User Interface and Experience
Ease of Use
Retool has a reputation for being a highly reliable and powerful platform for low-code development. It provides a wide range of features. However, it is mainly targeted at professional developers or experts at least with some technical background.
As well as ToolJet, it can be either deployed in the cloud or self-hosted.
Business users who have never dealt with any tool of this kind may find it rather difficult to interact with Retool without proper training.
ToolJet is known as a suitable tool even for professionals without any specific technical expertise.
Nevertheless, given the fact that it is an open-source solution that can be self-hosted, users may need to prepare and further manage their infrastructure on their own.
This can be associated with some challenges. To handle the related tasks, users need to have relevant tech knowledge and skills.
Customization
Retool provides its users with great flexibility when it comes to customization and tailoring apps to unique requirements. The platform has a rich library of customizable UI components, including forms and charts that can be adjusted in accordance with specific business needs.
Solutions built with Retool can be smoothly connected with a wide range of APIs, databases, and third-party tools and services.
If users have some technical skills and can write code on their own, their work with Retool can bring even greater results. Retool can support SQL queries and custom scripts which allows developers to build even more sophisticated features for their apps.
ToolJet allows its users to build custom components. It is possible to do it with the help of React.
To integrate a custom component, it is necessary to drag and drop it on the canvas and further configure its data and code.
The integration of custom components enables users to expand the functionality and capabilities of their ToolJet apps. As a result, such solutions can provide a unique user experience and greater flexibility for businesses.
Moreover, all paid plans offer the possibility of introducing custom branding.
Templates and Components
Thanks to a wide choice of the offered ready-to-use components like buttons, charts, tables, and others, everyone can create apps much faster in comparison to building software from scratch.
It’s very convenient that Retool has a big collection of templates suitable for various solutions and scenarios. For example, the list of the provided options includes templates for sales reports, inventory management, CRMs, and admin dashboards.
Moreover, companies can benefit from reusing templates that they customize for their specific needs.
Tooljet offers a variety of templates and components to streamline the creation of internal tools for businesses working in different domains.
There is a rich collection of ready-made templates for HR, sales and marketing, product management, data analytics, financial services, and customer support processes.
Tooljet also provides a library of 45+ components that can be used to design custom applications.
Short Recap
Ease of use: Retool provides a lot of powerful tools. However, users without proper experience may find it challenging to navigate the platform.
Customization: In the questions of customization, Retool provides a lot of freedom. That’s why this low-code development platform is a good choice even for complex features and apps.
Templates and components: The availability of a rich collection of ready-made components and templates helps to significantly streamline the development process.
Main strength: The platform provides a wide range of features that make it suitable for a lot of use cases.
Main weakness: Users without tech expertise may find it tricky to deal with this tool.
Ease of use: ToolJet is known for its user-friendly interface. In the Retool vs ToolJet comparison, this solution is more suitable for users with minimal tech expertise.
Customization: There are a lot of customization possibilities. Moreover, ToolJet apps can have custom branding. This option is available to all paid users.
Templates and components: ToolJet provides a wide choice of templates and ready-to-use components that make the development process much faster.
Main strength: With ToolJet, users get a lot of tools and components to build their business solutions intended for different purposes.
Main weakness: To fully leverage all the provided opportunities, at least basic tech skills and knowledge are required.
Features and Functionality
Core Features
To interact with this platform, users need to deal with a drag-and-drop builder interface that significantly simplifies the way of solving various tasks.
Retool provides its users with access to more than 100 customizable components that can be tailored to specific business needs with the help of JavaScript and SQL.
Retool offers a range of important collaboration features, such as version history and role-based access. They make it comfortable and easy to work on the project, even if a lot of team members are involved in it.
ToolJet is an open-source platform, which ensures self-hosting and great customization.
It offers a drag-and-drop app builder. The interaction with its interface is pretty simple which allows users to build various web, desktop, and mobile apps rather quickly and with minimal effort.
Apart from this, the platform provides built-in automation features. This enables users to set up various workflows that may involve multiple data sources and tools.
