Congrats on the launch!
How does your product compare to Retool and other products in the space including the OSS ones (Appsmith, Windmill, Tooljet etc)?
How does your product compare to Retool and other products in the space including the OSS ones (Appsmith, Windmill, Tooljet etc)?
One of the key differences is our code-first preference over no-code, which distinguish Refine from the drag-drop style workflows of Retool, Appsmith, Tooljet, Budibase etc.
Instead of offering a fixed set of pre-made components, Refine outputs a real React project with collections of helper hooks and providers. The "headless" architecture enables developers to integrate any preferred UI framework or custom design, thereby maintaining the highest level of customization and styling options.
This level of flexibility fits use-cases like complex admin panels, SAAS interfaces and B2B portals rather then single-page internal tools which require little or no customizations.
With react-admin, you have no choice other than using Material UI for your app. refine's provides nearly all the features of react-admin enterprise provides as open-source.
Since refine's architecture is headless, router logic is completely detached from the business logic and UI layer. So you can use refine with React Router, NextJS, Remix, or any other framework may pop-up as long as it's React based. With react-admin, you can only use react-router and it doesn't have a real SSR support, while with refine, you can use SSR frameworks like NextJS and Remix without being limited.
Short story: Refine and react-admin were in the same low-code space (targeting developers) until today, but it seems they've pivoted to no-code (targeting non developers) as they go after ReTool.
Long story: https://marmelab.com/blog/2023/07/04/react-admin-vs-refine.h...