Migrating From Retool: A Practical Guide
You've decided to move beyond Retool. Here's exactly how the migration works, what it costs, and how to minimize disruption.
Migrating away from any platform is daunting. You've invested time building Retool apps, your team knows the workflow, and the thought of a full rebuild feels overwhelming. We get it.
The good news: a Retool migration doesn't have to be a painful big-bang cutover. With the right approach, you can transition incrementally, keep your team productive throughout, and end up with significantly better tools.
Step 1: Audit Your Retool Apps
Before writing a single line of code, we catalog everything you've built in Retool. Every app, every query, every integration. We categorize them by complexity, usage frequency, and pain level.
This audit typically reveals that 20% of your Retool apps handle 80% of your workflow. Those high-value apps are where we start.
App Inventory
Complete list of Retool apps, their users, and how often they're accessed.
Pain Point Mapping
Which apps have the most workarounds, slowest performance, or most user complaints.
Integration Map
All databases, APIs, and services your Retool apps connect to.
Step 2: Prioritize and Plan
We work with your team to decide the migration order. Usually, the highest-pain, highest-value tool goes first. This proves the model and builds team confidence before tackling the rest.
The plan includes timelines, resource requirements, and a clear definition of "done" for each phase.
Step 3: Build in Parallel
We build the custom replacement while your team continues using the Retool version. There's no downtime, no disruption. Your team keeps working while we build something better.
Throughout the build, we do weekly demos so your team can provide feedback and we can adjust course before it's expensive to do so.
Step 4: Migrate Data and Users
Since Retool connects to your existing databases, the data migration is usually straightforward — the data is already in your systems. We connect the new custom tool to the same data sources, verify everything matches, and run both systems in parallel for a validation period.
Step 5: Cutover and Decommission
Once the custom tool is validated and your team is comfortable, we switch over. The Retool app stays available as a fallback for a grace period, then gets decommissioned.
The whole process for a single app typically takes 6-10 weeks from kickoff to cutover. Multi-app migrations run in parallel to compress the overall timeline.
Common Migration Concerns
Will my team need retraining? Yes, but custom tools built around your actual workflows are typically easier to use than Retool apps full of workarounds. Most teams are productive within a day.
What about our Retool investment? Think of it as a prototype. You learned what you needed — now you're building the production version.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does a full Retool migration take?
Do we lose access to Retool during migration?
What happens to our data?
Can we migrate one app at a time?
What if we want to keep some Retool apps?
Ready to Start Your Migration?
Book a free migration assessment. We'll audit your Retool setup and give you a clear plan with timelines and costs.