Advanced Features
If the provided components do not correspond to your business needs, Retool allows its users to build custom components. It can be done with React or JavaScript.
Retool supports embedded apps. It means that businesses can integrate their solutions built with Retool with other platforms. Thanks to this, Retool apps and their data can be accessed by other business systems.
Advanced scripting enables users to manage complex data tasks like custom visualizations. As a result, Retool can become a good choice for creating apps that need to handle heavy data processing.
Retool is also equipped with built-in AI tools. They can handle such tasks as data classification, text generation, and image recognition.
The team behind ToolJet regularly updates its platform and introduces new advanced features that can address the continuously evolving business needs across various industries.
TooJet offers its Copilot (as of December 2024, still in beta). ToolJet Copilot can help users minimize the time needed to write queries faster. To make suggestions for queries, it relies on OpenAI’s technology.
The ToolJet database supports SQL interactions and allows for making complex queries with aggregate functions and groupings.
There is also a possibility to duplicate tables, which can significantly streamline the app creation process.
Automation and Workflow
This low-code development platform provides a quick and simple way to set up workflows of different types, like sending notifications, data synchronization, etc.
The available tools are suitable for creating not only simple but also multi-step workflows with more complex logic.
With the available event-driven automation, it is possible to build unique workflows that can be customized with JavaScript.
It is possible to activate workflows at a specific time or as a reaction to particular events in real time.
After testing its workflows in the beta version, ToolJet has finally made them available to all users.
Workflows can be triggered by webhooks and have multiple result nodes.
Their use can greatly facilitate and enhance the automation of multiple manual business processes of different levels of complexity. Thanks to this, the required engineering effort is significantly reduced.
According to estimates, just 1 developer can perform the tasks traditionally fulfilled by 5.
Short Recap
Core features: Retool offers a convenient drag-and-drop app builder with a rich library of ready-made components.
Advanced features: The platform provides customizable components for handling heavy data processing. It also has built-in AI-powered tools.
Automation and workflows: Retool allows users to automate multiple workflows and trigger them based on a specific schedule or activate them with real-time events.
Main strength: This platform is suitable for creating multi-step workflows and feature-rich apps with complex logic.
Main weakness: Customization can be a rather difficult task for business users.
Core features: ToolJet is an open-source platform that provides a full set of basic features for creating apps, including a drag-and-drop app builder and a rich library of ready-to-use templates and components.
Advanced features: ToolJet can help to handle complex queries. The development process can be powered by ToolJet Copilot (now in beta).
Automation and workflows: Workflows can have multiple result nodes. Workflow activation can be triggered by webhooks.
Main strength: The platform offers a wide range of customization options.
Main weakness: Self-hosting can be associated with a row of challenges.
Integrations
Third-party Integrations
Retool enables users to integrate multiple third-party tools to expand the functionality of their apps and ensure smooth data exchange with other business solutions.
What integration does it offer?
- SQL databases: MySQL, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, etc.
- NoSQL databases: MongoDB, Redis Firebase, etc.
- APIs: REST APIs, SOAP APIs, GraphQL APIs.
- Cloud Services: Google Sheets, AWS, and more.
- Communication tools: Twilio, Slack.
- Payment Gateways: PayPal, Stripe.
- Developer Tools: GitHub, GitLab.
- CRM & Analytics: Salesforce, Google Analytics, and others.
Want to get access to a full list of supported integrations? You can find it on the official Retool website.
ToolJet ensures smooth connection with a wide range of data sources, including over 50 apps, APIs, and databases.
What integrations are available to users of ToolJet?
- SQL databases: SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MySQL, OracleDB, etc.
- NoSQL databases: Redis, MondoDB, etc.
- APIs: REST API, Open API, etc.
- Cloud Services: AWS, Google Sheets, and others.
- Communication and collaboration tools: Twilio, Slack, Plivo, Notion.
- Payment Gateways: Stripe.
- eCommerce and customer service: Zendesk, WooCommerce, Salesforce.
To get more information about the available integrations, we recommend you visit the official web page.
Ease of Connection
The connection of your Retool apps with various services and databases is a rather straightforward process. To link APIs or data sources, it is possible to use drag-and-drop components.
Users with coding experience can also apply SQL queries and custom scripts. This ensures greater flexibility.
If users need to connect any data sources or external apps, ToolJet provides them with a simple way to do it.
Moreover, it won’t be difficult to find various guides and documentation that contain detailed information on how to integrate the required APIs and tools.
Users can also build their own custom integrations if needed.
Short Recap
Third-party integrations: When it comes to integrations with external tools and databases, Retool has a lot to offer. The list of available options is rather impressive. But apart from this, there is enough space for customization.
Ease of connection: A lot of tasks can be performed just with a drag-and-drop interface. For more complicated cases, users can apply custom scripts and SQL queries.
Main strength: Retool provides the possibility of integrating a lot of different services and data sources.
Main weakness: More advanced options can be challenging for users without relevant experience.
Third-party integrations: ToolJet provides a long list of available interactions. Users can seamlessly connect databases, APIs, and external tools. The platform also allows for custom integrations.
Ease of connection: The process of connecting the supported data sources and APIs won’t take long. Moreover, there are a lot of guides that can provide users with practical tips and detailed instructions.
Main strength: ToolJet offers a lot of integration possibilities. Thanks to its open-source nature, there is also enough space for customization.
Main weakness: Custom integrations can be tricky for non-developers.
Performance and Scalability
Speed and Efficiency
Retool is good at working with real-time data processing and complex data operations.
Even when it needs to deal with multiple data sources at once or with huge volumes of data, it can still demonstrate excellent performance. This is possible thanks to caching, server-side processing, and advanced query optimization.
The platform ensures real-time updates. Applications built on it can quickly adapt to different devices that they are running on.
ToolJet is designed to ensure an optimized runtime for both its drag-and-drop builder and the apps it generates.
It efficiently handles UI rendering and API calls. This can guarantee smooth performance for most internal tools.
It supports real-time updates from data sources, while its caching mechanisms and query optimization features reduce latency in data-intensive applications.
Scalability
Retool is designed to work with large-scale apps and complex workflows. Even when your application expands, its performance does not deteriorate as Retool can efficiently support its growth.
Retool apps are highly reliable, which is ensured by cloud-based backups.
Retool can be deployed across multiple environments, including cloud and on-premise. Moreover, the deployment on such platforms as Kubernetes makes scaling based on user demand and workload absolutely smooth and interruption-free.
Multi-tenant architecture and its capability for enterprise-level scalability make Retool a good choice even for big companies and organizations.
ToolJet is built to be a scalable platform that is able to adapt to increasing user demands. It can adjust to handling larger datasets or more complex applications as the needs of organizations can evolve over time.
Thanks to containerization and orchestration tools like Docker and Kubernetes, users can scale their solutions horizontally by adding more containers to handle higher loads.
Apps that need more processing power or memory can be hosted on servers with enhanced hardware specifications.
Apart from this, the necessary growth can be ensured by scalable database solutions that ToolJet can be seamlessly connected to.
Short Recap
Speed and efficiency: Retool can demonstrate outstanding performance even of the most advanced apps that deal with real-time data processing and complex queries.
Scalability: This platform supports great scalability of apps and workflows. This makes it a good option for large enterprises.
Main strength: It supports scalability and high performance of applications of different complexity.
Main weakness: To build complex functionality, users need to have a technical background.
Speed and efficiency: Thanks to a wide range of built-in features, ToolJet can create the required conditions for seamless performance for various internal tools and other apps.
Scalability: There are different approaches to ensure the desired scalability, with extra options available for users who prefer self-hosting.
Main strength: The platform can successfully support scalability and high performance even for complex apps.
Main weakness: Any extra changes that go beyond standard components can be performed only by experts with relevant skills.
Security and Compliance
Data Security
To protect sensitive business information, Retool applies encryption to data both in transit and at rest.
To execute better control over their data and apps, businesses can implement role-based access control. Admins can introduce specific permissions for different users.
Thanks to version control and detailed audit logs, it is possible to see who and when any changes. This helps to detect any unusual behavior.
To enable secure login management, Retool supports Single sign-on (SSO).
As ToolJet is open-source, developers can host it on their own servers. It means that they get full control over security and data protection.
This can be a big plus for those industries and sectors that need to deal with strict compliance requirements.
Nevertheless, when users prefer to self-host the platform, they also need to take responsibility for security updates.
ToolJet itself also has strong security features, such as Docker support, SSO, and role-based access control.
Compliance
Retool fully meets the GDPR requirements when it comes to personal data storage and processing. Thanks to this, you can be sure that your apps will be compliant with the EU privacy regulations.
Moreover, the platform can be set up in accordance with the HIPAA standards, which is highly important for healthcare apps thar deal with health-related data.
It is also compliant with key industry standards like SOC 2. This proves that it follows all the best practices in such aspects as security, confidentiality, and transparency.
ToolJet is compliant with a row of globally recognized data security and compliance standards.
The platform prioritizes data privacy and complies with the GDPR rules. It also follows the ISO 27001 standard for information security management.
It regularly undergoes SOC 2 Type II audits. These procedures help to verify whether the platform maintains high availability, security, and confidentiality standards.
Short Recap
Data security: Retool applies a data encryption mechanism, role-based access control, SSO, and audit logs to protect data and reduce risks of fraudulent activities on the platform.
Compliance: The platform meets the strongest industry regulations and standards, including SOC 2, GDPR, and HIPAA (requires configurations).
Main strength: Retool ensures a high level of data protection. Moreover, it is compliant with all major regulations in the EU and US.
Main weakness: Without proper knowledge, it can be rather confusing to deal with all the advanced features related to security.
Data security: The platform supports a range of highly efficient and highly demanded security features, such as SSO and role-based access control.
Compliance: ToolJet meets the requirements of the GDPR rules and the ISO 27001 standard. It also regularly undergoes SOC 2 audits.
Main strength: ToolJet is compliant with the most commonly applied regulations in the world.
Main weakness: In the case of self-hosting, users need to have a deep understanding of key software and data protection principles.
Pricing
Plans Overview
Free Plan
- Cost: Free
- What it includes: All key features that are required to create applications. It is possible to engage up to 5 users. The number of web and mobile apps is not limited, however, the number of workflow runs is restricted to 500 per month.
- Excellent for: Everyone who has never used Retool before and wants to explore the available opportunities.
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: Apart from everything that is available in the free plan, businesses can leverage an unlimited number of users, up to 5000 workflow runs per month, and app release versions amid other upgrades.
- Excellent for: Growing teams; small and mid-sized businesses that are looking for flexibility.
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: As extra features, this plan provides audit logging, embedded apps, unlimited modules, permission controls, and much more.
- Excellent for: Bigger teams that need to execute strong control over data security and compliance.
Enterprise Plan
- Cost: Custom pricing
- What it includes: This plan covers a full set of available advanced features and offers, like custom branding, SAML / OpenID Connect SSO, and dedicated support.
- Excellent for: Large organizations and enterprises that need to build complex scalable solutions that will be able to deal with complex data handling.
Basic Plan
- Cost: Free
- What it includes: This plan doesn’t have any restrictions on the number of applications. However, it has a limited number of tables and rows on ToolJet DB. It provides 5 tables and 10K rows.
- Excellent for: Small teams and individual developers who need only the most basic functionality.
Business Plan
- Cost: $24 per builder/month and $8 per user/month (if billed annually) or €30 per builder/month and €10 per end user/ (if billed monthly)
- What it includes: It offers granular access control, custom branding, audit logs, and an unlimited number of ToolJet tables and rows amid other upgrades in comparison with the Basic plan.
- Excellent for: Small and mid-sized teams that are focused on scaling.
Enterprise Plan
- Cost: Custom pricing
- What it includes: Apart from all features of the Business plan, it also provides air-gapped deployment, custom integrations, and dedicated support via multiple communication channels.
