Seamless AI and CI/CD Integration
What do you like best about the product?
There are many great things about Retool.
1. Creating enterprise quality applications very quickly.
2. Ability to connect with source control.
3. Ability to connect and kick off CI/CD.
4. Built in unit tests that automatically run on changes. So, very "pushed left" into the app developer environment.
5. Very useful integration of AI. The editor makes AI a collaborator. AI can handle iterative development.
What do you dislike about the product?
No known issues at this point. We are early in our adoption process.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
The big one is application development acceleration. We have a very large backlog of pending work.
Fast Setup, Hassle-Free Process
What do you like best about the product?
I really liked how Retool made the process fast for building an audience engine, allowing me to get everything ready in less than 24 hours. I also appreciate that I can edit my prompt results without having to prompt again and again. The integration and the assist mode are features I enjoy, and the initial setup was swift and easy.
What do you dislike about the product?
The part that I have to run VPN to access the platform
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Retool made building an audience engine fast, getting everything ready in less than 24 hours. I like editing prompts without repeating them and appreciate the integration and assist mode.
Intuitive and powerful tool
What do you like best about the product?
I appreciate how Retool enables us to build intuitive and multi-functional interfaces in a very short amount of time. Its capacity to construct strong workflows that effectively call APIs to interact with our working environment really stands out for me. I love that it's capable of not only connecting with agents to execute diverse tasks such as web searching and summarizing but also of calling or updating data resources seamlessly. The powerful agent feature is a remarkable aspect of Retool, and its quick learning curve makes it extremely accessible and easy to master. I find the inspirations provided by Retool particularly helpful. Moreover, the initial setup was very easy, which I highly value. Overall, my experience with Retool has been overwhelmingly positive, and I would highly recommend it.
What do you dislike about the product?
I would like to improve documentation for workflow and response time of asking AI assist
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Retool helps me build intuitive interfaces quickly, create strong workflows interacting with APIs and agents, and manage diverse tasks, enhancing productivity and functionality in hackathons.
Has provided a quick way to build mobile apps and could improve usability for non-technical users
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Retool involves an inventory app project. I built a mobile app to make an inventory of chemistry products. Retool helped me with that project as it was a good way to show a quick solution to call APIs for another software, the main software for chemical products, and Retool has good possibilities for this purpose.
I found working with those integrations to present some challenges, but not really difficult challenges because Retool integrates functionality to call APIs and manage the results to provide data to mobile app components.
I have another main user story to add about my use case and experience with those integrations in Retool. We have to scan QR codes and the scan has to be made with Zebra hardware.
What is most valuable?
The best features Retool offers include the ability to quickly create a mobile app and use this mobile app in a native mobile app for Android.
I found the process of creating and deploying those mobile apps for Android with Retool to be smooth as the documentation is very good, and I found answers and examples to create a mobile app. I can access a debug mode in the mobile app which was really convenient to make tests and find what can be improved, where I have a problem, and how to correct it.
Retool positively impacted my organization as the proof of concept we built gave us a way to convince power users and key users before developing the real software. It was a way to maintain the launch date of the project, which helped speed up the project timeline and save resources.
What needs improvement?
Retool, being a low-code/no-code platform, could improve by allowing users, particularly non-technical users, to use it more easily.
In the mobile app development, you have to use JavaScript to interact with components, and for non-technical users, it's already too technical, so Retool has to add some integrated solutions.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working in the IT sector for 26 years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Retool is stable in my experience, but I did have an issue with my app where I lost some modifications and had to recreate some functionalities.
How are customer service and support?
I don't think I reached out to customer support, so I cannot comment on my experience.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I did not previously use a different solution before Retool, although I had explored several solutions.
What was our ROI?
I think we can see time saved to start the proof of concept and maybe money saved because I was able to develop the mobile app alone without needing additional resources.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The pricing, setup cost, and licensing experience were good as the free plan was enough for us.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I evaluated other options before choosing Retool; I talked with no-code experts and found KHAR, K-H-A-R, could be a way, along with Zilio, another French app development solution.
What other advice do I have?
My advice for others looking into using Retool would be to follow JavaScript training if needed and take time to train yourself with Retool.
Before wrapping up, I would like to add that I think Retool is a solution to know about because I don't find anything totally comparable in the market.
I found this interview to be a bit quick, and I have to think about my answers, maybe because I'm French and English is not my natural language. I would rate this review a 7 out of 10.
Empowers Rapid Tool Building with Ease
What do you like best about the product?
I really appreciate how Retool facilitates exposing data to a diverse range of stakeholders through a self-service, app-like interface. This capability significantly enhances cross-functional collaboration, as it enables all parties, regardless of their technical expertise, to engage with data effectively. The platform’s ease of use makes it a wonderful tool that doesn't impose limits on creativity or functionality, which I find extremely valuable. The power Retool provides is evident as it empowers a single developer to achieve what typically might require the effort of two to three developers. Furthermore, its robust connectivity is impressive; I'm able to connect with virtually any datastore, making it versatile for various applications. It also efficiently sends information to trigger jobs or pipelines, allowing seamless integration with other processes. Overall, Retool stands out for me in terms of boosting productivity and operational efficiency.
What do you dislike about the product?
I would like to see improved documentation and potentially examples similar to those available in complex frameworks like D3.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I use Retool to easily expose data to stakeholders via a self-service interface, allowing rapid creation of internal tools that enhance cross-functional collaboration and productivity. It empowers a single developer to achieve tasks that typically need a team.
Streamlines daily job management and data sorting but lacks learning resources for non-technical users
What is our primary use case?
I use Retool to create jobs and workflows, managing whatever assigned tasks are there to create jobs and upload data entries.
Whenever I begin my analytics work, I first create a job using Retool by uploading my Excel file so it gets processed, and then the output comes from another dashboard linked with Retool, acting as a filter that sorts our data for the web and our other software.
I also use Retool to download data from our company's data repository, from where I can compare my data to check its correctness or whether we need to feed that data into our reports for the desired results.
What is most valuable?
While I don't think there is a best feature in Retool, the way data appears in Retool is pretty good, allowing us to see, sort, download, or review required fields for our use case, and the customization options are beneficial, allowing us to tailor features to our needs.
Retool positively impacts our organization by saving costs compared to using other data repositories, and teams prefer Retool for daily tasks that perform customizations to showcase web pages or link their data backend, making it more efficient and cost-effective than other software available in the market.
What needs improvement?
The UI of Retool could be improved, as I am not fond of the current design, and there should be a platform for learning how to use Retool efficiently, especially since our software team customizes it for their needs, leaving the operational team with limited knowledge on how to customize it.
Since I haven't delved deeply into Retool beyond exporting data, I believe it could benefit from tutorials or learning platforms on how to integrate Retool into daily tasks, as more feedback might arise from that knowledge.
There should be better documentation or support for non-technical users, providing a platform to learn and implement Retool effectively.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Retool for the past three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Retool is stable, and I haven't encountered any downtime or issues.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Retool's scalability appears to handle growing amounts of data and users easily.
How are customer service and support?
I haven't reached out to customer support, so I can't comment on my experience with them.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
This is my first time using any solution, so I haven't used a different one before Retool.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I have no idea regarding pricing, setup costs, or licensing.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I haven't evaluated any other options before choosing Retool.
What other advice do I have?
I don't have specific answers regarding cost savings or increased efficiency.
For mesh regeneration, we have reduced time for our model; apart from that, I don't have much knowledge to share.
For managing your work or creating tasks, Retool is the best option you can explore, and you should definitely give it a try. My overall rating for this product is 7.
