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p/tooljetOpen-source low-code platform to build internal tools
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Kevin William David

ToolJet 0.5.3 - Open-source alternative to Retool

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ToolJet is an open-source alternative for Retool. ToolJet can connect to your existing databases, API endpoints, and external services to build applications on top of the data using our no-code app builder.

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Tom Johnson
I'm all for open-source, but not a fan of taking a successful product and duplicating a near-exact copy for your own means. Retool has done great work and has spent years refining their product. If you want to play in the same space, find ways to make your solution novel and differentiated instead of copying and pasting the hard work of others. Open-source or no, it's still not ethical. At least that's the opinion of someone also designing a product in this exact space.
Veronica
@tomjohndesign I was reflecting on this after reading https://news.ycombinator.com/ite..., which is linked later in the comments. It's quite hard to draw the line when it comes to copying software. On one hand, you're right, there's something morally wrong in creating a copycat. In any industry, really, but in software it's particularly frowned upon, despite a history of great successes based on copying UI-UX of others (the mouse, the window-based OS... and countless others). On the other hand, if someone can deliver 80% of the value of your software in 7 weeks, are you really worth 1 billion dollars? This space is competitive and heavily commoditized. Retool already has a competitor, internal.io, and the ToolJet guys differentiate themselves in a few ways: open source & price. Same way GitLab differentiated themselves at the beginning. Probably they were called copycats, too (name didn't help). Then of course the grew and differentiated even more. Rocket Internet made European copycats of successful marketplaces like Etsy and Airbnb and while it didn't help their reputation, they created value for users, and made well-deserved millions. I'm quite conflicted on this one, but it's hard to say this product is undifferentiated, and that founders' egos are very, very fragile.
Max Musing
@ubervero Building a direct competitor from scratch like Internal is fair game imo. On the other hand, it looks like ToolJet straight up ripped off Retool's UI, which is not as cool. Supabase is a great example of how to build an open-source alternative to a popular product—I'd love to see ToolJet innovate on their product in a similar way.
Adnan Yunus
@tomjohndesign If a product can be copied, it should be copied. The burden of keeping ahead of the curve lies on the product owner, not the new entrants.
Tom Johnson
@udnaan That line of thinking doesn't encourage competition, it encourages laziness. This is a carbon copy for a lower price point. I don't see why that should be encouraged at all by this community of makers. Also, it's not a death sentence. Now the onus is on this maker to improve his product to be differentiated other than price. If he copied all of their decisions, he won't know why they're made or not made and they'll outpace it quickly. Also, legally this is grey area. Retool has IP law on their side and it wouldn't take much for action to severely impact a "competing" start-up. All they need to is act and legal fees will pile up. It's not just ethical to make your own product, it's the only way it'll survive.
Alex Andreyev
@maxmusing @ubervero: I just looked up basedash. basedash looks like a really poor clone of internal.io. So this got me interested. I further checked Basedash & you were into YC an year ago! Wow and you have raised millions probably! Im astonished that you are even commenting on this. And you and your team are here trying to hijack a thread of an open source product developed by a single developer in seven weeks who is giving away the product for free whereas basedash in itself is clone of something else, is not open source, is YC+VC funded and finally costs 25 bucks per user per month!! Wow says a lot. And your team seems to be really well aware of every bit of Retool UI. So you have put real efforts in studying retool UI ? So is Basedash soon gonna be a poor clone of internal.io and retool too ? Right, gotcha. Gimme a break with this.
Navaneeth Padanna Kalathil
Maker
Hello Product Hunters 👋 and thanks to @Kevin for introducing ToolJet to the community. My name is Navaneeth and I'm the founder of ToolJet. We believe that any piece of software that has access to sensitive data of companies should be open-source and hosted on premises. This ensures that the data never leaves the private networks of the companies. With a rise in privacy related laws like CCPA, it makes more sense to not share the data with third-party tools. ToolJet helps companies to build and deploy internal tools with minimal efforts from the engineering team. Engineering teams struggle to find bandwidth to work on internal tools. With ToolJet's no-code platform, internal tools can be built in minutes that would otherwise take a couple of days. 🔥 Features: Visual app builder with widgets like charts, tables, forms and more. Can connect to databases - MongoDB, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Firestore, DynamoDB, Elasticsearch and more. Can connect to API endpoints - supports OAuth Can connect to external services - Google sheets, Stripe, Slack, etc Deploy on-premise ( supports docker, kubernetes, heroku and more ) Write JavaScript code almost anywhere in the builder Transform & merge query results using JS code All the credentials are securely encrypted using aes-256-gcm ToolJet acts only as a proxy and doesn't store any data. Thank you for your time ! Our team will be here all day to answer your questions. We'd love to hear your thoughts on what we've built so far ! GitHub: https://github.com/ToolJet/ToolJet
Aleks Bochkov
@kevin @navaneeth_pk1 Its awesome that it is open source! 🚀🚀🚀
Aditya
@navaneeth_pk1 Congratulations on the launch! Tooljet can do almost everything Retool can, but at a much greater pricing! 🤯
Navaneeth Padanna Kalathil
Maker
@adityavsc Thanks for the feedback ! I think there is a confusion here, ToolJet's paid plans starts at $5 and tops out at $15 ( excluding the enterprise plan). Also, the self-hosted solution of ToolJet is free and can be deployed for free on Heroku using the one-click-deployment button :)
Aditya
@navaneeth_pk1 Absolutely! I'm actually applauding Tooljet for its better pricing, not Retool! 😉
Navaneeth Padanna Kalathil
Maker
@adityavsc Haha sorry ! I got confused by 'greater'.
Aditya
@navaneeth_pk1 no worries. I should have chosen the word 'better'. That would have been 'better' lol
Jay Janarthanan
Just be careful calling it a clone of some commercial product, see this https://intuitiveexplanations.co...
Navaneeth Padanna Kalathil
Maker
@jay_janarthanan1 Hey Jay, Thanks for sharing the article. I just read it and it seems like the person who built the clone worked as an intern at the company that built the original product and thus probably had access to the company's IP.
Subin T P
Congrats on the launch! Looks promising
Sojan Jose
Excited to try this 😃 Congrats on the launch !!!
Shyjal
One of the thing that stopped us from using retool was it is closed source and expensive to do the on-premise installation. I would love to give Tooljet a try. Thanks for building this.
Navaneeth Padanna Kalathil
Maker
@shyjal Thanks for the feedback :) Please let me know if you need any help setting up ToolJet on-premises.
Nithin David thomas
Thanks for building this! Looks really good 👍
Pranav Raj S
Congrats on the launch! 🎉
Sooraj Chandran
Congrats on the launch! 🚀
Muhsin K
Great job @navaneeth_pk1 🚀🚀🚀
Navaneeth Padanna Kalathil
Maker
@muhsin Thanks for your feedback :)
Yoav Taieb
Love it!
Matías López Díaz
Simply wow!
Salman Khan
nice 🙌 👏
William M. Ballance
Can it connect to Segment?
Navaneeth Padanna Kalathil
Maker
@mballance Not yet but planning to integrate soon :)
Sudharshan Karthik
@mballance Hi William! Do you want to connect it to segment to see trial activity and prioritise reach out? If so, we’re building something and would love to chat.
Simon Row
This looks very nice 👍 Congratulations.
Ken Moo
Great job! Looking forward to try this out
Rahul Nair
Nice innovation and cool features. Congrats on your launch. Best of luck.
Tanaya Majumdar
Very good