Developers February 13, 2020

Dashboard service for SaaS


Are there any SaaS services which can let us create dashboards quickly by taking data from REST API?

For our SaaS product, we have the REST API built and currently looking for a service which can create dashboards for our tenants quickly.

  1. 2

    Have you looked at

    You might also want to co-ordinate with @nprail who has already used keen and is looking to custom build a solution.

    Also, this might help:

  2. 2

    I would definitely encourage you to support our fellow IH @matt_h_. I've been using Retool for internal dashboards. Could you clarify if these dashboards are for users or for you to use internally?

    1. 1

      Not for internal use. Our product gives access to our tenants(developers) where they login and check their analytics.

      Retool is a great tool which i checked earlier but its more for internal usage.

    2. 1

      Thanks for the vote of confidence :)

      FYI I'm @matt_h_ though

      1. 2

        Username population is weird in IH. Corrected!

  3. 2

    I am building exactly that product! This is a great validation moment for me :)

    Take a look at or reach out to me directly.

    1. 1

      “ Instantly create a web app for your API” - sounds exactly like what i’m looking for but, I see its building from the swagger spec which i expect will be very basic UI. Consider I want to connect to a custom widget for my data which is fetched from multiple api requests, is it possible?

      1. 1

        The generated UI is customizable to display your data exactly how you want. We may not support your exact UI widget yet, but we're continually adding new widgets, so we can prioritize what you need.

        If you'd like to see what's possible, send over the documentation for your API (whatever you have is fine, doesn't have to be a swagger spec). I'll get it all set up for you and send a link back for your review. My email is in my IndieHackers profile.

        1. 1

          I would like to know more as the site seems to not exactly show what you mean here. However, please let me know how I can contact you to know more :)

          1. 1

            I have emailed you directly to get you set up!

  4. 1

    Take a look at

  5. 1

    These tools might be useful for you: (open source, self-hosted) (YC W'20) (my own solution)

  6. 1

    Yes, I've been working on exactly this: :-)

    You can pull data from your API, and it'll automatically be cached daily to generate charts and email reports.

    You can display data from other services as well, like Google Analytics, Intercom, Stripe etc

    1. 1

      Looks like it will be too costly for my use-case as I can have many tenants who will be logging in to the dashboards.

      1. 1

        How many tenants do you need?

        1. 1

          For example more than 1000

          1. 1

            Are those 1000 users all making their own individual dashboards and API calls?

            1. 1

              I think there is some confusion. Please consider this example.
              Consider shopify as our product and each seller(tenant) who have access to admin dashboard to see the sales of their products.

              Here consider shopify(we) need to provide access to a dashboard to all the tenants using “Dashboard as a service” which lets them fetch the data from their REST API. Consider the data thats displayed to tenants is total api calls done from each tenant site, total sales etc.

              1. 1

                I understand now, it sounds like this would be something better built in-house (perhaps with a framework to speed up the process)?

                Routing 1000s of users and API calls through a third-party SaaS is going to be mega-expensive due to the overhead.

  7. 1

    Sounds like a great project for you ;)

  8. 1

    Have you checked

    I heard it's really great but never tested myself.

    1. 1

      Yeah, you don't have to transfer data to their servers, but imho it was way too heavyweight and complicated in terms of ACLs and initial setup for my use case.

    2. 1

      I heard about it too but the issue with it is to transfer data to their servers.

      1. 1

        Hmm... but their tagline says:

        Forest Admin provides an off-the-shelf admin panel based on a highly-extensible API hosted on your servers.

        1. 1

          I haven't checked recently though. I could be wrong.

          Also their plans are too high for my use case. They are charging per 10 users and it works well for users within the company but not for a SaaS platform where the user count will be high.

  9. 1

    I'd be interested to know more about the data you want to display on the dashboard. In particular:

    • what format it is in
    • where it's coming from
    • how you want to view it

    I'm passionate about knowing the stats for any system I work on, and have finally got round to building a website to support that. Not ready for public consumption yet, but moving fast, as projects often do at the start!

    I look forward to hearing more,

    Cambridge UK

    1. 1

      For ex. For the logged in tenant, i want to show his api calls count. For that I should be able to connect a UI widget which display the count with the data from my rest api.

      1. 1

        Do you want a single call count for all time or a graph on a daily or weekly basis?

        Where is the data coming from - do you have it in a database?

        1. 1

          Yes, I have it in database.