[HN Gopher] Baserow.io - Self-hosted Airtable alternative
___________________________________________________________________
Baserow.io - Self-hosted Airtable alternative
Author : punnerud
Score : 219 points
Date : 2021-03-13 19:03 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (baserow.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (baserow.io)
| chaps wrote:
| Can who's who's used this share their experiences with this?
| Sounds interesting, but it's going to be a hard sell for
| collaboration work with airtable already.. on the table.
| iampims wrote:
| The documentation is excellent. It's so rare to see such well
| written documentation with just the right learning curve.
| chrisblackwell wrote:
| I will be using this, and dropping a lot of my paid AirTable
| bases...and let me please explain why.
|
| Airtable makes it VERY hard to collaborate with people outside my
| organization. We are a team of 7 people. No longer a scrappy
| 1-person startup, but not an enterprise client by any-means.
|
| If I want to add a single person to an Airtable base, that's $24
| a month please. I have one client with 12 people that want to
| collaborate on the base by posting comments. I can't justify $288
| a month just to keep the comments for all time.I contacted
| Airtable about this and was told the "Enterprise Plan" would be a
| perfect fit. Minimum $15k a year commitment.
|
| Why is this happening in the SasS world??? Everyone seems to be
| either single Pro user, or Enterprise. Do they really think there
| is nothing in-between?
| loceng wrote:
| "Why is this happening in the SasS world???"
|
| It's the VC-finance industrial complex expecting a drive
| towards an IPO to exit while offloading the risk and
| unsustainable fees to the general public via misaligned stock
| brokers buying/selling to get fees vs. only benefitting long-
| term if their picks earn profit.
| donmcronald wrote:
| > Everyone seems to be either single Pro user, or Enterprise.
| Do they really think there is nothing in-between?
|
| Just like GitLab. If you have users that might post one or two
| issues a year you have to pay for them at dev level prices.
| $240 / year for idle users that barely participate? No thanks.
|
| And they have the same tone deaf solution; upgrade to Ultimate.
|
| Silicon Valley SaaS bros have lost touch with reality because
| they have unlimited money to work with.
| Swizec wrote:
| > Silicon Valley SaaS bros have lost touch with reality
| because they have unlimited money to work with.
|
| Disagree. The issue is that they don't _want_ cheap users. It
| lowers your average user value, impacts your valuation, and
| usually cheap users are the most demanding to support in
| relation to their revenue. A user that pays $50 /year and has
| 5 questions to support us very different than 5 questions
| from a user posting $5000/year
| Aeolun wrote:
| The problem is _getting_ those 5000 /month accounts if
| nobody wants to use your product before they get there.
| Exuma wrote:
| Hourglass on pricing tables makes no sense. I'm not a moron and
| after scanning the page I have no idea what this means... the
| only thing I can assume is some kind of feature not ready for
| production yet?
| bram2w wrote:
| It means that those features have not been created. I agree
| with you that it has to clearer. We will add a small
| description what the hourglass icon means soon.
| nojvek wrote:
| Something that would be really cool is if there was an open
| source - self hosted version of notion.so.
|
| I like notion because it's a hybrid of wiki, table/database,
| calendar, kanban. You can do a lot more than just tables.
| bram2w wrote:
| We are going to add Notion like features to Baserow in 2022.
| You should then be able to create similar documents within the
| same tool and it is going to work well together with the
| databases and tables that you already have.
| bram2w wrote:
| Hello everyone, I am Bram Wiepjes, the founder of Baserow.
| Baserow is an open source, soon to be open core, no-code database
| tool and Airtable alternative. Easily create your own relational
| database in a user friendly way without technical experience.
|
| - Unlimited rows.
|
| - Released under the MIT license.
|
| - Uses popular frameworks like Django and Vue.js.
|
| - Uses PostgreSQL as database backend.
|
| - It can be self hosted.
|
| - Designed to be performant with lots of data, handles 100k+ rows
| per table easily.
