Today, we’re introducing a new option to store data for your Retool apps: a Retool-hosted PostgreSQL database—complete with a spreadsheet interface to update the database schema and manage your data.
Retool Database is now in private beta for all cloud users. To get started, join our waitlist today (eligible users usually get access within 24 hours).
Building internal tools should be fast, even if you don’t have a database ready for the app you have in mind. But spinning up a database often means navigating through complicated AWS UIs, worrying about security groups, or editing data manually with low level command-line tools like `psql`. Which is why a lot of teams turn to spreadsheets.
Unfortunately, spreadsheets like Google Sheets can be just as painful: they’re not as robust as relational databases, which makes it harder to enforce data standards and maintain usability over time.
Today, we’re introducing a dead-simple PostgreSQL database built into Retool to solve this problem. You can get right to building apps, and build confidently knowing that the database can scale with you.
With Retool Database, you can:
- Create a new database table from scratch in minutes, or go from spreadsheet to SQL database in one click by importing a CSV
- Build apps for any use case while editing the data model at the same time
- Manage your database schema and data as easily as a spreadsheet—add new columns and rows, filter, sort, search, and edit in a few clicks
- Ship changes to production safely across multiple environments
- Easily control user access with permissions built into your Retool Database
In building Retool Database, we've worked closely with early beta customers who needed to ditch spreadsheets or quickly spin up new data stores. Today, those customers have used Retool Database to build everything from call notes trackers for sales to employee directories.
Tristan Drummond, a Senior Developer at The Delta, shared that he’d normally have to get the DevOps team to create a new AWS RDS instance or get an admin to make a new database user with the right permissions. But now, “Retool Database enables our team to ship any idea in Retool—without being blocked on the complex setup and management of AWS and Azure.”
Nico De Leon, a Software Developer at Poap, noted that his team has migrated more and more apps to Retool Database. He adds, “Google Sheets was a beast and would barely even load for us. But, in less than two weeks, we moved mission-critical Google Sheets to Retool Database. Now, we can move faster, test new app features with end users, and move to our own backend if we need to.”
Retool Database is free to use during our beta (and will always have a generous free storage tier, during the beta and beyond)*. To get started building Retool apps using Retool Database, join our waitlist today. You can also read our docs to learn more.
*Today you can use up to 50,000 rows or 1GB of storage (whichever comes first) in your database. But if you need more storage space, we’d love to support your use case! Just reach out to us at retooldb-questions@retool.com.
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