The financial aspect is among the most serious ones to think about before starting your software project realization. Nobody wants to run out of budget and to be left with a half-finished product. To avoid such a situation, it is highly recommended to think about development costs in advance. Retool low-code development is considered to be a cost-efficient approach. That’s why it is often chosen for companies of different types and sizes that are planning to build their business solutions for internal use. If you are also thinking about such an option, this article is for you. In our blog post, we offer you to take a closer look at Retool pricing and its peculiarities.

Is Retool free?

The use of free development tools may seem the best idea for those who are looking for cost optimization. Nevertheless, Retool is not fully free. In general, it is a tool that is provided on a paid basis and you should take Retool cost into account while planning your project budget. However, it has a free plan. Despite some limitations, it can be a good choice for developers and teams, who are just starting their journey in the business world.

As well as other Retool plans, this one includes such roles as standard and end users. While standard users are those who make their contribution to building or editing apps and workflows during the billing cycle, users from the second category do not participate in these activities. The free plan is available to a group of up to 5 users.

Of course, if you compare this offer with paid variants, you will see a row of serious differences that may provoke some doubts at first glance. There are some limitations related to the data storage, as well as the number of workflow runs per month.

Our team has been working with Retool and other low-code development platforms for quite a while. That’s why we can say that with these resources provided for free, it is possible to finish more than half of your software product. This means that you can opt for this plan when you need to test your idea.

Moreover, you can use this plan to familiarize yourself with the platform and its functionality without any financial risks.

But for some serious projects, it will be necessary to opt for any of the other Retool pricing plans. And to make a conscious and cost-effective decision, it will be necessary for you to study the details of each of them.

Paid Retool plans

The platform provides different options that could be feasible for businesses of different types and sizes.

It’s important to mention that monthly subscriptions may look “safer” for companies that do not want to have long-term financial obligations. Nevertheless, with an annual subscription, you can enjoy 20% off.

Team

With this pricing Retool can be a good choice for teams that are in the stage of active growth. Here, you can already have more than 5 users and the number of included workflow runs will be 10 times higher than in the free plan.

It also provides staging and production environments, as well as access to environmental configuration variables and additional professional services.

Based on our experience, we can recommend this option for projects that include testing and enhancing your apps.

Business

This plan offers significantly more possibilities in comparison to the previously discussed ones. With it, you can get access to all environments, as well as unlimited staging and production resources. Teams that choose this option can build a wide range of advanced apps, including authenticated, embedded applications and external solutions. It is also possible to introduce themes for your web apps and implement your own branding. There are also some external features for those who are interested in creating mobile products. They can be easily enriched with offline mode and push notifications.

Moreover, the Business plan allows you to include external users who are not part of your organization.

In general, this Retool pricing plan is quite flexible and can successfully support the scalability of your company and address your changing needs.

Enterprise

Retool enterprise pricing is custom. It means that the plan itself with all the included features is adjusted to the needs of each company or organization. Of course, here we are talking about huge teams with some specific requirements. They can ask for individual offers if standard plans can’t address their needs. Retool cost in this case will be significantly higher. Nevertheless, users of this plan can enjoy access to advanced security features and services, as well as source control, custom branding of all their apps, and dedicated support.

Some enterprises can also enjoy a reduced Retool price thanks to the introduced system of discounts that are based on the volume of ordered services and resources.

Special Retool pricing

If you are a student, an educator, or you run a non-profit organization, there is some great news for you. You can leverage some special offers that Retool provides to these categories of users.

For example, nonprofits can get 25 Business plan seats for free. Eligible organizations can opt for any combination of standard and end users based on their needs. Those who do not want to miss this opportunity need to register on the Retool website and submit an application for revision. In this application, they should provide some info about their activities and projects that they are going to use Retool for.

As for students and educators, they are also asked to complete a short form and share some details about their plans for using Retool. If their applications are approved, they can get access to the cloud-hosted Business plan or the self-hosted Team plan for free.

Moreover, Retool has a very appealing option for startups. Those companies that were established not more than 10 years ago, are not existing Retool customers, and meet the investment-related requirements (they can be bootstrapped, angel-funded, debt-funded, pre-seed, seed, or series A projects) are invited to apply for receiving up to $25,000 in Retool credits for one year.

If you are eligible for these offers, it can be a great way for you to optimize your development costs.

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Why is Retool a cost-effective choice?

If compared with custom development from scratch, low-code development is a much more affordable approach. With this option, it takes significantly less time to build a fully functional app than in those cases when teams need to write hundreds and thousands of code lines.

Thanks to its flexible pricing, Retool can become a very sensible choice for individual developers, startups, actively growing businesses, and enterprises. It can be used for building solutions of any complexity for various domains. If you want to learn more about it, we offer you to follow the link and read one of our previously published blog posts.

But what are other factors that make it appealing to different categories of users?

• Speed of development. Retool provides you with a huge choice of pre-built blocks. The drag-and-drop interface and these ready-made components reduce development time. As a result, this can also translate to significant cost savings.
• Reusable modules. You can build reusable components or templates for all your internal tools. This will steamline future development and ensure consistency across tools.
• Custom queries and logic. You can write custom SQL queries and use APIs within Retool to manipulate data. This gives developers flexibility and control while maintaining the simplicity and speed of project realization.
• Integration with data sources. Quite often in custom development, integration of any external tools or services is associated with significant expenses. Thanks to the seamless integrations offered by Retool, the connection of some data sources won’t make the project cost skyrocket.  Retool connects to a wide range of databases, APIs, spreadsheets, and cloud services.
• Security. Security vulnerabilities may result not only in serious reputational damages but also in significant financial losses. Retool provides features like role-based access control, single sign-on, audit logs, and compliance with SOC 2. All this is crucial for businesses handling sensitive data. Moreover, for companies with strict security requirements, Retool can offer an on-premise deployment option to host Retool apps within their own infrastructure.
• Lower initial costs. One more point that proves the possibility of optimizing development costs with Retool is the fact that its use does not require significant upfront investment. Retool provides a flexible subscription model. And you do not need to heavily invest in setting up your development infrastructure or hiring a big team of tech experts with specific skills.

If the Retool cost is not the only factor that you are concerned about at the moment and you also have doubts about whether you really should rely on this low-code platform for building our business solution, you should study more information about it. On our blog, you can find a lot of useful articles about Retool and practical tips on how to make the work on this platform as productive as possible.

At Akveo, we provide a wide range of software development services and work with a rich tech stack that includes low-code tools,  including Retool. Our specialists deeply understand their perks and capabilities. That’s why if you need professional advice or tech support of Retool experts, just let us know.

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