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APITable: open-source Airtable alternative
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bluelightning2k 4y agoThis looks awesome. Really well done and certainly well presented!
- xenospn 4y agoThis is fantastic - can’t wait to try it out!
- foolfoolz 4y agothe best air table alternative is google sheets
- czx4f4bd 4y agoIn what way? Google Sheets doesn't offer nearly the same set of functionality without a lot of extra scripting work on top. Also, it isn't open source.
- lazyasciiart 4y agoNonsense, it’s obviously emacs.
- pomatic 4y agoLooks very promising from the landing page... but the one click gitpod instance is localised in a language that I don't speak. (Mandarin? Thai?). Is there English language support available, and if so, how does one turn it on?
- moralestapia 4y agoThis! By translating a lot of things I was able to reach an options panel with a language setting, among the options there was "English (beta)" and clicking on it restarts the UI but nothing changes.
- petilon 4y agoIt is Simplified Chinese. English doesn't work.
- mdaniel 4y agoWhich means these "screenshot gifs" are almost certainly fake: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/apitable/apitable/develop/docs/static/feature-realtime.gif https://raw.githubusercontent.com/apitable/apitable/develop/...
- 0x008 4y agoAlso try out NocoDB as a good air table alternative.
- garrrry 4y agoactually, they are totally for different use right? nocodb cant be a true airtable alternative as its design is for database manipulation
- moralestapia 4y agoThis is great but I have trouble running it, so I just opened a couple PRs and bug reports. Thanks for releasing this!
- chepy 4y agoWe will fix it. Day 1 for us.
- TedShiller 4y agoAirtable was a really cool startup when they came out in 2012. There was nothing else like it. Now, with their mass layoffs, and free alternatives, it makes you wonder if they can survive as a company.
- ushakov 4y agoThey're a $10B+ company now. Incredible, isn't it?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- lancesells 4y agoAccording to the $1.4B they raised. Love the product but let's not get ahead of ourselves.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bachmeier 4y agoI have an account and I've tried to use it. It's never been clear to me who their paid customer is - though obviously they've found a ton of customers, so this is nothing more than my own curiosity. The entry-level paid plan is limited to 5000 rows, so it's not a substitute for an SQL database. If I want to capture data in this type of app with a few hundred rows, why not use a spreadsheet, which everyone already knows how to use and already has installed? For other uses, Trello significantly overlaps, but with a simpler interface. Put differently, why pay for Airtable unless you need a performant way to manage a significant amount of data?
- CPLX 4y agoI’m using it for internal business process stuff. Like keeping track of client deliverables, events, things like that. It’s basically the next step when you’re annoyed with Google Sheets for that kind of thing. The advantage is that it’s just super quick and easy to use for normal people that want to go one step past a normal excel type spreadsheet into something with a little bit of automation or custom views.
- xfz 4y agoLooks good, are they going to offer a hosted model? I couldn't find pricing on their website, just an email sign-up. Airtable's pricing just didn't work for me as an individual user - $$$s per month even for a simple table with ~2000 rows. At least Google had the good sense to make it accessible to individuals, because those same people then go on to make decisions at work.
- teej 4y agoGoogle, with the monopoly profits it commands in search, can afford to subsidize everything else. A startup that does one thing cannot.
- djbberko42 4y agoI hope you've reissued the secret keys you accidentally checked in (as you can see them in the PR diffs). Cool project!
- comprev 4y agoThis alone doesn't fill me with much confidence. Such a basic opsec error.
- florbo 4y agoEh, mistakes happen. For me it's all about how they're handled.
- connordoner 4y agoAnd, so far, it's been handled pretty damn crap.
- chepy 4y agoThese keys are revoked in earlier time. They are samples. The official team have remove secrets, tokens and keys.
- jswny 4y agoAirtable was so cool when I tried it years ago but it was insufferably slow. Just unusable as are many web apps these days unfortunately
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- darkteflon 4y agoWe use Airtable a lot with work projects; I also use it for some personal stuff - a web-available relational database is very convenient. But yup, it’s still slow as molasses.
- mark_mart 4y agoAre they mostly for marketing? I have never needed something like Airtable, so just curious.
