A Note to Internal.io Users

Posted by Michael Peach|Published on Nov 15, 2023

4 min read

Appsmith offers a secure and developer-friendly home for applications impacted by the Internal.io shutdown.

Internal.io is shutting down

The team at Internal.io announced that they will be shuttering their service at the end of the year. As a fellow start-up and low code champion, we’re disappointed to hear the news and would like to offer our support to users as they transition their applications away from the service.

The importance of internal tools

Low-code platforms like Internal and Appsmith are often used to build categories of apps that support internal teams. These can include dashboards, admin panels, CRUD apps or front-ends for databases, and other back-office applications. Internal tools typically aren’t commercial applications, so teams often look for ways to limit the development effort required to develop and maintain them.

That doesn’t mean these internal tools aren’t highly important or valuable. They’re built to address digital gaps in crucial business processes. These applications play a vital role in customer onboarding, service management, inventory control, order fulfillment, and the overall smooth operation of technology stacks. When the platforms supporting these applications go down, business operations are disrupted.

That, frankly, is one of the risks associated with low code development. In exchange for reduced development overhead, users trust the applications that they build to a third-party platform. If that platform goes down, or the company that is supporting it goes out of business, users are out of luck. Low code platforms speed development by abstracting away parts of the software development lifecycle, whether that’s building UI components, defining business logic, or managing DevOps. These proprietary abstractions, while helpful, make it difficult to port applications between platforms.

The inherent security of open-source solutions

The primary reasons for building Appsmith as an open-source solution are the importance of internal tools and the risks associated with using a low-code platform. Our codebase and roadmap are fully accessible on GitHub and available via the Apache 2.0 license. This allows users to freely use, fork, and contribute to the project. This also means that users are not fully reliant on the Appsmith team to maintain and update the platform (although we intend to do so for a long time).

Open source offers true transparency into our low code platform. Users can easily verify our claims about features, functions, and security. Our roadmap and updates are published publicly as well, giving users visibility into the frequency and extent to which the platform is updated. In addition to the support from our team, Appsmith is supported by a vibrant community of users and contributors. Community members are an important resource for each other and key drivers of new features and improvements that are made to the platform.

Developer-first low-code development

One of the reasons that some low-code platforms struggle to provide value is that they try to fully service the spectrum of use cases from 100% no-code visual development to code-supported low-code building. This leads to platforms creating a lot of abstractions across data source access and querying, business logic, and software lifecycle processes. These abstractions can’t always support the “last mile” of customization that business applications need, but then end up severely constraining the developer control that’s needed for customization.

The result of this is a solution that can’t fully support no code building and limits how developers can use code to build the functionality they need. At Appsmith, we’ve taken a different approach to low-code development. We’ve created a platform that provides full flexibility and control to technical users: developers, system administrators, and data teams, while still allowing them to build applications 80% faster.

Our platform provides code-level control over business logic, data sources, and UI elements. You can import custom JS libraries, and manage all the variables and functions used in an application within a centralized IDE. Appsmith applications can be fully integrated with Git, allowing you to manage deployments, updates, and version control using your preferred tools.

An invitation to Internal.io users

If you’re looking for a new home for your tools developed in Internal, we invite you to take a look at Appsmith. As an open-source product, it’s completely free to build with Appsmith in the cloud or host your instance of the platform. We have a library of ready-made templates for common applications that you can use to jumpstart your project, detailed documentation and tutorials, and a robust community that’s available to help you as you get started.