- Excellent for: Large enterprises that want to get access to the most advanced features and great customization flexibility.
Flexible Plan (only for self-hosting)
- Cost: $90 per application/month, $5 per ToolJet table/month, $20 per workflow/month
- What it includes: The number of builders and end users is not limited. The exact set of provided features and tools (available on a paid basis) is defined based on users’ requirements.
- Excellent for: Bigger teams that need to execute strong control over data security and compliance.
Short Recap
Pricing: It’s far not the cheapest low-code development tool. Nevertheless, with all the available opportunities, this pricing looks quite reasonable. Though Retool also offers self-hosting deployment, there isn’t a specific tariff for it.
Suitable for: Larger teams and teams with technical backgrounds that can fully leverage broad customization opportunities.
Pricing: The platform offers several pricing models, including a separate plan tailored to the needs of companies that prefer self-hosting.
Suitable for: The pricing policy can be viewed as pretty user-friendly as it provides enough flexibility and allows teams with different needs to find an appropriate option for them.
Use Cases
Type of Work
- Data analysis and management: Retool is designed to manage complex data flows and queries with ease.
- Internal app development: This platform is widely used to build internal business tools like CRM systems, admin panels, and dashboards. Retool has a rich choice of templates for such solutions.
- Rapid development and prototyping: Drag-and-drop interfaces together with ready-made components make Retool an excellent platform for experimenting, testing ideas, and introducing changes quickly.
- Custom workflow automation: Retool allows its users to automate various workflows, even those that deal with multiple data sources and external tools.
To get more info you can also discover other use cases and projects from our portfolio.
- Data visualization: ToolJet provides a ready-to-use Chart component that can be used to visualize different types of business data.
- Workflow automation: This platform can be helpful for automating multiple repetitive tasks that often take too much time if performed manually. These workflows can be integrated with various tools and services like Notion or Google Sheets.
- Development of customer tools: With ToolJet, you can build apps to manage customer inquiries and gather clients’s feedback. You can also connect your apps with customer support platforms like Zendesk.
You can read more about how ToolJet is used by companies from different industries, just follow this link.
Short Recap
When it comes to complex apps that need to deal with big volumes of data and numerous simultaneous queries, Retool should enter the game. It is a good platform for building internal apps and custom workflows that will address unique business needs.
ToolJet is an open-source, low-code platform that can help to create custom business applications of different kinds. It enables developers and non-developers to build, deploy, and manage internal tools that can cover a wide range of specific use cases.
Reviews
User Feedback
G2:
On the G2 platform where users can share their opinions, Retool has 4.5 out of 5 stars, which can be viewed as a good result.
Users praise Retool for the scope of available integrations, an excellent choice of components and templates, as well as its functionality.
As for weaknesses, people mention performance issues and a steep learning curve.
G2:
On G2, ToolJet has 4.8 stars. Nevertheless, to make our ToolJet vs Retool comparison fair enough, we should mention that ToolJet’s rankings are based on 33 opinions, while Retool has received more than 300 reviews.
Users like ToolJet’s intuitive interface and simple navigation. They also highlight that the development process is really rather fast.
However, some of them noticed performance issues and software bugs.
Conclusion
The detailed overview of Retool and Tooljet brightly demonstrates that these two platforms deserve your attention if you are looking for a secure and reliable low-code development platform. They both have their unique strengths which make them suitable for different use cases.
ToolJet is a good choice for those who are looking for a flexible, cost-effective, open-source platform. At the same time, Retool is an excellent option for companies that need enterprise-grade features and are ready to pay for premium capabilities. If we compare only the range of the in-built features, Retool will be a winner. Nevertheless, in the questions of customization, ToolJet can provide better flexibility thanks to its open-source nature.
That’s why when you are trying to make the right choice in this ToolJet vs Retool dilemma, always start with a deep analysis of your own business needs. You should clearly realize for what purposes you need to use a low-code development platform and what your current requirements are.
If you need professional assistance, consultation, or tech support, do not hesitate to contact us.
