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Hi all, engineer who worked on forms @ Retool here. Excited to get HN’s feedback on a new product I’ve been working on: Retool Forms. There are a ton of form bu
by cuffe 3y ago
Hi all, engineer who worked on forms @ Retool here. Excited to get HN’s feedback on a new product I’ve been working on: Retool Forms. There are a ton of form builders out there (e.g. Typeform, Google Forms, Airtable Forms, etc.) and honestly we weren’t really looking to build another one. But as a developer, I wanted my data in my database, not in another SaaS app (which probably has a shoddy API, like every example I listed above). Surprisingly, the only way to build a form on top of my database was by a) building my own backend (probably via node), and b) building my own frontend (probably via React, and then maybe via formik). There was no “one click” form-on-top-of-my-database tool available.
So we decided to build a form builder. It allows you to:
1. Send data directly to your database (Postgres in our case), your data warehouse, or wherever else you want it
2. Write JS almost anywhere on the front-end, including libraries like moment and lodash, for custom validations, conditional logic, and data parsing
3. Run any arbitrary code in form submission (or validation), via our Workflows product
4. Store it in our database (where we give you a connection string), or your own database
5. Self-host it in your own VPC
And it’s free with no arbitrary limits on the number of users, forms or submissions.
I’m hoping to ship a bunch more features like integration to any REST API, more styling options, etc. If you have any feedback please let me know!
- mrcwinn 3y agoSo, you didn’t feel comfortable relying on “another SaaS” app, and then go on to suggest Retool Workflows, which is itself part of another paid SaaS app? All those “shoddy” alternatives also have free tiers.
- quickthrower2 3y agoNot sure that is fair? The difference seems to be the data is squarely in your own DB. You can use their SaaS for validation. You might pay for something (surprise?).
- hk__2 3y agoSo exactly like Budibase, but closed-source?
- _heimdall 3y agoIt would be pulling in another SaaS, what isn't fair? It actually sounds like an interesting service in my opinion, but it is another SaaS that is giving me an API for a form handler that I could otherwise host myself. Personally I wouldn't see the use case of using your own DB as helpful, if you already have your own database the odds that you aren't hosting APIs as well seems low.
- breadwinner 3y ago> There was no “one click” form-on-top-of-my-database tool available. Does this count: https://airforms.com/ https://airforms.com/
- a_subsystem 3y agoInteresting. 'Automatic database diagrams'. How does that work in a db without primary/foreign keys?
- breadwinner 3y agoIn that case you would want to use another tool that is more manual than automatic.
- no_wizard 3y agoWhen you say on the website that Amazon uses this product, is Amazon a paying customer or is it simply an engineer (or a few I suppose) are using it? I’m curious how to interpret the “trusted by” statement here
- dvdhsu 3y agoAmazon pays us more than $1M annually. See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37426191 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37426191
- hans_castorp 3y agoThere is no download link, so how can this be self-hosted?
- hk__2 3y ago+1, and the "self-hosted" page on their documentation is… empty. https://docs.retool.com/education/labs/self-hosted https://docs.retool.com/education/labs/self-hosted Edit: the right page seems to be https://docs.retool.com/self-hosted https://docs.retool.com/self-hosted but it’s about Retool in general; I doubt you need 8 vCPUs and 16GB of RAM to host forms [1]. [1]: https://docs.retool.com/self-hosted/quickstarts/docker#vm-configuration https://docs.retool.com/self-hosted/quickstarts/docker#vm-co...
- cuffe 3y agoYou can self-host here: https://retool.com/self-hosted https://retool.com/self-hosted. Most people deploy it as a docker container on an EC2 instance but there’s various options
- rmbyrro 3y agoCongrats on the launch, looks neat! > and b) building my own frontend (probably via React, and then maybe via formik) There's also a new technology called HTML. It comes with a <form> tag, <input> field tags, and even a <button> to submit! Although new, they managed to get all browsers on board to support it. You will not need to import 150kb of JavaScript, though, which is sad. And it's not shiny to speak about in the interview for your next job. I guess the pros dont overweight these cons... Yes, "probably via React" is the way!
- pantulis 3y agoLet me tell you something about this fancy HTML tag you are talking about. It has an "action" attribute that points to a server you need to own and run a code you need to code in order to validate the input and store it in the database. If you are comfortable doing this, which no doubt you are, then you are not the target audience of this tool.
- hk__2 3y ago> It has an "action" attribute that points to a server you need to own and run a code you need to code in order to validate the input and store it in the database Pure-HTML forms work exactly like React forms; React does the lifting but it doesn’t change anything to the fact that the data eventually needs to be sent to a server to be stored in the database.
- _heimdall 3y ago> Pure-HTML forms work exactly like React forms This should probably read "React forms work exactly like pur-HTML forms" seeing as HTML came first and react ultimately spits out either an HTML form or a form request. The original point still remains though, reaching for react just for forms is really heavy handed. It works fine if everything on the site is react already, though that's an assumption that I wouldn't make and that I hope will die soon enough if devs finally start moving away from massive react apps.
- rmbyrro 3y ago
- hk__2 3y ago> There was no “one click” form-on-top-of-my-database tool available When did you start building it? Budibase does exactly this since 2020.
- crazymoka 3y agoWhy is it free? And for how long will it be free for? I do not want to start to use another Form builder to find out months later I'm locked with a $50/m charge.