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How stable is airtable?

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We are making a choice about where to migrate an old access database. This database must be available to the client for at least 5 years at which point it will be over-hauled and could be, I guess, moved somewhere else.

How can I assure the funder and the client that Airtable won’t evaporate and leave us with the workload of moving the database yet somewhere else, when we really only have funding to create this once.

Also - in the unfortunately circumstance that we would need to move it, does Airtable offer a standard/compatible export function for the database so we can extract it and reload it somewhere else, with minimal effort?

Thanks,

Elizabeth

PS - I’m brand new to Airtable as of about a month ago and I am totally digging it for my wildlife conservation clients. The Gallery view, for imperiled species, up’s my science communication opportunities significantly.

2 replies

JonathanBowen
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Hi @Elizabeth_Crisfield - the short answer, I think, is “you can’t”. This is just a personal view (I’m not associated with Airtable in any way). On the plus side Airtable looks to be a well funded company:

https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/airtable#section-overview

On the downside, a lot can change in 5 years. But the risk of change isn’t unique to Airtable. You can’t even make risk-free technology decisions by sticking with the tech giants - Google, Amazon, Microsoft. All occasionally close down products that are used by many 1000s of users, so there’s no 100% safe decisions in my view.

My company often makes technology choices on behalf of clients and there are many factors in the decision, but a well-funded company with a great product and a decent amount of customers is always a good sign. I also think Airtable wins on the price vs. functionality question too. I know I can find solutions to problems that are sometimes better than Airtable, but they are often 10s or 100s of times as expensive to implement.

If you do need to move from Airtable at any point, there is a csv download for each table in your base, so compatibility with other tools going forward shouldn’t be a problem.

Hope this helps

JB

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Justin_Barrett
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  • Elizabeth_Crisf
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  • May 26, 2019
JonathanBowen wrote:

Hi @Elizabeth_Crisfield - the short answer, I think, is “you can’t”. This is just a personal view (I’m not associated with Airtable in any way). On the plus side Airtable looks to be a well funded company:

https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/airtable#section-overview

On the downside, a lot can change in 5 years. But the risk of change isn’t unique to Airtable. You can’t even make risk-free technology decisions by sticking with the tech giants - Google, Amazon, Microsoft. All occasionally close down products that are used by many 1000s of users, so there’s no 100% safe decisions in my view.

My company often makes technology choices on behalf of clients and there are many factors in the decision, but a well-funded company with a great product and a decent amount of customers is always a good sign. I also think Airtable wins on the price vs. functionality question too. I know I can find solutions to problems that are sometimes better than Airtable, but they are often 10s or 100s of times as expensive to implement.

If you do need to move from Airtable at any point, there is a csv download for each table in your base, so compatibility with other tools going forward shouldn’t be a problem.

Hope this helps

JB


Your reply helps a lot! My business is wildlife conservation, not tech tool selection! I appreciate you taking the time.

Elizabeth

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