Retool for External Apps?

Account and User Management
1

Is it just me or a Retool with features built for end-users would really be amazing? Posting my wishlist:

  • Login / Signup via Auth0 or other OAuth platforms
  • Payment button (Stripe & other payment gateways) for certain actions
  • Webhooks / Lambda functions for background jobs.
    Something like this would be a dream come true as I'd be able to focus on coding things that make my app special and not just plumbinh or gluing things together.
2

Hey there - great points! Retool actually supports most of these features:

  • OAuth docs are here: https://docs.tryretool.com/docs/apis#section-oauth-2-0
  • Payment button: there is a ā€˜Stripe Card Formā€™ component (you can search for it on the right hand side within the editor) that you can drag onto the canvas!
  • We also support AWS Lambda integrations; you can see the docs here: https://docs.tryretool.com/docs/lambda-integration
    As for making apps ā€œExternalā€, our Pro Plan allows you to create publicly accessible apps. Just click the hamburger icon in the top left of the app editor and select ā€œEmbedā€, and it will give you a public url
    Does this answer your question? Let us know how else we can help :slight_smile:
3

@polyglot-network just to clarify, are you trying to build public retool apps with those features? where users can login with oauth, pay money, etc.?

4

Yes. Even for public apps, the CRUD functionality should be trivially easy to build so that we can focus on building the custom processing in lambdas / jobs. Good to know that Retool has many of these features already. Do you have a startup-friendly pricing for public apps use-case?

1 Like
5

Is this possible? Iā€™m also have a similar user case.

6

Reviving this thread.

We love Retool for our internal apps, but we also have a use case where a Retool-powered app for external users would solve a business problem for us. Are there any plans to allow for external user access? Currently the pricing model makes this prohibitive.

3 Likes
7

No plans as of current :confused:

If your external users donā€™t need to authenticate, you can make your Retool app public!

8

Hi folks! I'm the PM working on Retool for external use cases (like client-facing portals). Please shoot me a note at antony@retool.com - would love to learn more about how you're thinking about leveraging Retool!

2 Likes
9

Hi @antonybello,

I've reached out to you by email 2 weeks ago, but got no response so far, thats why I'll just hijack this thread, as it exactly the topic I wanted to talk about.

We plan to create some courses that should be available for public, best as an app. In order to track the process for everyone, they would have to authenticate, so again, I would've had to pay $10/m for every user, just because I want to personalize their experience.

So any idea on how we can leverage the use of Retool for us without getting bankrupt?

I really love the idea of Retool, but I can't imagine that there is someone who would actually pay $50k/m for 5000 course participants when the course is free. And yes, I know that Retool was build with internal tools in mind.

We have more use cases, but I don't want to name them in public.

In the end, I just don't understand why the best low code tool for creating workflow tools is secured with an unnecessary lock and thus prevents companies from using its full potential.

I'm sure many of the users would have plenty of application ideas that could be implemented if Retool was able to create real public apps. You could at least change the policy so that when we add authentication ourselves, it doesn't violate Retool's terms of use.

It's like putting a tiger in a cage in the wild.

If you have any plans or more background informations on that, I would really appreciate to hear about that.

3 Likes
10

Hey Simon! Thanks for sharing your use case here. Sorry that it took a couple weeks to get back to you, but Iā€™m glad we got to talk.

Itā€™s exciting to hear the inspiration folks have for how they can use Retool. In fact, we launched a new product that's meant to better support external use cases for Retool: Retool Embed.

Knowing your use case is slightly different (you'd like to build an end-to-end product from scratch using Retool), we're working on making building something like it a first-class experience: from product to pricing.

Looking forward to continuing the conversation with you - thanks again for reaching out.

2 Likes
11

Hi @antonybello .

I'm considering using Retool for my external, customer-facing app.

I'm building an app that displays data on methane levels on cattle farms (for climate purposes). I've used Softr in the past but I'm looking for something more powerful.

I'd be eager to hook it into a DB. I think your postgres one would work.

The big issue is on external user authentication and access control. Would you, for example, allow for attributes of a given user (e.g. the Company they are part of) to restrict and filter the data displayed to them?

I'd love to learn more about what you have in mind as I need to make a decision soon on what platform to use.

12

That sounds great - but will it remain only available as a self-hosted option?

It seems to me that a lot of the efficiencies of a low-code tool are lost if we need to self-host and maintain the app and related backup infrastructure, hosting software updates, etc, etc.

13

Hey @rkaplan! The plan is definitely to release to Cloud as well :slightly_smiling_face:

1 Like
14

Is it possible to use the "embed" version?

15

Hi @antonybello,

I've been using retool for internal apps now for about 18 months and I love it. I keep an eye on other no code/low code products such as Bubble, but I find Retool super easy to use and create and I don;t want to have to learn another platform.

I have an use for an external client-based app where clients sign up and the app manages documents and messages with specific third parties. Possibly monetised through advertising.

I would be very interested in an external, cloud-based version.

1 Like
16

Hey folks! Just want to report back here for those who missed it that, for people on the Business and Enterprise plans, Retool embed is now available on Cloud :confetti_ball: