User Interface and Experience
Ease of Use
Today Retool is one of the most popular platforms for low-code development known for its rich functionality, user-friendly drag-and-drop interface, and outstanding performance even under high loads.
Though it has some basic features that can be easily used by non-tech professionals, including marketers or business analysts, the majority of tools are targeted at specialists with technical backgrounds.
Before starting to use Retool at full scale and leverage all its possibilities, users need to learn how to interact with a platform first. Nevertheless, when the available functionality is already well-known, developers can rely on Retool to solve technological tasks of different complexity.
Refine is positioned as an open-source Retool for enterprises, which indicates that the core functionality of these platforms will be quite similar.
This React-based framework provides user-friendly drag-and-drop tools that are simple to navigate not only at the start but also with your project’s growth and scaling in the long run.
Business tools built with Refine can share not only their fundamental UI elements but also the logic that powers the key processes.
It’s comparatively easy to learn. There are a lot of available examples and well-developed documentation that can help beginners get started.
Customization
Customization is one of the strong sides of Retool. The platform offers great flexibility in building apps. It means that even businesses with specific requirements and processes can opt for it.
Retool provides a rich library of UI components that can be adjusted based on your needs.
All solutions created with the help of Retool can be integrated with various third-party tools, services, and custom databases. This can significantly extend the functionality of your apps.
If you need to equip your tools with any advanced features, developers can create SQL queries and custom scripts to solve this task.
What unites both platforms in this Retool/Refine is ensured flexibility in terms of customization.
Refine allows users to leverage unlimited customization of user interfaces. This makes it possible to create apps that look and feel unique based on specific business needs.
Refine offers complete freedom to implement any layout you need without limitations. It also includes default layouts provided by its UI packages, which you can use as-is or customize.
Apart from this, you can create entirely custom layouts using hooks and components provided by Refine.
Templates and Components
Instead of creating their apps from scratch and writing dozens of code lines manually, platform users can choose any of the ready-to-use visual components available to them.
Apart from this, Retool also has hundreds of templates that correspond to different use cases and types of solutions.
For instance, there are templates for various domains like agriculture, manufacturing, logistics, hospitality, HR, sales, eCommerce, telecommunications, construction, and others.
Developers can modify the available templates and components to further reuse them in their projects.
Refine provides numerous enterprise-grade components like tables, charts, lists, forms, and wizards. All of them can be smoothly added to your projects and further customized and reused in accordance with your business requirements.
The framework also offers an impressive collection of pre-built templates intended for the realization of different scenarios and tasks.
There are templates to address the majority of common enterprise needs, such as invoice generation, HR process management, custom relation managment, etc. Moreover, there are templates for eCommerce stores, various admin boards, and internal tools.
Short Recap
Ease of use: Retool is known for its rich functionality which allows users to build different types of software solutions to address their business needs.
Customization: The platform ensures great freedom in the aspect of customization. Developers can power apps with their manually written code to implement unique functionality.
Templates and components: The collection of templates and components is quite rich. Users can find excellent options for different use cases and tasks.
Main strength: Rich functionality and wide customization possibilities are among the most significant benefits of Retool.
Main weakness: The learning curve is rather steep, especially for non-tech users.
Ease of use: Refine offers simple navigation and a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface. But it might be necessary to spend time getting accustomed to some tools.
Customization: When it comes to the customization of user interfaces, the possibilities are not limited. Apart from this, users can significantly expand the functionality of their apps by integrating them with third-party tools.
Templates and components: There are a lot of components and templates designed to address the most popular enterprise needs.
Main strength: Refine provides great flexibility and freedom in terms of customization, which allows developers to build apps of different complexity.
Main weakness: The audience of potential users is limited due to the specificity of the offered features.
Features and Functionality
Core Features
The main functionality is built around a drag-and-drop app builder interface. Thanks to this, users can significantly reduce the time typically needed for creating software tools.
Instead of writing code manually, developers can just add ready-made components to their projects and enrich the functionality of their apps.
It is very convenient that when the platform doesn’t provide any ready-to-use options that meet the company’s needs, it is possible to modify the available components or introduce custom-built elements using React, HTML, or JavaScript.
The platform also has a range of helpful features to organize efficient collaboration between teams.
