This is more of a hypothetical question- could I build a SaaS product with Retool? Essentially, Retool would serve as the frontend layer, connecting to other services on the backend. Users would log in to the frontend layer via an external authentication service.
So basically, we would pay for "development" licenses for the team of developers that are building the product, and the end user would not be a Retool user, but instead would only exist in our external SaaS database.
I think this is counter to the Retool business model. They need to get a cut of every person that makes use of Retool. The also do not allow a third part authentication as an end-run around this.
However, similar method that does not need authentication could work using a public facing app. A "user" has a long, unique ID that is passed in through the querystring. Anyone on the wire could read the URL so I would not call this secure, but would be useful for certain situations where security is not an issue. I have a client with low security requirements who needs to service many people outside their office for but a $50/month license for every one of those is not workable for their business model. I will be trying that model out on them, which I believe is the intent of the public app feature.
I have a somewhat related discussion on this forum category (Using Retool as a SaaS platform for verticals - #3 by bradlymathews) about creating a vertical SaaS application.
I would love to hear other people's ideas and viewpoints around Retool SaaS potential.