HN Explorer

Show HN: Illa – An open-source alternative to Retool (github.com)

151 points by vicsomething ↗ HN
Hey HNs:

This is Vincent from the ILLA team. I'm sure you guys see tons of "Open-source" and "Alternative to Retool" these days. I won't deny Retool is a great product, and so are many open-source competitors such as Appsmith, Budibase, Tooljet etc.

However, what makes ILLA so special? What advantages does ILLA have that allow users to choose ILLA instead of others?

Well, I would like to answer those questions to all folks at HN one by one.

First, we are similar to Retool, or Appsmith but we have many different our own features. We are a true open-source project all the folks here can check and review our Code here: https://github.com/illacloud/illa-builder. We believe as developers the basic ethic is to be honest, especially in "open-source" circumstances. You have to be honest with your team, users, and contributors in order to grow. Therefore, we welcome all the contributors from around the world to build ILLA together, this is a promising project and won't let you down. With your code, we can build the next DevTool together instead of just making some cash.

Ok, so maybe some folks here would say that I don't care about "Code Integrity", and there are many different options such as Appsmith, Budibase, and Tooljet. Why should I use ILLA here? Well, we believe the difference between animals and homo sapiens is that people know to use tools to improve their work efficiencies. Our whole team members are developer backgrounds and we know many itch issues we would like to solve for developers. So maybe our newest 1.3.3 version is not good enough, but just give us a little more time and I'm you will see the differences.

In the end, We are also "open-source" first. We are willing to collaborate with different open-source alternatives as much as we can. For example, we just partnered with PingCAP a few weeks ago. We will support many other open-source databases such as MindsDB, Supabase, etc soon. We can also support many other open-source alternatives, if you are interested, you can always find us in our Discord community.

Our Repo again: https://github.com/illacloud/illa-builder

73 comments

[ 0.79 ms ] story [ 165 ms ] thread
mxe1
So many oepn-source alternatives to retool. So what?
smallSohoSolo
Everyone has It owns the best feature. They let developers work effectively together. Low-code tools need us to encourage and support~
necatiozmen
It's always cool that there are alternatives for popular tools. It encourages maintainers to put more effort and release new project features.
enos_feedler
I've been curious why so many of these low-code dev tools target enterprise/business with internal apps. Can anyone shed some light on this? Thanks!
fegu
Because LOB (line of business) apps don't need to be as polished as customer-facing tools. Lowcode will mostly get you almost there, but not perfectly. For internal tools it can be good enough.
enos_feedler
Is that really it? I thought maybe it was because of full control of their own database access. Makes it easy to integrate the code blocks with the data sources.
vicsomething
Well, it's simply because with more employees there will be more problems. Each corporation has tons of different problems in internal management, and those problems can't be solved by just purchasing standard SaaS so they have to build on their own. Well in that case developers are very expensive and building some tools used only internally won't contribute to developers' achievement. So using a tool to build it faster really make sense.
idealmedtech
The original low code app is the spreadsheet; a very useful abstraction that people have bolted together all kinds of critical workflows with. Low code is meant to be for a similar audience of nontechnical DIYers in the process automation space.
atarian
because they'll actually pay
allanitis
We have been looking to replace our FE devs with a low-code tool, but haven't found any that will suit complex authentication, permissions, and global theming (per client). I expect these internal tools will mature and come out with next-gen Bubble.io type of tools in a few years.
vicsomething
Hey, thx for replying here. We will update the permissions features soon. For complex authentication and global theming, could you pleas elaborate on your thoughts in our Discord community if you like? We would love to solve some problems you are facing with our tool if possible.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
revskill
The real devils is in authorization and computed fields. For CRUD, a generator can do it for developers.
rreyes1979
May you elaborate?
noworriesnate
Not OP but authentication is easy, authorization is a cross-cutting concern that often requires custom code. E.g., there are people and teams, both of which can have different kinds of access to something (read/write). Sometimes teams have sub-teams. Do the sub-teams have access to the parent teams' resources and/or vice versa? Also what kind of sharing are you going to support? Do people have to have an account to view stuff shared to them or can you just send a link? There are some efforts to make custom DSLs for describing authorization policies, to avoid cross-cutting code[1].

