"We did an analysis of both Internal and Retool, and concluded that what would take 30 minutes in Internal would require 3 hours to build with Retool. Plus, Internal is easy to use, making it possible for non-technical teams like PMs and Ops people to help build — not just engineering teams."
From databases and APIs to business apps, Internal works with your existing data. It unites everything in a single, powerful interface with built-in CRUD capabilities.
Retool is built for engineering teams who want to reduce the work involved in building internal tools. It’s a low-code platform that requires at least basic SQL and Javascript knowledge in order to use. For example, if you want a button to update a table, you’ll need to know SQL to write the update query in Retool. Similarly, you may need some Javascript in order to fully configure Retool components.
In contrast, Internal is built for both developers and non-developers. Because anyone can build with Internal, developers can do as much as they want, and hand off the rest to product managers and ops teams. It can eliminate the need for developers to do work on internal tools, rather than just reducing that work. Internal can be used without code: instead of setting up queries to read, write and delete data, Internal automatically generates these functions -- it’s both faster and easier to use. Component configuration in Internal is done with human-understandable options and simple templates, you don’t need to write Javascript.
One major competitive difference between Retool and Internal is in the level of security settings available. Retool allows you to control whether or not end users can access a particular app, but once an end user has access, they can view and write anything within that app. Internal allows you to set granular permissions, where you can control whether an end user can view data or edit that data as separate controls. Further, you can set data controls down to the table-level and field-level in Internal.
This means that if you wanted to bar a certain role from viewing certain sensitive fields (like banking data) or editing certain fields, Internal can do it while still allowing that role to access and use the tool. Or you can make it so that a particular role can only view data but cannot use any functions to edit or delete data. In Retool, such controls would be all-or-nothing: an end user could either do everything within the app, or they wouldn’t even have access. To ensure your users can’t edit or view specific fields, you’ll likely need to create a different app for various access levels.
From customer onboarding and customer service to data processing and on-demand operations, learn how Internal helps teams do their jobs better.
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