What is Retool and what are its top alternatives?
Top Alternatives to Retool
- Bubble
It is a visual programming language that lets you build a fully-functional web app without writing code. Users have built marketplaces, CRM tools, social networks. Engineers can focus on new features and add them as plugins with code, while business people can focus on the customer-facing product. ...
- Airtable
Working with Airtable is as fast and easy as editing a spreadsheet. But only Airtable is backed by the power of a full database, giving you rich features far beyond what a spreadsheet can offer. ...
- Superblocks
It is a programmable IDE for developers to build any internal app, workflow or scheduled job at a fraction of the time and cost. Save 100s of developer hours building custom internal tools. ...
- Blazor
Blazor is a .NET web framework that runs in any browser. You author Blazor apps using C#/Razor and HTML. ...
- Google App Maker
App Maker lets you develop powerful apps with relative ease. Create a model to manage your data, build a UI in the visual editor, use Apps Script to write some scripts, and you're on your way. ...
- Microsoft PowerApps
It is a suite of apps, services, connectors and data platform that provides a rapid application development environment to build custom apps for your business needs. Using Power Apps, you can quickly build custom business apps that connect to your business data stored either in the underlying data platform (Common Data Service) or in various online and on-premises data sources (SharePoint, Excel, Office 365, Dynamics 365, SQL Server, and so on). ...
- Stamplay
The API-based development platform enabling developers to do 80% of the job in 1% of the time thanks to: out of the box APIs for users and data, one-click integration with any API, scalable infrastructure and SDKs. Build Rome in a day. ...
- Appsmith
Open source framework to build, deploy and share internal apps. Use UI widgets like tables, charts, forms, maps, and more. Easily connect to DBs like Postgres, Mongo, MySQL++ or REST API/GraphQL and use JS anywhere. ...
Retool alternatives & related posts
- An affordable alternative to Mendix and OutSystems7
related Bubble posts
I would like to build a community-based customer review platform for a niche industry where users can sign up for a forum, as well as post detailed reviews of their experience with a company/product, including a rating system for pre-selected features. Something like niche.com or areavibes.com with curated information/data, ratings, reviews, and comparison functionalities.
Is this possible to build using no-code tools? I have read about the possibility of using Webflow with Memberstack, Airtable, and Elfsight through Zapier / Integromat, which may allow for good design and functionality. Is it possible with Bubble or Bildr?
I have no problems with a bit of a learning curve as long as what I want is possible. Since I have 0 coding experience, I am not sure how to go about it.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
So I've been working as a freelancer building websites using Wordpress, limiting myself to available templates and customizing it (drag and drop no code involvement) and blending between plugins to get the requirements as much as possible. and I have spent my day job doing everything related to web portals (business case, business plans, marketing, back-office operations, project management, product management) but never got my hands into code yet. I heard of zero-code solutions such as Bubble and Webflow and I would like to be able to develop an MVP (Minimal Viable Product) to launch those ideas quickly to make sure that I make some sales before we invest into building a state of the art app.
Those MVPs are a struggle since most of it has its own unique processes therefore WordPress doesn't come in handy most of the time. This is where Bubble and Webflow come to the fore. Before I start my journey to learn one of these tools, where I imagine I will spend weeks to months learning, I need to know which road I should take while I am standing at the crossroads.
Objective: 1- Build MVPs with unique workflows to secure sales and transactions to confirm the product is viable
Requirements: 1- No coding knowledge required 2- Drag and drop workflows 3- Can use RTL (right to left) and build websites in Arabic 4- Cost-effective 5- High-quality online courses (free/paid) are available
Your advice is much appreciated.
- Powerful and easy to use19
- Robust and dynamic8
- Quick UI Layer6
- Practical built in views4
- Robust API documentation3
- Great flexibility0
related Airtable posts
If you're a developer using Google Docs or Google Sheets... just stop. There are much better alternatives these days that provide a better user and developer experience.
At FeaturePeek, we use slite for our internal documents and knowledge tracking. Slite's look and feel is similar to Slack's, so if you use Slack, you'll feel right at home. Slite is great for keeping tabs on meeting notes, internal documentation, drafting marketing content, writing pitches... any long-form text writing that we do as a company happens in Slite. I'm able to be up-to-date with everyone on my team by viewing our team activity. I feel more organized using Slite as opposed to GDocs or GDrive.