|
| - Headless and API first.
|
| - Supports plugins.
|
| If you have experience with Django and Vue.js, we are hiring full
| stack developers. More info: https://baserow.io/jobs/experienced-
| full-stack-developer
|
| Repository: https://gitlab.com/bramw/baserow
| kennydude wrote:
| Nice to see this using Django and VueJS! :D
| decentrality wrote:
| Had me at "self-hosted"
|
| Following the repository now, and tried an online demo account.
| Looks promising but now quite ready.
|
| Will be switching from Airtable when:
|
| 1. More field formats are supported ( like Currency,
| Collaborators, Multiselect )
|
| 2. Kanban views are supported
|
| 3. Automations are supported
| artemonster wrote:
| What is the market for that? What can it do that good ol excel
| cannot (or, if so really desired, ms access)
| [deleted]
| 40four wrote:
| Well, among the many answers you might get to this question,
| the one that sticks out the most to me is Excel spreadsheets do
| not have a built in REST API and Websocket service out of the
| box.
|
| Sure you can pay up for Access or Sharepoint, or whatever
| offerings Microsoft has that _do_ give REST APIs (I'm honestly
| not familiar with them). But this is free and open source, and
| anyone can put it on a web server and start jamming :)
| I_am_tiberius wrote:
| Open source is great. But it's hard for me welcoming something
| that is almost a 1:1 copy of a concept that somebody else worked
| on for many years.
| treve wrote:
| You mean things like Linux, LibreOffice, Any browser?
|
| The things that they are copying are themselves also copies of
| earlier products. Airtable can be traced back to MS Access,
| DBase and I'm sure there's even older examples.
| I_am_tiberius wrote:
| I just said I'm not welcoming it. But I also distinguish
| between copying in terms of implementing the same
| protocol/standard and copying an innovative product that is
| unique (or was unique when it came out). I don't think in
| this discussion there is a right or wrong but I think that if
| you put 10 years of thinking into a concept and another
| person just copies it it's just not fair.
| OmegaPG wrote:
| If I use the self hosted software now, how to keep it up to date?
| Also if they start charging, how will it be different than
| AirTable? I get the privacy aspect of self hosted solutions but
| there is a huge overhead cost of maintaining it and updating it.
| I am not even sure self hosted is safer than SaaS.
| bram2w wrote:
| It depends a little bit on how you are going self host it.
| There are updating instructions at the bottom of
| https://baserow.io/docs/guides/installation/install-on-ubunt...
| and https://baserow.io/docs/guides/installation/install-on-
| cloud... We are going to make it much easier to self host and
| update in the future.
| zwayhowder wrote:
| You lost me when there wasn't a docker image. I'd strongly
| encourage having one that can be dropped into a docker-
| compose config.
| bram2w wrote:
| There are going to be production ready Docker images soon.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| You know (probably) that the binary you download and self host
| will always run. You can avoid updates, and avoid future paid
| requirements too.
|
| It's more work, but if you host something on LAN you eschew
| many security concerns. You can more easily track what it's
| pinging and who it talks to. If it's open source, you can audit
| and adjust the code too.
|
| It's all about priorities.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| 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 can take
| your data away.
| chaps wrote:
| "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.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| 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/
| chaps wrote:
| 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.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| 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.
| chaps wrote:
| "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.
| FPGAhacker wrote:
| "Eerly premium" should be "Early premium" on the front page.
| bram2w wrote:
| Thank you for notifying me of that typo. We will update that
| soon :).
| ochronus wrote:
| Or "eerily premium"
| agustif wrote:
| Looks promising will try out.
|
| Glad to see competition in the space.
| dbrereton wrote:
| 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
| travisjungroth wrote:
| I wonder if there's a business model of paid hosting of other
| companies open source alternatives...
| mikkom wrote:
| You mean AWS?
| travisjungroth wrote:
| Yeah, something like that. But for all these SaaS apps.
