Top 5 reasons to choose Retool for your internal applications.
The majority of businesses are striving to optimize their operations and boost efficiency, especially in today's incredibly difficult market.
Marketing, business, and product teams must be agile and need to build small internal applications or proofs of concepts quickly, often needing them done yesterday. Software development departments, though, are busy writing and maintaining major software supporting the core of their business. It often leads to frustrations, which is where no-code tools or low-code platforms come to the rescue.
Why consider no-code or low-code tools?
Not long ago, no-code or low-code tools were seen as limited, immature, challenging to use, and unstable. However, the landscape has shifted considerably now, and there are numerous robust solutions that offer numerous advantages:
- Relieve the development teams and enable business users to have more control. Not every internal application needs a big technical team, an engineer, or highly secure security systems.
- Accessible and easy to use. With the help of visual programming tools, people in marketing or business can create sophisticated internal products and automate business processes themselves without too much difficulty and complexity. In the case of problems, an internal engineering team can always provide some help.
- High customization. The graphical user interface generated by most low/no-code tools can be highly customized. End-users will see no difference between the application built with low/no-code tools and custom developed application.
- Flexibility. Modern tools provide an array of flexibility, including the development of web frontends, mobile apps, and integrated workflow engines.
- Enable Agility. The use of low-code tools allows companies to overcome various obstacles and iterate with increasing speed.
There is one problem, however, which is the abundance of no-code tools on the market. There are hundreds of them, and new ones are popping like mushrooms after the rain. But if we are talking about the development of internal software, there’s one internal tool builder which stands out from the crowd — Retool.
What is Retool?
Retool is a low-code tool that allows building internal tools really fast. Founded in 2017, it is arguably the best-looking and the most widely used low-code builder of internal tools.
It’s really worth considering for your next internal project, so let’s discuss why!
1. Financial stability
Yes, you heard it, financial stability. Retool recently raised $42 million at a $3.5 billion valuation, and is backed by several major funds, offering you the financial security that you may not have with other SaaS tools which have an uncertain future. When choosing a SaaS tool, I’m often wondering whether it will exist in 2–3 years' time.
Putting it simply, they are not going anywhere anytime soon.
2. UX and DX
I can argue that Retool has one of the best User Experiences compared to other options. It is easy to use with a simple, logical layout. The design team behind Retool is really good and is constantly adding new improvements to the product, making it even easier to use.
3. Integrations
Retool integrates with virtually every SaaS in the world. Airflow, Google Spreadsheet, DynamoDB, Firebase, GraphQL, you name it.
Suppose you have an existing legacy database and need to create a dashboard or editing interface for it. An SQL connector (MySQL, Postgresql, etc) can be used to easily build your dashboard with a visual form builder.
It also has its own database, so you don’t need to use an external one if you don’t have one already. You can also manage your business logic with the help of a workflow management tool.
4. Multi-platform
With Retool, you can develop apps for both web and mobile. While web apps are designed to be responsive and can be used on mobile devices by default, native iOS or Android applications may suit better if, for example, you have iPads in your shops or delivery personnel using mobile phones.
5. Flexibility and scalability
One of the key objections to no-code tools is a fear that there might be functionality that we won’t be able to develop due to the limitations of the platform.
Retool is a low-code tool, which means that you can always write custom code in JavaScript if some of the functionality is missing.
Conclusion
As a software engineer myself, I take pleasure in writing code. However, due to the current demand for software development with existing developers having difficulties keeping up, it is my belief that non-tech people should have the capacity to make their own applications without relying entirely on coding teams.
Businesses need an increasing number of internal applications to be built to automate and speed up their internal processes, and there aren’t enough developers to build them. That’s why I think more non-tech-savvy people should have the ability to create applications without relying on engineers.
Companies need to stay agile and act faster than their competitors today to survive, and I believe no-code or low-code tools in general, or Retool in particular, when it comes to internal apps, can help them achieve that.
Some software teams will also have to overcome certain repulsion to the low-code tools by understanding that everything that makes them more agile makes them stronger. Software teams must choose their own battles and given the scarce resources, make decisions about where to concentrate their efforts.
As for Retool, it’s simply one of the best tools on the market, it is backed by some best VCs on the planet and is used in top-notch companies, and you should consider it for your next internal project.
