We have exciting news to share. Avo has a new big brother, basetool.io.
When we started building Avo, we wanted to make tools that helped us develop apps faster. We began with Rails because we loved the conventions it provides. Those conventions led the way to build what Avo is today; A package that supercharges the way you make admins with Rails.
We first launched the initial beta version in August 2020, and the v1.0 rewrite with Hotwire in January. Since then, Avo was deployed to over 100 production apps and received feedback like "integration was a breeze and even things like custom fields were really simple to add" and "just dropped avo in and suddenly it's a dream". That made us feel like we did something right, and we wanted more. We want to help more developers and companies. So that's how basetool was born.
"What if you could create an admin panel from just the credentials of your database?". We immediately started jotting down thoughts on how we could bring that idea to life.
We knew that there would be hurdles to overcome. We overcame some and left some for a later time.
It took us about seven weeks, but we came up with this MVP.
Basetool is the place where you have the most extensive visibility on your data and your company. Bring in all your data under the same roof, no matter where it comes from. Our vision is to make this the next base of operations for your company.
At the moment, you can connect four types of SQL data sources and Google Sheets (beta). We're still working on bringing Stripe and Airtable in the following weeks.
Also coming in the next few weeks are data visualizations, custom views, and sharing data across data sources.
Right now, you can create an account, add your data source, invite your teammates, give them roles and share your data with them.
Basetool ships with a few field types to make it easy for you to manage your data.
We want to build a business that funds the further development of products like Avo and basetool. While basetool.io is a hosted service for which we will eventually have paid tiers, we also have plans to release an open-source version that you can use on your infrastructure. The open-source release is in the pipeline for the next few weeks.
We also want to grow a community that steers basetool in the right direction like you did with Avo, so we hope you'll stick with us on this journey.
Head to basetool.io and help us test out this idea.
It's nerve-racking to write these words and put basetool into the wild like this. It's still in beta, so be gentle with us. All feedback and bug tickets are most welcomed.
We're here to listen adrian@basetool.io and david@basetool.io.
Thank you,
-Adrian and David