undefined | Better HN

0 pointsdvdhsu5y ago0 comments

internal.io is pretty similar to https://www.forestadmin.com/, or even djangoadmin. If you're looking for a quick, non-customizable CRUD interface on top of your database, both of them are pretty good solutions.

Retool is really aimed at engineers who are building custom internal applications. For example, if you're Coinbase and looking to build a complex approval workflow for withdrawals above $100MM (with a custom UI depending on which Okta groups you're in, with custom approvals required depending on the KYC status of the customer, etc.), it's very very hard to do with either internal or forest (since the customizability and flexibility are much lower with both of them).

So: forest and internal are good if you want something quickly but have no intention of customizing it later. Retool takes longer to get started, but allows you to customize substantially more.

In the mid-term (i.e. 1 - 6 months' time) we want to make starting in Retool much easier. We will probably allow users to quickly generate admin panels (similar to internal or forest) with a few clicks on top of common datasources.

0 comments

seyz5y ago

Hey David, I'm the founder and CEO of Forest Admin (https://www.forestadmin.com). Thanks for mentioning us! First of all, I wanted to congratulate you for this fund raising. I'm a big fan of what you're building. For Retool, Internal, Forest Admin or any others... I think it's great to create this new SaaS product category and to design this new market all together! That's exciting!

From my point of view, Retool helps you build any internal tools using a frontend builder where you can build your UI from scratch or from templates after connecting any type of data sources.

With Forest Admin, we decided to focus on the administration panel of any webapps. From the ground up, we've designed our solution accordingly by providing a fullstack framework using an on-premise backend/API (open-source) connected to the application's database(s) and an off-the-self SaaS frontend (learn more about architecture here: https://medium.com/forest-admin/a-deep-dive-into-forest-admi...).

The reason behind having such an architecture is to let our users to keep full control of their data and to be able to access the code locally to extend the API without any restriction. That's why I don't agree when you say "Forest Admin is good if you want something quickly but have no intention of customizing it later". Our mission is to do the exact the opposite.

To be fully convinced, I think examples are always better than words. We spent time with some of our customers to demonstrate how Forest Admin can be adapted to handle complex workflows: https://www.forestadmin.com/customers. To react on your example about the KYC stuff, approval workflows, etc. This is something that some of our Fintech/Banking system customers are doing with Forest Admin.