This tool is great for front-end developers mostly (but not only). It. simplifies building user interfaces and helps reduce the time spent on coding. With it, developers can focus on designing and customizing their applications more efficiently.
One of Refine's standout features is its modular design, which works smoothly with popular UI libraries like Ant Design and Material UI. This gives developers plenty of flexibility to adapt and integrate components as needed.
The framework also makes it easy to customize components, handle advanced page logic, and reuse elements to keep development efficient and consistent. It’s all about saving time while maintaining control over the look and feel of your application.
Advanced Features
For complex data-related tasks, such as custom data visualizations, users can enable advanced scripting. Thanks to it, Retool can be chosen as a low-code development platform for building solutions that include heavy data processing operations.
The Embedded Apps feature allows users to integrate their Retool-built apps with other platforms. This makes it possible for other business systems to work with these solutions and their data.
Apart from this, the platform has introduced Retool AI. This set of features is intended for building AI apps, workflows, and data-aware chatbots. For instance, developers can use this feature to generate chat responses based on the message history and instructions provided in a natural language.
Refine supports advanced routing. Thanks to this, developers can leverage a robust routing system that enables nested resources and dynamically generates routes based on their provided APIs.
With such functionality, developers can create highly scalable and modular applications with ease. This feature simplifies navigation logic, making it faster to extend even complex enterprise-level applications as they grow. Their management becomes simpler as well.
Moreover, Refine’s Headless UI approach, allows developers to work with any custom design to solve even the most specific business tasks.
Automation and Workflow
Retool can become an excellent choice for those who are looking for a powerful platform to set up different workflows without any specific efforts.
Some standard processes, like data synchronization, can be implemented just with a couple of clicks.
Workflows can be either triggered by particular events and conditions or activated based on a particular schedule.
Apart from this, there is also the possibility of creating unique workflows based on the specificity of your business tasks. To do this, users need to have at least basic knowledge of JavaScript.
Unlike Retool, Refine doesn’t directly offer built-in workflow management features. It is mainly explained by the fact that Refine is a frontend development framework.
Nevertheless, Refine supports smooth integrations with third-party workflow engines and backend automation tools.
Developers have the possibility of applying Refine to create custom frontend interfaces and further integrate them with backend workflow systems, including but not limited to n8n and Integromat.
This helps to seamlessly address complex enterprise-level automation tasks.
Short Recap
Core features: To build apps with Retool, you will need to work with its drag-and-drop interface. The platform provides a lot of helpful collaboration tools for joint work on projects.
Advanced features: Thanks to the supported advanced scripting, Retool is a good option for building apps that involve heavy data processing.
Automation and workflows: For activation of a workflow, users need to set a schedule or indicate a particular event or condition that will trigger it.
Main strength: Retool allows the automation of various multistep workflows, which makes this platform suitable for many different use cases and domains.
Main weakness: Users will need to have basic coding skills and tech knowledge to build complex applications.
Core features: To streamline development, users can customize components, implement advanced logic, and efficiently reuse or combine elements.
Advanced features: Refine offers a powerful system for nested resources and dynamic route generation based on APIs. This significantly simplifies navigation logic.
Automation and workflows: Refine seamlessly integrates with third-party workflow engines and automation tools. Developers can connect their apps with backend workflow systems.
Main strength: This framework can help you successfully address even complex enterprise-level automation needs.
Main weakness: Refine is mainly a front-end framework. It doesn't directly support built-in features for managing workflows.
Integrations
Third-party Integrations
To enrich the functionality of their business tools and apps created on the Retool platform, businesses can integrate them with different external databases and third-party services. For example, you can connect your apps with:
- APIs: REST APIs, GraphQL APIs, SOAP APIs.
- Cloud services: AWS, Google Sheets, and others.
- NoSQL databases: Redis Firebase, MongoDB, etc.
- SQL databases: PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, etc.
- Payments: Stripe, PayPal.
- Communication: Slack, Twilio.
- Analytics and CRM: Google Analytics, Salesforce, and more.
To get more detailed information about all available integrations, you can visit the official Retool website.
Developers can extend their Refine projects with a wide range of UI frameworks, backend connectors, and other tools.
- UI framework packages: Ant Design, Material UI, Mantine UI, Chakra UI.