| edjrage wrote:
| I wasn't aware of Athens, thanks! There's also Logseq:
| https://github.com/logseq/logseq and a few others, but I forgot
| their names.
| zwayhowder wrote:
| I work at a university, we are legally not allowed to host a
| lot of our data outside of our country. While I'd love to use
| tools like Airtable & Roam we can't. As those vendors aren't
| interested in hosting in a small backwater country like
| Australia </sarcasm> an open source alternative I can host
| myself is amazing.
|
| But I'd gladly pay more to have someone else manage hosting...
| sevencolors wrote:
| 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.
| high_byte wrote:
| Self hosted Always free
|
| I like that pricing model
| jeffgreco wrote:
| Though they're already laying the groundwork for "premium"
| features like admin tools, role based permissions, kanban and
| calendar views which would be paid subscriptions for self-
| hosted options too.
|
| I always worry that essential features for tools like these
| will get bumped into one of those paid tiers.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| The benefit of having the self hosted always free option is
| your data isn't locked into the service.
|
| Price is important, but data sovereignty more so imho. If a
| vendor is no longer meeting your needs, or the deal becomes
| less fair (you know the whole "raising prices once your
| business relies on them"), you can export and bounce.
|
| More of this _chef kiss_
| high_byte wrote:
| exactly. I get the point that corporations tend to "extort"
| users by offering supposedly-core features only under
| premium, but on the other hand this one is a startup and
| gotta make ends meet somehow. so far I'm fine with that
| boomskats wrote:
| In their defense, their upcoming 'premium' features are
| clearly labelled on the Feature Roadmap. I really like that.
|
| Great job OP!
| johnchristopher wrote:
| 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 used by non-
| technical people ?
|
| And can Baserow fill that role too or is it a database thingy
| first and foremost ?
|
| edit: does it have anything to do with templates ?
| wodenokoto wrote:
| 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
| eightysixfour wrote:
| 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.)
| tmpz22 wrote:
| Gorgeous landing page. Is it a template or did you handroll that?
| Kudos either way.
| bram2w wrote:
| Thanks! It is not a template, I designed it from scratch.
| jerrygoyal wrote:
| nice project.. Will add it to my open-source alternatives list
| gourav.io/clone-wars ps: any particular reason for not choosing
| GitHub?
| mhd wrote:
| How good is it at recreating the DabbleDB demo?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wZmYMWKLkY
| samblr wrote:
| Looks like Airtable took a lot of 'inspiration' from DabbleDB!
| faichai wrote:
| DabbleDB was way ahead of its time.
| garduque wrote:
| I love Airtable but not the monthly invoice that comes with it.
| Signed up for your email newsletter so please do remind me when
| you get further along. Things like csv export and all of the
| pending field types are a necessity before I could even consider
| switching even my most basic bases.
| rvz wrote:
| Good. We really need more self-hosted open source alternatives
| like Baserow.
| high_byte wrote:
| Open-SaaS!
| nine_k wrote:
| Does "SaaS" read as "Self as a Service"?
| high_byte wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| showerst wrote:
| FYI if anyone from baserow is reading this, I tried following
| your docs at https://baserow.io/docs/guides%2Fdemo-environment
| and can't clone your git repo -- I'm getting permission denied.
|
| Once I looked up the HTTP url it worked fine, so I think you may
| have a permissions issue in gitlab.
| bram2w wrote:
| Thanks for notifying me. I was not aware that it is not
| possible to clone the repo that way without being signed into
| GitLab. I will change the url in the docs to
| `https://gitlab.com/bramw/baserow.git`.
| showerst wrote:
| No problem! FYI the rest of the demo worked fine, pretty
| slick!
| aschampion wrote:
| See also https://seatable.io/
| kennydude wrote:
| Seatable doesn't appear to be open source, and for some reason
| the website is incredibly janky on Firefox
| vineyardmike wrote:
| This is self-hosted but I'm pretty sure it's not Open Source
| (or even available source) like Baserow
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-03-13 23:00 UTC)