Computed fields require different treatment at every level of the stack. This isn't inherently hard, but it is an extra feature these low-code/no-code platforms need. Where things get difficult is in migrations. It's common for a field that is computed at the beginning to become customizable, or for the computation to change. When that happens, what should the value be for old columns? Computed fields also often pull data from multiple other tables, which may require some combination of custom queries and database optimization.

[1] https://github.com/osohq/oso

revskill
One example, you're creating order form, which contains many order lines.

When we create a new order line, the tax, remainaining inventory for item must be dynamically computed before submitted and also to display after successfully saving.

imwoody
I count at least a dozen open-source alternatives to @Retool and they are all growing nicely. Feels like devs don't like to be trapped!
bastijn
Also feels like an enormous waste to me. Imagine all these devs combining efforts in one great OSS iso multiple small alternatives that all just miss the required list of features by a bit forcing me to stay at retool.
ohgodplsno
Half of these devs are looking to pull you in and make money out of you, so they're not going to work together. The other half hates the idea and is busy disagreeing on the tech stack so they make their own
ajb
A comment by the OP is dead. This is unfortunate since readers should have a chance to question the OP, who seems to be associated with the project.

Maybe the mods could fix this?

vicsomething
thx much appreciated！
ajb
No worries. A hint about why your comments (most likely) got flagged on the other thread: you pointed at your own competing tool, without disclosing that you develop it, and also without giving any reason to check it out. This space is friendly to people starting new things, so it will actually work better to be upfront and say its yours. People will appreciate the chance to get information from you directly, since obviously you know the tool best, as long as you treat them as peers. With a nearly bare link, it just looks like link spam.
vicsomething
thx for elaborating the rules! I will notice this in the coming posting.
elitan
Thanks for sharing, looks great!
omeraplak
Congrats!

Contributing to an open-source ecosystem with alternative tools is a great approach. Having a built-in support for other open source tools is the best practice ever.I hope you guys will grow rapidly.

We are running an open-source project too. It’s a React-based headless framework for building CRUD apps.

As being an open source project, we would like to get feedbacks:)

Repo:https://github.com/refinedev/refine

We are not offering drag-and-drop building blocks. However, you can build complete CRUD apps without needing to lock into the tool.

jstummbillig
Does any of the current "low-code" tools offer support for notifications on mobile? For my use cases that seems to be the lynchpin.

EDIT: Apparently Retool does :)

dgudkov
It should be relatively straightforward with something like pushover.net (I'm not affiliated with them). Most low-code tools can send an API request.
I_am_tiberius
I like open source projects but what I don't like if someone else's ideas are just copied. The interface looks almost like a 1:1 copy of retool.
Aeolun
It’s a great interface. I’m sure Retool can compete on something more salient than their interface.
I_am_tiberius
Yes, it's a great interface. But I'm not sure what you want to say with your second sentence.
helsontaveras18
I agree with this sentiment. Even the font is the same. Show some creativity.
josephcsible
Do you dislike ReactOS too, since it looks so similar to Windows? If not, what's the difference?
zakokor
Congrats! Do you support login with keycloak/OpenID?
vicsomething
We are trying to make a collaboration with Keycloak Asap.
Aeolun
I'm not a fan of using a cli to boot a docker image. I found out that it's possible to find the base docker-compose images with a bit of searching, but it'd be nicer if the documentation links to them directly.
nextaccountic
What does Show HN posts don't begin describing what the tool does?

Indeed Illa's README doesn't clearly state what it does!

starkd
Yes. No context provided to introduce the tool. It seems to be all too common. It's like they are only speaking to their own team. I've noticed this is all too common in all parts of the web.
vicsomething
Thx for pointing that out we will revise it ASAP. Much appreciated!
vicsomething
Hey, we've updated a new version of Readme. If you think it works plz let me know. thx!
Aeolun
Do you have a way to turn off your automatic telemetry? It seems like one of the first things the UI does is send a bunch of info back to Sentry.

It also appears that the email verification works by passing the email straight on to one of your servers, instead of my own SMTP setup, which is promptly blocked by my spamfilter.

