baserow.io VS airtable

Hey ​@luismi,

Which features is Airtable missing? Those “portal” related (given your other related topic)?

I do not have experience using baserow. However I would say that most Airable limitations can be bypassed with workarounds! Would be happy to discuss workaroudnd solutions for your specific needs.

Mike, Consultant @ Automatic Nation

​@luismi 

Similar to ​@Mike_AutomaticN’s answer above, I’ve never used (nor heard of) BaseRow, but I wouldn’t personally use a product like that.

For me personally, I wouldn’t trust a product that looks like they are just copying-and-pasting all of Airtable’s intellectual property and trying to make a 100% Airtable clone.

From what I can see on their website, it looks like they are literally using the same interface elements as Airtable, the same fonts as Airtable, the same color palettes as Airtable, the same terminology as Airtable, everything. It looks like they are even marketing themselves as an Airtable alternative.

What if BaseRow gets sued by Airtable’s Legal Department for copyright infringement? How long before BaseRow goes bankrupt and takes all of their customers’ data with it?

But even if Airtable doesn’t sue them, their marketshare and web traffic is extremely minimal… how long before they can’t afford to stay in business anymore? You can use similarweb.com to see that they are not doing very well compared to Airtable.

For me personally, all of this seems like a huge risk.

For me, I wouldn’t trust a product like BaseRow,, and I wouldn’t risk putting my data into it.

However, if you’re looking for a more powerful database than Airtable, then I would highly recommend Apple’s FileMaker, which is still low-code but has absolutely NO LIMITS AT ALL.

FileMaker can be used to power some of the most complex & most powerful & most customizable databases on the planet.

I used to be a Certified FileMaker developer for nearly 30 years, and now I’m an expert Airtable consultant for almost a decade.

I don’t do FileMaker consulting anymore, but I still know some great FileMaker developers, so if you need me to put you in touch with any FileMaker developers, feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable and FileMaker Consultant - ScottWorld

​@ScottWorld 

Well, I don’t think suing Baserow is a smart move. They are open-source, and their roadmap is publicly visible. I'm sure Airtable keeps an eye on it for ideas—that’s just the natural course of things.

I also don’t see any solid grounds for suing someone over cosmetic aspects like the interface or fonts. Not only could they change those at any time, but I also think it would be a PR nightmare to sue a competitor over something like that.

That said, I’m not a lawyer, although I do have some knowledge of intellectual property matters.

FileMaker seems like a strong alternative, but since I’ve started working with Airtable, I’ll stick with it unless I run into a critical blocker.

No specific features, just trying to get a broader view of the available options, if any.

I still think Baserow isn’t mature enough yet, but like any open-source project, I’m sure it will gain traction over time—either in its current form or as a fork. Once something is open-source, it’s hard to stop its progress.

Airtable has an opportunity to maintain its lead by being competitive on both price and features. Their current position is solid. Time will tell—this is just speculation.

Got it ​@luismi. Just let me know if you find any challenge you’d need some help with.

From the top of my mind, Airtable has 3 limitations I hit often:
- Record count limits under all tiers -even enterprise (500,000) -makes it very hard/complex to run huge systems.
- Automations are not robust enough (automation counts, automation runs, automation features -e.g. you cannot have both repeating group AND conditional logic within one automation).
- Forms do not allow you to create records in multiple tables (I end up relying on Fillout to such effect).

Having said that, I’m obsessed with Airtable and I’m pretty sure that they’ll work on the above limitations at some point in time. 

Mike, Consultant @ Automatic Nation

​@Mike_AutomaticN 

Thanks for bringing visibility to the issues you faced. We discussed some potential challenges ahead, but we’re confident that we can manage them—we’ll see how things unfold later on.

As for the record limits, I initially thought HyperDB (https://www.airtable.com/platform/hyperdb) would do the trick. However, 500k seems relatively low for a dynamic environment. We were planning to rotate data whenever possible after some time, but it's still unclear how far we can push that approach due to the nature of the data. End users might need ongoing visibility.

Piping in late to this thread, but a friend just asked me to build out a couple simple tables & forms in Baserow.

Aside from generally being a poor man’s Airtable, one major frustration is the number of mouse clicks required to accomplish a simple task, such as adding an option to a single select or multiple select field. I have to mouse click instead of just hitting enter…. which is an absurd deal killer.

I just tested whether I could paste a column of data from a spreadsheet into a single/multiple select field to create all the options I needed… can’t do that either.

And when I switch the field type from single select to multiple select as i'm creating it, it clears all the options I've just typed in. Wild.

This is a hard no from me. Tried to convince the friend to use Airtable but they want the self-hosting option… I just don’t think he’s going to be able to scale in any meaningful way using this.

​@Irene_Pak1 Interesting, thanks for the info. I didnt try it personally but maybe nocodb is better within that potential zero initial cost. No idea.