- Data provider packages: Rest API, Strapi, GraphQL, NestJsx CRUD, Supabase, Airtable, Medusa, Appwrite.
- Frameworks: Next.js, Remix.
The full list of the allowed integrations is available here.
Ease of Connection
The process of integrating apps built on Retool with external services that are supported by the platform is based on the use of the relevant drag-and-drop components.
However, if you have some coding skills and know how to work with custom scripts and SQL queries, you can also connect your apps with a wider range of third-party tools.
With custom coding, your integration possibilities will be practically limitless.
Refine seamlessly integrates with platforms like Vite, Next.js, Remix, React Native, and Electron using a straightforward routing interface. No extra setup is not required.
Moreover, Refine provides a lot of detailed tutorials for those who have never interacted with this framework before.
Though the process of integrating external tools may look quite straightforward for developers, such tasks can’t be performed by non-tech users without any relevant coding skills and experience.
Short Recap
Third-party integrations: Retool offers a wide range of integrations with external tools and databases. Beyond this rich selection, it also provides ample opportunities for customization.
Ease of connection: Many tasks can be accomplished using a simple drag-and-drop interface. For more complex ideas, you can use custom scripts and SQL queries.
Main strength: Retool offers extensive integration capabilities with a wide variety of services and data sources.
Main weakness: Advanced integration features can be challenging to navigate for users without coding experience.
Third-party integrations: The functionality of the built solutions can be extended with the help of different tools, including UI frameworks and backend connectors.
Ease of connection: Refine integrates effortlessly with platforms like Vite, Next.js, Remix, React Native, and Electron through a simple routing interface.
Main strength: Integrations with supported platforms do not require additional setup. Refine also offers detailed tutorials for beginners.
Main weakness: Integrating external tools requires coding skills. It is less accessible for non-technical users.
Performance and Scalability
Speed and Efficiency
Retool excels in handling real-time data processing, complex operations, and large-scale data integration with outstanding performance. The platform is designed to efficiently manage multiple data sources simultaneously.
Its high performance is achieved through features like caching, server-side processing, and advanced query optimization.
Retool also supports real-time updates, ensuring that applications remain responsive and up-to-date.
Refine apps are built for speed and performance. The platform's modular architecture ensures efficient rendering and optimized resource usage. This leads to fast load times and smooth user experiences.
Its lightweight nature, combined with the ability to integrate seamlessly with various backend systems, minimizes latency.
The framework is mainly targeted at enterprises and large organizations. Given this, it helps to ensure excellent functioning even for large applications with complex functionality.
Scalability
What makes Retool a suitable choice even for enterprises with continuously growing needs is the capability of this platform to support complex multistep workflows and large-scale applications.
Retool can support the expansion of enterprise-level solutions while keeping the stable performance and high security of the created apps.
Moreover, Retool supports both cloud and self-hosted deployments. This gives users full control over scaling based on their infrastructure needs.
Cloud deployment will also guarantee real-time scaling based on user demand and workload without any interruptions or performance deterioration.
Refine offers excellent scalability, making it suitable for projects of any size. This framework is mainly positioned as a platform for building tools and systems for enterprises and it perfectly copes with the set tasks.
Refine is designed to adapt as your application grows, ensuring it keeps running smoothly no matter how your needs change.
It works seamlessly with different backend systems, manages complex data effectively, and supports dynamic routing. This gives developers the flexibility to scale both the frontend and backend as their projects grow.
Refine also offers versatile deployment options, so businesses can expand their infrastructure while keeping security and performance intact.
Short Recap
Speed and efficiency: Retool apps are designed to run efficiently, handling large data sets and complex queries without lag.
Scalability: With Reool, users can seamlessly scale their internal tools to support their growing operations.
Main strength: Retool apps can smoothly scale, while still maintaining performance, security, and flexibility.
Main weakness: Tech expertise is a must for building scalable and high-performance apps that need to handle complex data processes and unique workflows.
Speed and efficiency: The platform is built with performance in mind, making it a great choice for enterprise-level applications.
Scalability: Refine is highly scalable. It is a great fit for projects of all sizes, especially enterprise tools and systems.
Main strength: Refine’s modular architecture ensures the seamless performance of enterprise-scale applications as they grow.
Main weakness: The framework has powerful features that can ensure excellent functioning of apps but it is targeted at a limited group of users.
