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 even heard of) BaseRow, but I would personally avoid a product like that.

For me personally, I would never trust a product that is literally just copying-and-pasting all of Airtable’s intellectual property and is trying to make a 100% complete Airtable clone.

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. They are even marketing themselves as an Airtable alternative. 

How long before 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?

And 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 a tool like 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.

Personally, I would never trust a product like BaseRow,, and I wouldn’t risk putting any of my data into an untrusted product like that.

If you’re looking for a more powerful database than Airtable (which BaseRow isn’t), 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.

So if you need to hire either a consultant for either FileMaker or Airtable, 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.