Think fast
Thoughts and ideas on how to build tools, automate workflows and speed-up the workplace.
Top 10 Retool Alternatives & Competitors in 2025
Retool is one of the biggest players in the low-code space. However, that doesn’t mean it’s viable for every business; it’s far from it. Today, we’re checking out some of the top Retool alternatives from across the market. And it’s a crowded market nowadays. However, there’s huge variation between different options - across their pricing, features, target personas, use cases, and more. Today, we’re covering the following: What is Retool? Why would you look for an alternative to Retool?
Ronan McQuillan
May 30, 2024
Top 5 Open-Source Data Governance Tools
As a modern business, your data is your most valuable asset. Data underpins all of our internal processes and informs critical decision-making. However, it can also be a massive risk factor, especially if we don’t know what information we’re storing and how it’s being used. This means that lifecycle management for our data assets is a top priority. This is where governance comes into play. Today, we’re examining the market for open-source data governance tools.
Ronan McQuillan
May 29, 2024
Top 5 Open-Source Digital Asset Management Tools
Digital asset management tools are critical to teams that need to store, share, and collaborate on large volumes of media, like images, videos, and other files. However, choosing the right platform can be difficult. For example, requirements can vary greatly from one team to the next, depending on the scale of our processes, our user volumes, security needs, and specific workflows. Today, we’re exploring the market for open-source digital asset management tools.
Ronan McQuillan
May 24, 2024
Digital Signing, Simplified – The Signature Component Built for Forms
Over the past few months, the Budibase team has been hard at work enhancing the form-building experience. Today, we’re happy to announce the new signature component, opening up a range of powerful new workflows with Forms. Whether you’re looking to streamline contract signings, onboard new employees efficiently, or secure internal approvals, the signature component is here to support your digital workflows. Building a delivery workflow Let’s dive into a workflow that uses the new signature component.
Jamie Birss
May 22, 2024
Top 5 Open-Source Help Desk Software Tools
Help desk software is one of the most critical parts of your ITSM tool stack. Enabling employees and other users to access service quickly and easily has an enormous impact on your wider operational efficiency. Today, we’re checking out some of the best options out there for open-source help desk software. This can be a particularly tricky market to navigate. Many businesses prioritize open-source solutions for their help desk for security reasons.
Ronan McQuillan
May 22, 2024
Top 5 Free Field Service Management Software Tools
Field service management can be a mission-critical process for a wide range of businesses, from large enterprises to small contractors. Therefore, the tools that we use to handle this are central to our bottom line. Today, we’re looking at a range of options for free field service management software. However, this is a slightly tricky question. As we’ll see, there are a few approaches to handling field services without incurring big licensing costs for a COTS solution.
Ronan McQuillan
May 21, 2024
How to Build a SQLite GUI in 5 Steps
SQLite is the most widely deployed database in the world. However, it works slightly differently than other relational database engines, such as MySQL or Postgres. The key characteristic here is that SQLite databases are stored in a single file. This means that it’s a highly lightweight, portable solution that can be easily embedded into end-user applications. Today, we’re exploring how Budibase can be used to build a simple GUI for writing, testing, and saving SQLite queries.
Ronan McQuillan
May 17, 2024
How to Build a MariaDB GUI
MariaDB is one of the most popular open-source databases around. It was created by some of the original developers of MySQL as a truly FOSS RDBMS after its larger counterpart’s acquisition by Oracle in 2009. Today, it’s a scalable, secure, and performant way to handle large volumes of data with familiar SQL querying. Even better, just about any platform that supports MySQL will connect easily to your MariaDB database. This includes a huge range of off-the-shelf GUIs.
Ronan McQuillan
May 15, 2024