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Internal All-in-One Platform — All-in-one platform for building internal tools
With Internal’s all-in-one platform, you can connect databases and APIs to build internal tools including workflows, tasks, automations, and custom apps. We also released a GitHub integration so teams can control changes to apps across multiple environments.
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Hi Product Hunt 👋
Thank you for hunting Internal, @hnshah!
I’m Arisa, one of the co-founders of Internal. I’m really excited to share what we’ve been working on with the PH community.
IT and engineering teams spend 40% of their time building and maintaining internal tools and workflows, distracting from building products that actually drive business revenue. This results in significant amounts of money and time spent, not to mention the problem of having too many tools to manage. The tradeoff of building and managing these internal tools is development effort towards customer-facing products.
This past year, we’ve been working on a new approach to internal tools. We wanted to create an all-in-one platform where people can build all the internal tools (from workflows and automations to custom apps built on top of databases and APIs) and do so collaboratively across the entire organization.
Most platforms are designed with one persona in mind. We believe that if teams work together, they can build internal tools even faster. Internal is designed for technical and non-technical teams to build highly technical tools together.
Internal is free to use, with no trial period. Create an account to start building internal tools.
Here’s what you can do with the Internal all-in-one platform:
⚒️ Design and build apps in a powerful workspace: Spaces is a drag-and-drop interface where you can build custom applications on top of any database and APIs with a wide range of components, without writing any code.
📊 Improve efficiencies in a flexible task system: Queues enable teams to customize details of each step and action, trigger database queries and API calls at any step, and have oversight into the status of every task and workflow distribution.
⚙️ Build and automate multi-step workflows across databases and APIs: Teams can create multi-step automations, schedule recurring jobs, and chain together database queries and API calls.
🧰 Build with custom code: You can write Javascript to manipulate data and add custom logic to your internal tools. Or, you can write SQL to create custom views, execute stored procedures, and more.
🌲 Manage development changes with Source Control Management (SCM): Engineering teams can manage and control changes to Internal apps using source control management providers like GitHub to customize development processes across multiple environments.
I’m excited to help you build awesome internal tools and look forward to hearing your feedback!
Internal tools are generally awful -- poorly thought through, poorly designed, terrible performance, etc. Internal looks amazing, not to mention super powerful. It gives me hope that one day, I'll get to use internal tools that don't suck.
@ron_blandford @mattkauffman thank you! We've personally experienced the same, and have the same hope that companies can make great internal tools easily and quickly!
@arisa_amano1 @foobarfighter @jamieliu @mattkauffman @courtney_anders @garyder @andrey_melnikov @justinaeats @bjefferys @mattd_internal Congratulations on the launch! What are your advantages compared to Retool for example?
Hey Laurie! 👋 Thanks for the question. Here’s how we differentiate as a platform:
1) Internal takes a holistic approach to Internal tools. It’s not just about an app builder - it’s task management, data viewer, automations, workflows, and more.
2) Internal is the only platform made for teams to collaborate on internal tools. In addition to having all the technical features developers want (e.g. you can drop into JavaScript, hook into APIs, and manage development with Git), it’s friendly to non-technical users. This means developers could hook up an API and have Product or Ops teams customize the UI.
3) Internal is the fastest way to build. You can build a custom approval workflow with many states and transitions that writes back to a database in 5 minutes.
4) Internal has granular access controls that go beyond app level permissions. You can control who has access to every attribute and parameter in the system.
5) Internal offers enterprise features starting with our Teams plan which is $5/user/month. You don’t need to talk to a sales rep if you want audit logs, granular permissions, git integration, and more.
Awesome work, Internal team! 🎉 Congrats on the launch on Product Hunt!
I'd love to learn more about how software houses are using Internal to build internal tools. Could you share some use cases to give us a better understanding? Additionally, what would you say is the most unique feature or detail that Internal offers?