Airtable is also absolutely killer – you'll never want to use Google Sheets again. Have you noticed that with most spreadsheet apps, if you have a tall or wide cell, your screen jumps all over the place when you scroll? With Airtable, you can scroll by screen pixels instead of by spreadsheet cells – this makes a huge difference! It's one of those things that you don't really notice at first, but once you do, you can't go back. This is just one example of the UX improvements that Airtable has to the previous generation of spreadsheet apps – there are plenty more.
Also, their API is a breeze to use. If you're logged in, the docs fill in values from your tables and account, so it feels personalized to you.
related Superblocks posts
Blazor
- Uses C#61
- No need to learn separate language or technology48
- Supports making a single page application41
- Tight integration with .NET project39
- Uses .NET standard library37
- Very little JavaScript required30
- Components29
- No need to compile, bundle and deploy separately27
- Shared classes between client and server27
- Cross Platform24
- Has Server AND Client hosting models21
- Very easy JavaScript interop if required18
- Third party state management i.e. Blazor-State17
- App state can be managed singleton objects14
- Portable Code across Mobile, Web and Desktop4
- Work with Electron/MAUI2
- Initial load time3
- Hard to inject javascript2
related Blazor posts
The only two programming languages I know are Python and Dart, I fall in love with Dart when I learned about the type safeness, ease of refactoring, and the help of the IDE. I have an idea for an app, a simple app, but I need SEO and server rendering, and I also want it to be available on all platforms. I can't use Flutter or Dart anymore because of that. I have been searching and looks like there is no way to avoid learning HTML and CSS for this. I want to use Supabase as BASS, at the moment I think that I have two options if I want to learn the least amount of things because of my lack of time available:
Quasar Framework: They claim that I can do all the things I need, but I have to use JavaScript, and I am going to have all those bugs with a type-safe programming language avoidable. I guess I can use TypeScript?, but that means learning both, and I am not sure if I will be able to use 100% Typescript. Besides Vue.js, Node.js, etc.
Blazor and .NET: There is MAUI with razor bindings in .Net now, and also a Blazor server. And as far as I can see, the transition from Dart to C# will be easy. I guess that I have to learn some Javascript here and there, but I have to less things I guess, am I wrong? But Blazor is a new technology, Vue is widely used.
related Google App Maker posts
related Microsoft PowerApps posts
My company wants to make some relatively small, self-contained web apps to go through specific engineering analysis workflows.
Each app would involve:
(a) User inputs numbers and tabular data either in a table or from a csv import
(b) App makes plots of this data
(c) App performs calculations based on user input and outputs results as either plots or numbers or tabular data
It seems like there must be zillions of applications where people want these things, so I want a 'low code' approach that already handles a bunch of details so we don't have to. Experience in the past with Angular has involved, in my experience, a lot of low-level coding to 'reinvent the wheel', creating capabilities (like menus to control plotting options like font size) that I'd expect to be very common.
Specific wants:
(a) Plotting capabilities with prebuilt convenient plotting controls
(b) Ability to 'save' and 'load' (as in, you do the analysis and get results and want to save so that you can reopen this save environment with the data and analysis, as if you'd never closed it)
(c) For specific components, ability to swap out the built-in components with a customized plot/widget.
For example, with (c), we might have a situation where we do want to make a custom plot or tool, and would like to be able to drop that into the general application
Question is - does something exist that does what I am describing? What would you recommend? On our list to check out: Microsoft PowerApps , Dash , UI Bakery, Retool , Tibco Spotfire , Outsystems, Zoho, Creatio, or any other suggestions.
Other considerations:
(a) How easy are these apps to maintain (i.e., do they frequently make non back compatible, breaking updates, like they do with Angular)
(b) Need excellent security so I can deploy web apps for large companies
(c) General ease of use (would like to be efficient with developer time).
Stamplay
- Easy to use45
- No code for the backend32
- Out-of-the-box features32
- Easy and fast setup29
- Great customer support25
- Incredibly easy point 'n' click backend logic25
- Ease of back-end development22
- Low learning curve18
- Amazing app :)13
- Breathtaking ux12
- Elegant4
- Allows devs to focus on what makes their app unique3
- Terrific ifttt feature3
- Great features and easy setup2