Security and Compliance
Data Security
Retool implements a comprehensive set of security measures.
All data is encrypted both in transit and at rest to prevent unauthorized access.
Role-based access control ensures that users can only access the data and features relevant to their roles.
Thanks to the single sign-on (SSO) feature, the platform can ensure seamless and secure authentication.
Apart from this, the platform provides access to audit logs. This feature helps track user activities and detect any suspicious changes or access attempts.
Refine can become an excellent choice for organizations that perceive the security of their data and software solutions as a top priority.
Its flexible architecture allows users to seamlessly introduce different authorization strategies, such as role-based access control (RBAC), attribute-based access control (ABAC), and access control list (ACL).
Apart from this, with Refine, businesses can continue using their existing identity providers.
It is possible thanks to the native support for the most widely implemented options, such as Azure AD, Amazon Cognito, Okta, and Google Cloud Identity.
Compliance
Retool is often chosen for creating apps for highly regulated industries.
It is compliant with major data security and privacy regulations like GDPR that are in force in the US and European countries.
Apart from this, if you are building apps for the healthcare domain, you can ensure their adherence to HIPAA standards. Nevertheless, it will be necessary to introduce some extra settings.
The platform also follows the security, confidentiality, and transparency best practices. It is proven by the platform’s SOC 2 Type 2 certification.
Businesses can deploy Refine apps on their own infrastructure. This helps ensure compliance with regulations while maintaining strong performance and stability.
Users can stick to their current security practices without needing to make major changes.
Short Recap
Data security: Retool is suitable for building apps that deal with highly sensitive data. The platform employs robust protective measures.
Compliance: The platform adheres to the highest industry regulations and standards, such as SOC 2, GDPR, and HIPAA (however, in the case of HIPAA some extra configurations are required).
Main strength: Retool implements appropriate technical and organizational measures to safeguard customer data when stored or processed through Retool services.
Main weakness: For on-premise setups, you need to have relevant tech expertise. Otherwise, it will be a very challenging process.
Data security: Refine’s design allows it to work with a variety of authorization methods and connect smoothly with identity providers you already use.
Compliance: Businesses can deploy Refine apps on their own infrastructure, which helps to ensure the required regulatory compliance.
Main strength: Refine is an excellent choice for organizations prioritizing data security, as well as for those that have specific regulatory requirements.
Main weakness: With Refine, developers need to take 100% control over their projects. Though it can be a benefit for many teams, this approach requires significant technical skills and knowledge.
Pricing
Plans Overview
Free Plan
- Cost: Free
- What it includes: With this plan, you will be able to use all basic features which will allow you to build simple apps. Up to 5 users can work on your projects. There aren’t any limitations related to the number of web and mobile applications. Nevertheless, the included number of workflow runs is 500 per month.
- Suitable for: Those who want to familiarize themselves with Retool’s functionality.
Team Plan
- Cost: €9 per user/month and €5 per end user/month (if billed annually) or €11 per user/month and €6 per end user/month (if billed monthly)
- What it includes: In addition to all basic features, users of this plan will get some extra possibilities, like app release versions. The included number of workflow runs per month is increased to 5000. The number of users is not limited.
- Suitable for: Small and mid-sized companies and growing teams.
Business Plan
- Cost: €46 per user/month and €14 per end user/month (if billed annually) or €60 per user/month and €17 per end user/month (if billed monthly)
- What it includes: This plan ensures great flexibility and full control over the security of your apps. It includes embedded apps, unlimited modules, permission controls, audit logging, and many other advanced features.
- Suitable for: Teams with continuously growing needs and special requirements for data security and compliance.
Enterprise Plan
- Cost: Custom pricing
- What it includes: This plan can include any combination of all advanced features that the platform can offer, such as SAML / OpenID Connect SSO, custom branding, and dedicated support.
- Suitable for: Organizations and enterprises that have complex workflows with heavy data processing.
For more precise verview check our complete guide to Retool pricing.
When it comes to the necessity to make a Retool vs Refine choice, for many users the open-source nature and the possibility to use Refine for free become a decisive factor.
The platform provides two options: Community and Enterprise, which open access to different features.
