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Baserow.io – Self-hosted Airtable alternative

baserow.io

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Re: Baserow.io – Self-hosted Airtable alternative

#31

Post by ajsnigrutin »

chaps wrote: post #29
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You update the software. If they start charging, you don't care, because you can keep your free copy. I don't know about the "huge overhead cost" of running an update now and then. ...but, the data is yours, the software is yours, the solution built on it is yours. Noone can raise the prices, noone can give unrealistic/stupid limits (eg. how many queries can you do per month in your paid/free package,...), and noone…

"I don't know about the "huge overhead cost" of running an update now and then." Clearly you've never had to go to hours and hours of change management meetings for a minor release.

If the 'frontend' stays the same (and i literally mean all frontend, from GUI to APIs), then noone cares.

If something changes, you atleast can delay the change, until you fix other components (or maybe even not update, if it's some internal stuff), because with SaaS, you have no say about it.

Even if the project becomes unsupported, you can still run the old version, until you find 'something new' (or again, keep runing the old for internal stuff).

If you build anything around a SaaS provider, they alway have yu by the balls,... be it with ever changing pricing or killing the project, "just because" [0]

[0] https://killedbygoogle.com/

Re: Baserow.io – Self-hosted Airtable alternative

#33

Post by high_byte »

nine_k wrote: post #14
high_byte wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open-SaaS!

Does "SaaS" read as "Self as a Service"?

It's both open-source and software-as-a-service if service is required. but it's still open-source if you just want to self host. I see people did not get that.

Re: Baserow.io – Self-hosted Airtable alternative

#34

Post by chaps »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #31
chaps wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I don't know about the "huge overhead cost" of running an update now and then." Clearly you've never had to go to hours and hours of change management meetings for a minor release.

If the 'frontend' stays the same (and i literally mean all frontend, from GUI to APIs), then noone cares. If something changes, you atleast can delay the change, until you fix other components (or maybe even not update, if it's some internal stuff), because with SaaS, you have no say about it. Even if the project becomes unsupported, you can still run the old version, until you find 'something new' (or again, keep ru…

The moment that a major security bug is discovered in your app, you will need to upgrade it. It's not as simple as just saying that you can still run the old version. That's just one issue of many. There are many, many more hidden costs than you're giving free software credit for.

Re: Baserow.io – Self-hosted Airtable alternative

#35

Post by wodenokoto »

johnchristopher wrote: post #27

A few years ago there were many Airtables articles on HN and it seemed to me it was promoted as a table/database management of some sort for non-technical people. But now I see Airtable is used a lot in marketing departments and I caught a glimpse of a screen the other day and my marketing colleague's Airtable dashboard looked like a mix between Trello and messaging. Can someone explain to me how Airtable is being us…

The MMX cad team, is keeping track of some 10.000 parts used in a marble machine instrument being build by Swedish musician Martin Molin.

You can see some clips at the linked timestamp where they use air table. Looks really cool.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYFdNwXXcac&t=782s

Re: Baserow.io – Self-hosted Airtable alternative

#36

Post by ajsnigrutin »

chaps wrote: post #34
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the 'frontend' stays the same (and i literally mean all frontend, from GUI to APIs), then noone cares. If something changes, you atleast can delay the change, until you fix other components (or maybe even not update, if it's some internal stuff), because with SaaS, you have no say about it. Even if the project becomes unsupported, you can still run the old version, until you find 'something new' (or again, keep ru…

The moment that a major security bug is discovered in your app, you will need to upgrade it. It's not as simple as just saying that you can still run the old version. That's just one issue of many. There are many, many more hidden costs than you're giving free software credit for.

Of course... if it's outside facing... internal stuff can be delayed (and often is).... but again, that's why you pay admins for. Usually feature updates (api changes) and security updates are kept separate (unless you waited with the feature update, until there was a security issue).... but again, the thing is still yours.

it's like a taxi vs a free car + free parts, and all you need is gas and time to do service.

Re: Baserow.io – Self-hosted Airtable alternative

#37

Post by eightysixfour »

johnchristopher wrote: post #27

A few years ago there were many Airtables articles on HN and it seemed to me it was promoted as a table/database management of some sort for non-technical people. But now I see Airtable is used a lot in marketing departments and I caught a glimpse of a screen the other day and my marketing colleague's Airtable dashboard looked like a mix between Trello and messaging. Can someone explain to me how Airtable is being us…

With regards to the airtable question, it has the potential to replace almost any CRUD app in a company. Internally we needed to drastically extend our ERP implementation to handle a large custom project and instead of dedicating a dev team to working on it we were able to build the needs out in airtable and then add a few API hooks here and there to the ERP. It was a great success and probably took 1/20th the time since the people that needed to use it were moderately technical and could define and build the workflow as they went. Now less technical people are being onboarded onto it which has, for the most part, worked well. I think the growth areas are going to come from things like stacker.app that make it easier to wrap Airtable databases up in a simple UI.

In general, you can think of it like a better realized version of Access, it brings relational databases into an Excel like view that semi-technical people can understand, then wraps it up with a few excellent built-in views like a kanban board, a simple form, and a calendar that non-technical people can understand. It has definite limitations but an easy to use API to expand upon it when you need it.

I'm really bullish on it after the project and have moved a bunch of personal stuff that was using external services onto a single airtable instance (contact management/CRM, personal project tracking, etc.)

Re: Baserow.io – Self-hosted Airtable alternative

#38

Post by dbrereton »

There's an interesting trend of open source clones of popular products. Most recent one that comes to mind is Athens [0] which is an open source clone of Roam Research.

The business model is always that people who really want it for free can self host, and people who don't want to deal with the hassle will pay for hosting. Seems like a reasonable strategy to me.

[0] https://github.com/athensresearch/athens

Re: Baserow.io – Self-hosted Airtable alternative

#39

Post by sevencolors »

dbrereton wrote: post #38

There's an interesting trend of open source clones of popular products. Most recent one that comes to mind is Athens [0] which is an open source clone of Roam Research. The business model is always that people who really want it for free can self host, and people who don't want to deal with the hassle will pay for hosting. Seems like a reasonable strategy to me. [0] https://github.com/athensresearch/athens

I think it's a smart way to make money with open-source projects. Charge for hosting and premium add-ons. For me Gatsby comes to mind. The framework will always be free but they have a build, CI and hosting platform that makes it easy. And i don't mind paying money for.

Re: Baserow.io – Self-hosted Airtable alternative

#40

Post by chaps »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #36
chaps wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The moment that a major security bug is discovered in your app, you will need to upgrade it. It's not as simple as just saying that you can still run the old version. That's just one issue of many. There are many, many more hidden costs than you're giving free software credit for.

Of course... if it's outside facing... internal stuff can be delayed (and often is).... but again, that's why you pay admins for. Usually feature updates (api changes) and security updates are kept separate (unless you waited with the feature update, until there was a security issue).... but again, the thing is still yours. it's like a taxi vs a free car + free parts, and all you need is gas and time to do service.

"but again, that's why you pay admins for"

Yes, that's the exact point I'm making. You have to pay someone to manage something like this. The point (edit: okay, not the point) of this sort of software is to try to minimize those costs, but at the end of the day you still have to pay for them, and often even more.

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