Thanks in advance and keep up the amazing work! 🙌
Thanks for your support, @paolo_degiglio! We’ve got many dev shops using Internal to build internal tools for their clients today. Use cases range from support tools on top of a SQL database to approval workflows and a variety of administrative tools to manage all sorts of processes. You can pretty much build any type of internal application you need on top of databases and APIs. With Internal, you have the option to build an internal app and embed it into an existing web application that is already widely used by existing employees. Some dev shops are going that route – while others are building out entire tool set for employees to access via the Internal platform.
@paolo_degiglio If you need ideas on where to get started, check out our Solutions page (https://www.internal.io/solution...) where you’ll find example apps built using Spaces, Automations, Queues, and more. Thanks for your support!
Exciting to see Internal on PH - congrats @arisa_amano1 ! This stat from your blog is totally bonkers and proves the HUGE need for tools like Internal:
94% of IT and Engineering leaders want a more collaborative platform that would enable technical and non-technical users to build faster together
Best of luck with the launch!
Thank you @caroline_brayson1! We strongly believe that companies will save the most time on internal tools development when teams can collaboratively build - and it's not just the developer team building or the non-technical team building.
Thanks for your support, Ahmad! Let us know if you have any questions, or need help building internal tools. ⚒️ @motiondock
Amazing product. Thank you. Prior adopting Internal, our front-end engineers and the DBA spent weekends trying to cobble up a UI for our colleagues in Sales and Marketing. Those are additional non-urgent but important tasks that needed to be done! With Internal, our PMs can create necessary tools directly after requirements are defined.
Simply put, we can spend more effort on the core product.
We've been using Internal.io for years now and are incredibly happy with it. I'm constantly recommending it to others as well. In a startup especially you need to focus on building the product that will drive revenue and so Internal.io let's our product, design and engineering teams focus on building that product. We've easily saved 6 digits worth of money by utilizing Internal instead of building this all ourselves. Everywhere I've worked until we started using Internal we ended up having entire internal engineering teams. Entire salaries and benefits dedicated to what internal.io gives you for a fraction of the cost and you don't ever need to worry about trade offs of internal vs external product development prioritization.
@oscar_godson we are lucky to have you as a customer! We hope the new platform saves you even more time. Let us know if you have any feedback or help as you play around with our newest features!
@oscar_godson @arisa_amano1 Appreciate the the feedback! It's great to hear how Internal is saving you both time and money, so that you can focus on your core business!
We use Forest at my company - curious how Internal compares. Especially interested in whether apps built with Internal can talk to a local development environment
Hey @kgdavis, thanks for your support and question 👋 We support working with a local development environment! We recommend using ngrok (https://ngrok.com/) so our service can communicate with your local environment. We also have a robust environment system (https://www.internal.io/docs-spa...) to support workflows where different versions of an app need to be deployed for things like development and QA. A common workflow is to connect a local database via ngrok as a development environment’s datasource, so that users can develop applications without impacting their production system. Let me know if you need help getting started!
@kgdavis @mattkauffman
In addition to what @mattkauffman mentioned, here are some advantages to Internal:
1. Internal isn’t just for building admin panels. We offer a variety of solutions for any use case: https://www.internal.io/solution...
2. Internal is the only platform made for teams to collaborate on internal tools. In addition to having all the technical features developers want (e.g. you can drop into JavaScript, hook into APIs, and manage development with Git), it’s friendly to non-technical users. This means developers could hook up an API and have Product or Ops teams customize the UI.
3. Internal is the fastest way to build custom approval workflows with many states, transitions, and automations that write back to a database in 5 minutes.
4. Internal has granular access controls that go beyond app and role level permissions. You can control who has access to every attribute and parameter in the system.
Internal is actually mindblowing. It's super simple to use, and can be used to do just about everything. I've used it a ton, read all the docs on the website, and actively recommend it to friends/peers.
Like, a halfway decent dev can create an internal tool in less than a day using Internal.
Thanks @yackmachine, appreciate the support! We're super happy to hear about your great experience so far.
@yackmachine @garyder So glad you find it easy to use! User experience is very important to us!
Ragie