Retool, the developer platform for business software, launched Retool Mobile in public beta, the fastest way for developers to build native apps for iOS and Android–even if they have no previous experience developing for mobile platforms.
Building native mobile apps typically requires specific knowledge of mobile programming languages; with developer talent in short supply across the board, sourcing developers with native app development skill-sets needed to create and maintain custom mobile apps for their internal teams is cost prohibitive for most companies. Retool Mobile changes the economics of the equation, empowering any developer to create robust, feature-rich apps for their workforce, all in a fraction of the time it would take using traditional methods. With Retool Mobile, developers can now build these apps using just Javascript (which GitHub ranks as the most popular programming language) and SQL.
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“Retool Mobile has already been used by customers to accelerate their roadmap for mobile apps by 5x or more, unblocking these businesses and allowing them to build apps that weren’t possible before,” said Sean Ren, product manager at Retool. “Retool Mobile is a game-changer for companies with large field workforces, which typically have relatively miniscule engineering teams to support them. Now with Retool Mobile, even solo developers can build feature-rich apps that support the work of thousands of their colleagues in the field.”
“Retool Mobile has changed the way we have thought about building tools for our operations team,” said Dave Senior, chief product officer at Cookin.com, a homemade food delivery marketplace. “We’re able to empower our team with tools wherever they are, while building them in one tenth the time.”
With Retool Mobile’s drag-and-drop UI builder, any developer who knows SQL and JavaScript can build custom native iOS or Android apps for their businesses. These powerful apps can take full advantage of mobile hardware features like GPS, Camera, NFC, barcode scanning, and more. Retool Mobile also allows for seamless over-the-air (OTA) updates, so administrators need not worry about version control or app store submissions.
“Retool has always been about giving developers the tools to build better software, faster,” said David Hsu, CEO and founder of Retool. “Retool Mobile extends this vision to the mobile workforce, giving businesses and employees full-featured, native mobile apps customized for their unique operation models. Already, we’ve seen customers build incredible apps: Jiva, for example, operates across Southeast Asia, and tracks their produce shipments in real time via Retool Mobile. Or Astreya, an IT managed services solution provider, which services some of the world’s largest companies via an app built with Retool Mobile. Now that we are opening access to Retool Mobile to all developers, we can’t wait to see what they’ll build.”
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Retool Mobile supports a broad swath of use cases and empowers teams to build apps that might otherwise have been just ideas or relegated to a roadmap backlog, including:
Inventory Management
Retool Mobile gives developers built-in components for barcode scanning and warehouse management so that end-users can see what’s in stock, scan new SKUs, and update the status of orders
Field Sales
Quickly search, filter, and update prospect and customer data on the go — with a built-in Salesforce integration and robust filtering
Site Inspection
Native form inputs and validations that help you search, manage, and update assets in the field
Developers can easily connect apps built with Retool Mobile to any production database like PostgreSQL or MongoDB, or third party API like Firebase or Twilio, just as they would using Retool’s core product. In addition, Retool Mobile has built-in support for dozens of native mobile components, as well as pre-built layouts, allowing developers to not only build apps perfectly customized to their teams’ operations, but also to leverage the hardware features users expect from a native mobile app, such as:
- Geolocation: get current location of the device
- NFC reader: read data from NFC tags
- QR/Barcode Scanner: scan any barcode or QR code
- Camera: take photos or import from photo image library
- Businesses can also white-label apps, so that internal applications are consistent with their own branding
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