Retool Reviews & Product Details

The simplicity, interface & integration with various services

There seem to be some issues around the UI, like a sidebar opens up on clicking variables with details of all variables used, but there is no option to close it. Have to refresh the whole page. Also, some times placing the component works weirdly, like we can't resize after specific size, or can fit many components in a single view

We are generating reports, having some quick utils. Beneficial in creating quick reports without a new project for reports. Can make quick tools without much efforts on the UI side

I love any platform that make our systems more visible & accessible to the non-coders on the team. Once you get the hang of Retool, it's extremely fast to create new dashboards or tweak existing ones. I spun up a simple feature flag dashboard in less than a day. Love how it's a very live-first editor experience- once you hook up a working query, you immediately see the live data show up in autocompletion. Also it's definitely a plus that it works with our existing databases and services (in our case AWS), so our team stays in control of our data.

The editor is powerful but it's definitely a little tricky to learn at first, there's little things to remember like whether to use ".data" or ".value".

We're building a really lightweight CMS / PIM system for our ecommerce storefront.

The ease of use and the possibility to automate recurring manual tasks. Building retool apps went faster than expected and the feedback received by internal users has been overwhelmingly positive. I certainly recommend it for those looking for more speed in the process. Also, from the time we started exploring the retool possibility to actually building the apps and putting them to production... it all happened within a month. That's how dynamic retool is and that's what retool can do to speed up any query process you might be struggling with. I would say it's a 10 out of 10 for what it proposes itself to do.

Overall very happy. Maybe the interface could be friendlier to non-technical people, but I also understand it's complex type of work being done there :)

Recurring tasks that previously required extensive queries and reviews. Things are going faster now. Let's say that previously a given task would take 5 to 6 hours to complete. Now, with the help of Retool, it's possible to mostly complete that task within 5 or 6 minutes.

As a new user, I could quickly learn how to use it and successfully implement a dashboard.

Documentation needs to present some more use cases

Analytics Dashboard

The ease of using the tool. It's easy and so useful.

Requires a very basic coding background.

Tools for teams to use internally.

I had no issues getting connected to our RDS instance via SSH tunneling via a bastion server. I love how easy it is to change datasources from development to production once you're ready to publish. The editor is responsive and intuitive.

It would be useful to hide the Edit button altogether for users who have "view only" permissions.

We're building tools for our support staff to use for admin tasks that are quicker to build in Retool than incorporating into our own apps. Plus, my non-technical co-founder can build them with just a little SQL help from me.

I love that I can spend a few minutes in Retool as a non-engineer and still generate so much value for my team. It's easy to create entire dashboards and workflows, and you can make such impactful changes very easily.

The Retool UX isn't perfect, and the application is still missing some functionality that would be super helpful. Thankfully, it provides so much easy to use, useful functionality that it's not a real problem.

We've built an entire internal dashboard for our operations team to use. It plugs in with our database, so they can easily make changes to the underlying values, view certain cuts of data they want, or trigger events like API calls to other applications from within the dashboard. Retool saves a lot of time for our engineering team because now there's a whole application in Retool that does not have to be maintained by the engineering team.

The best feature is without a doubt the extensive library of UI components. Literally anything we'd ever need is there, to use in our apps. Also there's no limit to the apps you can connect to. You can easily use the API connector to use any REST api with any kind of authentication and it just works! You can even do advanced paging if you want. If you can write Javascript, there are simply no limits. Even async/await works in the script editor, which is amazing.

Sometimes, when creating a small error in one of the script queries, the app bugs and crashes. The support team is immediately notified though, and stuff like that is fixed quick. Also, combining multiple queries does get a bit unorganized or chaotic, if you go too far. But I guess that 's something you can solve by implementing an advanced query naming strategy and drawing out the app structure with all queries ahead of building in Retool.

There are a lot of automation flows and dashboarding solutions where you just want to take that data, show the data and allow the user to do all kinds of stuff with it. We're developers; we are used to building front-ends. But nothing matches the speed of combining components to a full-fledged app as Retool. We managed to rebuild our internal invoicing app (loading timelogs into invoicing software to create invoices) in 4 times the original development time.

- Integrations! I was able to connect will all the databases we are using. Even the one provided by AWS (Dynamodb). - Drag and dropping UI elements also make the developing tools faster. - Awesome support.

The free version has only editor mode so I have to move to a paid plan to get preview mode. But hey, I am nitpicking here.

We had to execute some queries upon customer request, Like making profile verified, etc. So we had to develop internal tools. This is where retool comes in handy. It hardly took 20 minutes to implement these tools

Retool allowed us to save a lot of development time. An "admin area" was on our roadmap and, after Retool, it was simply removed, because we were able to create every report that we need – and some basic actions like update or delete – directly from it's drag-and-drop interface.

Retool will be extremely limited if don't have coding skills. And, for MongoDB users, queries often get pretty complex, so you often get confused and it creates a "please don't touch this input code" culture.

We generate reports (with charts) directly from Retool, connection our MongoDB database to it. This would be way more difficult with "habitual coding" and use development time that is already difficult to get as a small company.