insights on Migrating from Airtable to MongoDB

[RSk]

Hi All,

We are in the process of migrating our database from Airtable to MongoDB as part of a scale-up effort, and I was wondering if anyone here has experience with such migrations.

Specifically, I'm looking to understand:

• Key considerations to keep in mind during the migration process.
• Potential risks or challenges we should prepare for.
• Limitations or differences between the platforms that might impact the transition.
• Any tools or best practices that helped make the process smoother for you.

Your insights or lessons learned would be incredibly valuable to us as we plan this migration.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

[matthew_b]

Hi! A few potential thoughts:

Limitations or differences between the platforms that might impact the transition.

• The two big things your team will be missing out on by switching away from Airtable are:
  • 1) The super easy ability for non-technical teammates to update data.
  • 2) The flexibility for non-technical teammates to change the schema (by adding or removing fields/tables)
• For #1, you could turn to something like Retool to build a frontend MongoDB client to make it easier to edit the data: https://retool.com/use-case/mongodb-client
• For #2, I don't think this is easy to replicate outside of Airtable

Potential risks or challenges we should prepare for.

• Like any migration, risk is introduced when there's a "hard switch" from one platform to another and all of a sudden you realize the little operational pieces the team may have relied on 😅
• As much as you can avoid that by temporarily running ops in parallel at least in a Test env (see tool suggestion below), the more you can reduce that risk

Any tools or best practices that helped make the process smoother for you.

• Airbyte is an ETL tool that has an Airtable -> MongDB connection: https://airbyte.com/how-to-sync/airtable-to-mongodb-destination
• If we had an MongoDB connector, I'd suggest trying a tool like Whalesync that can 2-way sync Airtable <> Postgres that way you could actually keep the benefits of both systems simultaneously.