Licensing and building as a team on self-hosted?

[QAnders]

We have no option but to run self-hosted, unfortunately, due to GDPR regulations here in the EU...

The plan is to eventually host it on AWS or Azure, but no firm plans have been set as we are currently evaluating Retool.

The idea is to use it initially for building some internal "help" tools, and later as an Admin portal, a little statistics, etc. about our platform as we are a SaaS provider.

So, as far as I understand the licensing, we are good to use the Free tier up until we have 5 users and we will have two developers now, working in parallel on Retool, and in the first App we build we'll have 3-4 users.

So, question then, as the developers are "done", would they still be considered "users", or can we remove them?

How is the user count tracked per "App", or is it Retool in general?
Say I start two Retool containers where I log in using my email address, is that counted as one user (me), or is it two, one per container?

I have to add the users to my Retool account, and then they can login in my "App", or how does that work?
I'm not sure on how we should add/count users if we add a tool internally, that has no login and runs on an available container... How is a "user" counted then on the on-premise setup?

Logging into my Retool account, I can see no trace of the containers I've used locally, so I'd assume it's one "person" that counts, rather than how many containers I run, correct?

How would we best share/merge the development between two separate containers?
As we can't use cloud, and we don't yet have it setup in an environment we only run it locally on our laptops.
I assume exporting the JSON, writing a script to merge the two JSON exports and then import that...?

What exactly counts as an "external user"?
It says someone who is not part of my organization, but we have partners/consultants working with us, in our environment, with our tools, are they then still external?
In that case, anyone not employed by us are external users?

Sorry, many questions, but I'd like to get the picture clear before we fully commit to Retool so there's no nasty surprises...

[Tess]

Hi @QAnders,

@QAnders

So, question then, as the developers are "done", would they still be considered "users", or can we remove them?

If they no longer need access to Retool, you can disable their accounts to free up the seats. They won't be able to log in after that, and they will be excluded from any billing/user count. If they need to log in, but only to view apps (not open them in edit mode), then they would be considered end users.

@QAnders

How is the user count tracked per "App", or is it Retool in general?
Say I start two Retool containers where I log in using my email address, is that counted as one user (me), or is it two, one per container?

The user count is tracked in Retool overall - not per app. Each self hosted license key on the Free/Team/Business plans is only supported for one instance of Retool. Enterprise license keys allow you to spin up any number of Retool instances.

@QAnders

I have to add the users to my Retool account, and then they can login in my "App", or how does that work?
I'm not sure on how we should add/count users if we add a tool internally, that has no login and runs on an available container... How is a "user" counted then on the on-premise setup?

Logging into my Retool account, I can see no trace of the containers I've used locally, so I'd assume it's one "person" that counts, rather than how many containers I run, correct?

You add users to your Retool organization. On the Free plan, they can then log in and access any of the apps in edit or viewer mode. Business & Enterprise plans allow you to set permissions so they can only access certain apps/resources/etc.
Again, non-Enterprise accounts only support 1 instance of Retool, so you shouldn't need to worry about other instances running. We track individual users (by email) per license key. What do you mean by an app that has no login? Users should always have to authenticate into your Retool organization to access apps

@QAnders

How would we best share/merge the development between two separate containers?
As we can't use cloud, and we don't yet have it setup in an environment we only run it locally on our laptops.
I assume exporting the JSON, writing a script to merge the two JSON exports and then import that...?

If you have an Enterprise plan, which supports multiple instances of Retool (dev, production, staging, for example), you will get access to source control. Non-enterprise plans only have one instance. If you set up multiple Retool organizations with separate license keys, then yes, you'd export/import the json between organizations. You can replace any app by importing a json file directly into the app.

@QAnders

What exactly counts as an "external user"?
It says someone who is not part of my organization, but we have partners/consultants working with us, in our environment, with our tools, are they then still external?
In that case, anyone not employed by us are external users?

The differentiation for external users on the Business & Enterprise plans is a user that does not share your internal domain. They also don't build apps or workflows. You can enable Retool to set up External Users by following these steps:
​External apps tutorial | Retool Docs

Please let me know what follow up questions come up! I know you mentioned you're in the EU, so this may not be helpful timezone-wise, but we also host live office hours if you want to chat about your use case there.

[QAnders]

Thanks for getting back to me!

So, if I get this right, on the free plan there's really no difference between users, all are accessing the on-premise instance as "developers" with access to Edit mode of the App, correct?

This essentially means that I can have up to five users and still be on the free plan, and they can all run one instance of the same "App", and by "App" I mean a Docker image using the same credentials for self-hosting, using the same DB encryption key?

We'd have two or three devs, and they would develop on the same solution/App for Retool, as they'd add different sections to it.
Then it depends on how much we can cram in there and if it'll work the way we intend it to if there's an additional 2-3 "users", or if there's more and we need to go to a Business license.

[Tess]

Hi @QAnders,

@QAnders

So, if I get this right, on the free plan there's really no difference between users, all are accessing the on-premise instance as "developers" with access to Edit mode of the App, correct?

Correct - the Team and Free plans have no differentiation in terms of user access

@QAnders

This essentially means that I can have up to five users and still be on the free plan, and they can all run one instance of the same "App", and by "App" I mean a Docker image using the same credentials for self-hosting, using the same DB encryption key?

Correct

@QAnders

We'd have two or three devs, and they would develop on the same solution/App for Retool, as they'd add different sections to it.
Then it depends on how much we can cram in there and if it'll work the way we intend it to if there's an additional 2-3 "users", or if there's more and we need to go to a Business license.

Yep - we also have the Team plan up to 100 users, but again, they'd all have equal edit access, so usually the Business plan makes more sense