I am a sole proprietor mostly developing apps for NGOs, universities and other small and social businesses. I'm working a lot with Retool because it has a lot to offer. There is just one thing I can't really understand and I wanted to bring this up here:
You offer the free plan, then the team plan for 10$/user/month and then the business plan for 50$/user/month. This price jump between team and business is what bugs me. It is a 400% price jump. Now, I acknowledge that you get a lot of features for this, but at the same time the business plan is nothing that small and social business nor NGOs will be able to finance.
What is missing, in my view, is a plan where you can at least decide that user A is a devloper, thus able to edit apps, and user B, C and D are only "operators" of specific apps without edit priviliges. I'm not speaking of granular access control, I get why you would offer this in the more expensive business plan. I'm just talking about a general and simple distinction between developers and operators throughout all apps. In my work with Retool I have noticed that the fact that every user in the team plan can theoretically edit an app will lead non-experienced users to accidently do this, which obviously will create a lot of trouble.
In the last weeks I have started to look into other No-Code/Low-Code providers (e.g. Appsmith) and even though their general range of features is smaller than that of Retool, they all provide this distinction for way lower prices. Thus, I'm currently considering to develop all new apps for customers with some of these other provides and eventually transission all exisiting apps away from Retool (which I personally don't want to). This is just because of the inability to assign simple edit rights to Retool users for a reasonable price (again, a 400% price jump seems not very useful here).
I would be happy to discuss this further and hear what you think about this issue. I love Retool and I would be happy to be able to stay longterm with you.
Hi @victoria, true, but I actually Just didn’t have problems in the last months (which is great!)
Thank you for forwarding this matter. I know about the program, but for me this is only suitable for (a) being able to test around as much as I want without financial pressure and (b) for ‘for profit’ companies. As I have said, I’m working also for NGOs and for them Budget is always tight. They need long-term financial security.
Hi @betternet! David here, CEO @ Retool. Thanks for writing in. We're actually just now rolling out a free plan for non-profits and edus. We'd love to have you building on it. @victoria will reach out with more details. Thanks for using Retool, and thanks for the feedback!
I'd just like to echo the sentiments expressed by betternet: separating devs from non-dev users is the most basic of security controls. When I saw 'granular access control' on the pricing page, I misinterpreted 'granular' to mean much finer control.
I love the tool and have been a vocal proponent of Retool in the last month since I started using it. But the 5x price increase for this one essential feature may be outside the budget for me.
Thank you again to both of you for your feedback on our pricing here. Taking your concerns into consideration, we’re making some major changes to our pricing today
First, instead of charging the same price for any user at your company, we will now charge different rates for standard users (people who build apps in Retool) and a significantly lower amount for end users (people who only view or use Retool apps). See the details on our pricing page.
We’re also adding an annual billing option to our Team and Business plans so that you can pay annually and get an additional 20% discount per user.
And, we’re introducing a self-hosted Business plan for teams that prefer to self-host and need more granular permissions, audit logs, and reusable modules.
Beyond these pricing changes, we’ve recently shipped dozens of new features, including an AI-powered query editor, Python support, offline mode in Retool Mobile, and a Retool-hosted PostgreSQL database with a spreadsheet interface. We are constantly adding to the platform to make it more useful to you.
If you want to try out these new plans, you can sign up on our pricing page. If you have any other feedback about Retool, please comment in this thread or start a new thread anytime! Your feedback is always welcomed and appreciated.
I'm very frustrated right now after your announcement here sounded so promising. We just upgraded the billing plan expecting that end user accounts will not be able to edit apps. This is the way I would interpret your posting and also the information you provide on your pricing page. Now I get to read this after upgrading to the new pricing plan: "You’ve successfully subscribed to the Retool Team plan. Pricing is based on users' activity in Retool each month. Users that edit Retool apps or workflows will be billed as standard users. Enabled users that don't edit apps or workflows will be billed as end users. For permission-based control over which users can edit apps and become a standard user, upgrade to Retool Business."
I'm very sorry but this is ridicolous. My original post was specifically about the price jump between "Team" and "Business" and that I would need a very basic access control ("Can edit, yes/no") as a differentiation. I don't care about the 5$ I can save every month, what I need is high-level access control. Again, I was expecting this when reading through your posting and the Retool website. I really feal dazed and disappointed by Retool. As of today I will deploy no more projects for customers on Retool and instead host any new projects for clients (including an upcoming project for one of the biggest universities in Europe) to tools like Appsmith.
Thank you for sharing your feedback, @betternet. We genuinely appreciate you taking the time to express your frustrations and concerns. Our team has reviewed your response and I wanted to share some notes back from the team.
Firstly, I apologize for any confusion caused by our recent announcement and wanted to confirm that access controls continue to be available starting from the Business plan. This hasn’t changed.
Second, I wanted to highlight that our approach to pricing is decoupled from user access controls. This means that a user is only charged at the higher, standard user rate if they actually make edits in the billing period, regardless of what their permission settings are. This approach to billing should save most customers money.
In situations where it’s not critical to control edit access (e.g. an org has a small, trusted team) and the customer is focused on saving money, then the Team plan might be a good fit. For customers who view access controls as critical, we recommend the Business plan.
We also strive to be flexible with mistakes (e.g. someone clicking edit by accident) and are always happy to work with users on any payment issues.
Should you or any other users have further thoughts or suggestions, we would be more than happy to hear them!
Thank you once again for sharing your concerns, and we genuinely appreciate your time with Retool.