Nevertheless, both options are free under the relevant licenses (under the MIT license for the Community plan and under the enterprise license for the Enterprise plan).
The Enterprise plan opens access to advanced features like 3rd party API integrations, access to backend integrations, query designer, data mashup, and custom enterprise components, among others.
Short Recap
Pricing: The platform doesn’t offer the lowest prices on the market. However, it provides a discount for annual billing which can be a good option for those who are looking for cost-efficient solutions.
Suitable for: Due to its pricing structure and feature set, Retool is often favored by larger teams, especially those that have tech expertise and can leverage the entire potential of the platform’s advanced features.
Pricing: The platform doesn’t charge users any fees, which makes it a very appealing option for many businesses.
Suitable for: The entire set of features is available only to those entities that possess enterprise licenses.
Use Cases
Type of Work
Retool is a versatile platform, which makes it a good option for a variety of use cases across different industries.
- Data management. Retool provides all the necessary features to build dashboards for visualizing and managing large datasets. You can easily create admin panels to manage user accounts, inventory, or customer records.
- Sales and marketing. Retool users can build CRM tools to track leads, manage pipelines, and analyze performance. It is possible to automate data processing and report generation for tracking campaign performance or customer segmentation.
- HR and recruitment. On this low-code platform, you can build custom tools for managing employee data as well as tracking hiring processes and onboarding.
You can find more detailed information about possible Retool use cases on our blog and in our portfolio.
Refine allows its users to build feature-rich React-based internal tools, dashboards for different needs, admin panels, and B2B apps.
- CRM applications. With Refine, enterprises can introduce advanced tools for customer tracking and engagement, managing sales pipelines and leads, as well as automating follow-ups and email campaigns.
- eCommerce apps. The platform ensures a fast and seamless way to create eCommerce solutions with functionality for managing product catalogs and categories and handling orders, payments, and customer reviews. Such apps can also be enriched with analytics dashboards for sales trends and inventory.
- HR apps. Such applications typically have tools for tracking attendance, leaves, and payroll, managing job applications, collecting feedback, etc. Apart from this, you can also introduce custom workflows for automating onboarding and other related processes.
Short Recap
With its flexibility, Retool can be tailored to fit practically any internal workflow or business requirement. Thanks to a wide range of available templates for different scenarios, teams can greatly save development time and focus on their core objectives.
While Retool offers appropriate options for businesses of different types and sizes, Refine is designed for enterprises and larger organizations. It has a wide range of tools to address their specific pain points with a focus on flexibility and security.
Reviews
User Feedback
G2:
Retool has 4.6 out of 5 stars based on more than 300 reviews on the G2 platform.
Among the benefits, users mention its intuitive and responsive drag-and-drop interface, endless possibilities for creating custom tools, a wide variety of components available, as well as excellent documentation.
When talking about the weaknesses, users indicate that the creation of any complex solution is available only to specialists with tech expertise. Moreover, the learning curve is pretty steep.
G2:
At least at the current moment, Refine is a significantly less popular platform for building business tools than Retool.
On G2, it has only one review. Nevertheless, according to it, Refine deserves the highest praise.
The users indicated that Redine supports CRUD logic out of the box, which allows developers to concentrate more on building features.
Nevertheless, the platform still requires a lot of manual configurations.
Conclusion
Both Refine and Retool are known as powerful tools for building applications quickly. However, they serve different purposes and target different use cases.
Refine is primarily a front-end framework for building highly customizable enterprise-level applications with minimal code. It focuses on flexibility and modularity. As a result, developers can create custom user interfaces and seamlessly integrate them with various backend systems.
Retool has a wider range of use cases. It is a low-code platform designed for building internal tools quickly. It provides a drag-and-drop interface to create applications by connecting to databases, APIs, and other data sources without requiring much manual coding.
While some basic features of Retool are available to users without any tech skills, Refine is mainly used by professional developers.
Given all these differences, one of the first things to do while comparing Retool vs Refine is to analyze the specificity of your project. The right choice can be made only when you clearly understand your needs.
It doesn’t matter whether you have already made up your mind or are still in the process of analyzing different available options, at Akveo, we can always help you. Our experts have a deep understanding of the peculiarities of different low-code tools and excellent practical skills in working with them. Just share your ideas with us and we will always be happy to provide you with professional consulting and development services.