- darkteflon 4y agoNo, it’s very flexible. If you need to present complex relational data to clients in an easily digestible form, it has some nice tooling around that now in addition to basic views - Interfaces, they’re called. It doesn’t have the permissions granularity of rolling your own, but it’s surprisingly useful. We also built a custom CRM in it. I also use it for personal things like aggregating transaction histories across financial institutions, personal contact management, etc. Although Notion has eaten its lunch a bit here imo. Turns out that a web-available relational database is pretty useful.
- lazyasciiart 4y agoI have used it as a simple CRM for a small organization, it was a big improvement on the earlier method of using Google sheets.
- erdos4d 4y agoI don't see the point of this. Airtable sucks at anything except providing a managed database you can store a small amount of data in for free. If you have to do the hosting yourself, just choose postgres.
- pimlottc 4y agoIs there a user-friendly web interface for Postgres that you recommend? A database on its own isn’t really a replacement for Airtable.
- kgodey 4y agoWe're building one – our first release is coming early 2023: https://github.com/centerofci/mathesar https://github.com/centerofci/mathesar
- CPLX 4y agoYou can get a non-technical person to spin up a Postgres database to do something like keep track of ad campaign run dates or client deliverables or whatever?
- hysan 4y agoFor those who have tried, how does this compare to other Airtable alternatives like Nocodb, Baserow, Seatable, etc?
- flowerlad 4y agoIt doesn’t work. The screenshots appear to be aspirational as opposed to a real product at this point.
- gkoberger 4y agoI see some serious red flags on their homepage: * "Partners" just seem to be logo-hijacking potential hosting platforms (not actual partnerships) * Most of the links in the footer don't work * The testimonials use fake names + stock art * API keys checked into a public repo * Seems to be built by (or somehow associated with) this company (hhttps://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/312911-47 https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/312911-47), but with no links back Please be careful using this product. Not trying to be insulting; but if you're going to use it I'd make sure you install it locally. That being said, I love this as a concept. Airtable is so so nice as a backend/DB for simple sites, and I'm intrigued by an open source competitor!
- cppshane 4y agoApparently they're scraping emails from people that starred Bitwarden and then sending out misleading emails that appear to be from Bitwarden... https://dev.to/cppshane/shady-marketing-apitable-is-scraping-emails-from-github-stars-3o5l https://dev.to/cppshane/shady-marketing-apitable-is-scraping...
- fnord123 4y ago> Airtable is so so nice as a backend/DB for simple sites, and I'm intrigued by an open source competitor! https://baserow.io/ https://baserow.io/
- darkteflon 4y agoLooks interesting but it’s only open-core: loads of important features locked behind subscription pricing, plus you lose the ability to self-host: https://baserow.io/pricing https://baserow.io/pricing
- esperent 4y agoIt's kind of hard to compare the long lists on mobile but I couldn't see any features removed when you self host. What did I miss?
- ralph84 4y agoBefore they get too far along they should consider changing the name. Airtable would probably have a good trademark infringement case that it’s confusingly similar.
- nawgz 4y agoYou really think so? “Table” is common database vernacular and “API” is the most generic term in all of software these days. APITable also sounds nothing like Airtable and doesn’t even have similar connotations. Gonna have to disagree with you, but open to hearing more context for your thought if you care to expand
- mtmail 4y ago> doesn’t even have similar connotations IMHO their tagline is "Open source & Airtable alternative" so they're trying to make a connection
- tough 4y agonocodb seatable are good options
- Mortiffer 4y agoIs it just me or is this category of product exploding right now? Here, a list of similar tools that let you easily make a data model and generate some descent UI from it ? https://budibase.com/ https://budibase.com/ https://baserow.io/ https://baserow.io/ https://directus.io/ https://directus.io/ https://strapi.io/ https://strapi.io/ https://nocodb.com/ https://nocodb.com/ https://keystonejs.com/ https://keystonejs.com/ https://saltcorn.com/ https://saltcorn.com/ https://www.plasmic.app/ https://www.plasmic.app/ https://www.appsmith.com/ https://www.appsmith.com/ https://www.jigdev.com/ https://www.jigdev.com/ https://www.sanity.io/ https://www.sanity.io/ https://www.jetadmin.io/ https://www.jetadmin.io/ https://dashibase.com/ https://dashibase.com/ https://cortezaproject.org/ https://cortezaproject.org/ The above are only the open source ones with a descent number of GitHub stars. I can't think of another time when I found so much competition in one product category. Or am I mistaken and this is not special?