EDIT: Limit on the password of 20 characters? It's hashed anyway right, who cares?

More Edit: I'm trying to add a data source, and even though I'm self-hosting it's displaying:

> Credentials will be encrypted & stored securely on our servers. Connect Type Cloud: ILLA servers will securely connect to your database.

I'm going to stop testing now, since I have no desire for my database credentials to be floating around on your cloud like my email already is.

[deleted]
(comment deleted)
smallSohoSolo
Hey Aeolun, thank you for your testing! This is the co-founder of ILLA. The automatic telemetry issue was caused by not deploying ILLA builder from CLI. For the email verification issue, we will support customized SMTP very soon to ensure our users have 100% control of their data. We will change our password limitation to 30 characters so that our users will have more flexibility. The most important thing is that showing the message"Credentials will be encrypted & stored securely on our servers. Connect Type Cloud: ILLA servers will securely connect to your database" is a bug. If you deploy it locally, your data will not transfer to our server. We will fix it asap and update a version tmr. I will keep you updated once we have the bug fixed.
swznd
what the purpose of limiting the password characters anyway ?
vicsomething
Hey Aeolun： illa-builder@1.3.6 is here! NEW： · Add sentry address configuration. Sentry will only start with the configuration. Improvements： 1. No longer limit the length of the password 2. Stop pushing the misleading message when the users create new resources during self-hosting 3. Routing optimization. There will be no more infinite loop 4. WebSocket improvement
sambeau
Hey, fast-try/illacloud,

I know this is petty, but, if you mess with history and make it impossible for me to back out of your web page (by clicking the back button), I will immediately assume you are a untrustworthy company, and I will never return later to make an account.

I hate this practice, it's rude, it shows contempt for your users (in this case future-users), and its one of the many dark UI patterns that is ruining the modern web.

Please don't do it.

Waterluvian
I agree. But I think most of the time it’s not malice, just website design not being a core skill of the team. Nevertheless, it does send a signal like many a dark pattern.
vicsomething
This is a UI bug. Sorry for your bad experience. Our team is fixing it now, and I will keep you posted once we fix it. ；）
smallSohoSolo
This is a bug. Our team is fixing it. We will let you know once it's done. Sorry for your bad experience
sambeau
Sorry—many sites have that as a 'feature'. Thank you for responding and fixing.
vicsomething
hey Sambeau: We just updated a new version and I believe most of the issues you mentioned were fixed. NEW： · Add sentry address configuration. Sentry will only start with the configuration. Improvements： 1. No longer limit the length of the password 2. Stop pushing the misleading message when the users create new resources during self-hosting 3. Routing optimization. There will be no more infinite loop 4. WebSocket improvement
sambeau
Thank you. I'll take a look now :)
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
la64710
IMHO developers who publish their software as open source but actually making it difficult to use their open source version , is doing them a disservice , because the first user experience itself is that of a feeling of deceit and is less than ideal. For example this one says there are docker components available for self hosting but it is clear the developers did not put as much heart into the open source version as they have done with their hosted or commercial version. It is simply better to be upfront about it.
vicsomething
thx for sharing your idea. We will upfront the difference between the opensource and commercial versions.
edmundsauto
Hey, some quick feedback from trying the demo. It feels like you're trying to generate sales leads for the cloud service by making me create an account just to try it. I'm not super familiar with the competition, so maybe your market is focused on people looking for alternatives, but having to register for an account just to see the demo was more than I was willing to go through. The kicker for me was when the opt-in to getting email updates was checked while creating a demo account.

Also, you may want to increase the verification code timeout value - 60s is too short for emails to get through.

vicsomething
Gotcha！ We will enhance it asap and keep you posted! Thx for trying our product here.
ano88888
i would like to know when there is a good open source version of Retool that doesn't have a paid version.
shuaihan
Have you checked Openblocks yet? https://github.com/openblocks-dev/openblocks
ano88888
not yet. it looks great. Will try it out. However, it seems like it is using Java for server. It is the one language that I don't want to work in when i need to extend new features
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
[deleted]
(comment deleted)