PM at Retool - worked on our External apps solution for 2 years.
Retool has a high ceiling for what you can build with it. Generally speaking, most of our external use cases are B2B use cases that focus on productivity and data, not things that require highly differentiated visuals and animations. We call this "Operations software".
We had to make a lot of platform improvements in Retool's performance and design capabilities to claim that we have first-class support for customer-facing use (it's not as easy as it should be if you're new to Retool, but we're working on it). The bar is simply higher. Pricing and packaging needed to be there as well: we launched external user pricing that gives you a predictable rate at scale, and if you're bootstrapping, you can get up to $60k in credits through our Startup Program, which would cover your Retool bill entirely.
Happy to chat more if you're overwhelmed by all the links - you can email me at antony[at]retool[dot]com.
Hi! Last year, Retool introduced differentiated pricing for end users (viewers) and standard users (editors) to make these kinds of use cases much more palatable[0]. We also rolled out support for building customer-facing apps through letting you whitelabel and ship apps to people outside your organization [1].
Would be more than happy to talk through your use case; feel free to reach out at antony[at]retool[dot]com.
We're revamping some things around Public Apps to make them better/more accessible/more easily shareable for unauthenticated use cases, where you don't pay for end users.
For use cases where you are authenticating external users (using Retool Embed or Retool Portals), we offer custom pricing because use cases vary quite a bit. Sometimes the number of users doesn't even make sense as the billable metric.
Happy to chat more to see what'd work for you - feel free to reach out at antony [at] retool [dot] com!
We actively work with folks on custom pricing that aligns with their needs, so would love to understand what model makes sense for you! If pricing is the blocker, you can email me at antony[at]retool[dot]com. Would love to help.
Antony here, PM at Retool. We’re really excited to share how you can quickly build portals and business software for your customers, partners, and vendors.
We started Retool to help developers build internal tools faster—and along the way noticed that a lot of the same frustrations with complexity, costs, and data risks applied to building software for external users too. Developers are often forced to build from the ground up: setting up a database from scratch, integrating multiple APIs, configuring the latest Webpack release and making it work in CI, fiddling with CSS to get components to fit company branding, and then managing auth, SSO, permissions, scaling, performance—the list goes on.
So, we’re introducing two new products. Retool Portals is great if you want whitelabel Retool and have it manage login, signup, and user management; Retool Embed makes sense if you want to augment an existing portal with the functionality you build in Retool.
I’d love your feedback on how to make these even better. Also happy to answer any questions.
(PM at Retool) Yes! We recently shipped Retool Embed to enable you to build settings pages, dashboards, and UIs in Retool and embed them securely into your client-facing apps. You can learn more about Embed here and sign up for the beta: https://retool.com/products/embed We’re also working on a solution to let you build full-stack client portals in Retool. I’m [email protected] if you want to chat!
Retool has a high ceiling for what you can build with it. Generally speaking, most of our external use cases are B2B use cases that focus on productivity and data, not things that require highly differentiated visuals and animations. We call this "Operations software".
To name a few examples:
- Greenly is a B2B climate tech company who built a large portion of its product using Retool. You can see their case study here: https://retool.com/customers/greenly - Ylopo is a real estate tech company that built Retool apps to drive upsell opportunities: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj0_XuRh3G8 - Retool runs its Partner Portal through external-facing Retool apps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fu7FlG7SsU0
We had to make a lot of platform improvements in Retool's performance and design capabilities to claim that we have first-class support for customer-facing use (it's not as easy as it should be if you're new to Retool, but we're working on it). The bar is simply higher. Pricing and packaging needed to be there as well: we launched external user pricing that gives you a predictable rate at scale, and if you're bootstrapping, you can get up to $60k in credits through our Startup Program, which would cover your Retool bill entirely.
Happy to chat more if you're overwhelmed by all the links - you can email me at antony[at]retool[dot]com.
(Quick plug - we're actually running a webinar on how to build external-facing applications tomorrow! You can sign up on https://events.retool.com/build-external-apps.)