- hysan 4y agoI’ve noticed that productivity tooling has been exploding in recent years. Note taking is another similar category where there is a ton of competition. Things were already ramping up pre-COVID, but ever since the WFH movement started, I’ve gotten the sense that there has been a lot of monetary investment in this space.
- melony 4y agoThere's also https://github.com/illacloud/illa-builder https://github.com/illacloud/illa-builder. Only Retool alternative I have found so far that's not AGPL encumbered or open core.
- esperent 4y agoWhat's wrong with AGPL? It's copyleft, that's intentional so it can't really be considered a flaw. Are there other issues?
- melony 4y agoYou can't deployed the apps generated in any useful business capacity so it is not truly free except for a minority of personal users (or if you are in a country where IP rights are not easily enforced). These platforms' primary customers and audience are enterprises and companies. The open source part is a red herring. It is not "free" to use in any sense for most organizations unless you are a non-profit with a majority of network infrastructure being under copyleft software. Don't be disingenuous, there is a very big difference for a web application builder and PaaS under rigorous viral copyleft vs e.g. a generic web server that will never be seen or utilized directly by users.
- christmaspizza 4y agoIs there an ongoing trend of sketchy "OSS" product offerings using this same website layout and similar fake quotes from users? I feel like I'm seeing this a lot recently.
- reilly3000 4y agoWhat's the angle? How would somebody exploit people through offering a sketchy OSS product?
- TAForObvReasons 4y agoInvestment. There are multiple VC groups trying to fund products in this space and using GitHub and other metrics to pick targets
- flowerlad 4y agoThere are? How do I find these VCs?
- gregwebs 4y agoI am looking for a low-code system where I could easily add code for custom business logic (on the backend) when needed. Most of these systems seem well-suited to reading data, but don't seem suitable to writing it for non-trivial use cases. pocketbase.io has some hooks for when data is saved, but currently only supports SQLite as a backend. Directus seems to have some custom validation ability. All these systems don't seem to have a way to add custom validation logic: https://appwrite.io/docs/getting-started-for-web https://appwrite.io/docs/getting-started-for-web https://github.com/appsmithorg/appsmith https://github.com/appsmithorg/appsmith https://docs.openblocks.dev/build-apps/event-handlers#component-events https://docs.openblocks.dev/build-apps/event-handlers#compon... https://docs.budibase.com/docs/contextual-bindings https://docs.budibase.com/docs/contextual-bindings https://docs.tooljet.com/docs/contributing-guide/setup/architecture https://docs.tooljet.com/docs/contributing-guide/setup/archi...
- v3ss0n 4y agoYou can add custom validation in budibase by writing JavaScript. But Django is best low code platform for me.
- mfru 4y agohave you considered PayloadCMS? it has hooks for nearly any situation imaginable: https://payloadcms.com/docs/hooks/overview https://payloadcms.com/docs/hooks/overview not affiliated in any way
- panda_2134 4y agoI simply don't know what they're doing with their marketing strategies. Do they really think sending promotion emails in the name of unrelated popular products (claiming they're tied to bitwarden in email subject) will work? I received an email like [this](https://imgur.com/a/CVAhQvs https://imgur.com/a/CVAhQvs) weeks ago. At first I was worried that bitwarden had leaked my email address, but then I found that the mail address that got the mail was not used for bitwarden registration. APITable seems to be using the name "bitwarden" in email subject to disguise as an email from a trustworthy product, so that receivers will open the email and see their ad. Definitely a shameful way of self-promotion. some discussion also on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitwarden/comments/zeqpd6/is_bitwarden_leaking_email_addresses_i_got_an/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitwarden/comments/zeqpd6/is_bitwar...
- cppshane 4y agoYeah, they're apparently getting user emails from people who starred Bitwarden on GitHub. See my reply to the post above.
- poppylorry 4y agoIt appears to be a new open-source project. What shocked me the most is that this APITable has rich features and high quality product interface at such an early stage. I guess there's a professional team behind them.