Comment by yawnxyz
> Niching down, if you work in operations at a <50 person startup or SMB and your company relies on a Postgres or MySQL database, Sourcetable is an affordable reporting tool with turnkey data infrastructure that doesn’t require code or engineers to set up.
I'm already using Retool for these kinds of tasks- what does sourcetable do that I can't already do with Retool?
edit: also, did you build your own spreadsheet engine, or use an off-the-shelf one? (also will it be open source ;P)
Category Comparison (table-based solutions): "How are you different than Retool/Airtable/Coda/Notion/Zapier Tables, etc."
The primary difference vs table-based solutions is that Sourcetable is a spreadsheet in the common sense of the word, similar to Excel and Sheets. We have A1 notation and cell-based referencing. This is what most users expect, and this flexibility/familiarity has a big impact on the breadth of users and use cases within a team.
The formula referencing system of these table-based solutions is usually very limited both to columns/rows (not cells), and is a set of SQL-based queries which are much more limited than that 500+ formulas and functions spreadsheet users commonly expect.
Retool specifically: I tend to think of Retool as a lightweight custom-ERP software system, whereas Sourcetable more like Excel + PowerBI + Data Warehouse, so we will generally be much stronger for reporting and analysis. We definitely have some overlap in potential users since technical operators should like us both. FWIW - Retool is an excellent product.