Migrating to different database platform in the future

Hi,

I know there are various plans to integrate Softr with multiple different database platforms (in addition to the existing Airtable and GSheets).

If (hypothetical question here), we started building our Softr app with our users connected to an Airtable base, would it be possible to migrate this to one of the new database integrations once available? I.e. if we needed to scale big time. Just wondering if there might be challenges moving from one database platform to another.

I know we all hate this answer, but it depends.

In my case I rely heavily on airtable native features for automations, so I dont know how could I migrate not only airtable data, but airtable functionality to a different provider.

Sometimes I struggle to move things inside airtable ecosystem, I wouldn’t imagine how hard would it be moving thing out of airtable.

If you plan to scale and grow very big with softr, you must wait until they announce what database is planned to include in the softr studio. But probably by then airtable will have more options for the regular users that need more airtable records.

They recently announced going from 100k records on the enterprise plan, up to 200k records per table.

So maybe there is a small possibility that records limits can be scaled up, and I am sure the limits will grow, the question is if this will come at a higher price.

Solutions like Xano have the possibility to import your whole Airtable database.
Some little mistakes can happen within the fields but it’s ok.

Concerning Airtable, even if the records limit increases … it doesn’t change anything: you don’t scale with Airtable, because Airtable is not primarly built to be a backend. Speed performance will be a strong issue if you have a lot of records, at some point.
It’s not only the amount of records that counts, it’s the amount of records + speed performance.

When using other no-code tools and backends like Xano, Firebase or Supabase, the result is clear: it’s faster than Airtable (even without a huge amount of data).

Concerning the specific case of moving users from Airtable to another database: as long as the fields of the users table are well set up (the same), there shouldn’t be any problem.

But 2 or 3 hours of work would be necessary. For example to re-set conditional filters, user groups etc.
I don’t know how Softr will handle this but I think this would be the typical workflow to move from a database to an other: fix some importing bugs, re-set conditional filters, user groups.

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Yes I would expect softr to pick one day between Xano, Firebase or Supabase.

I was asking the other day about importing airtable data to xano, and they do have native support.

Wanted to ask, what is the equivalent to airtable automations in xano?

Yes this is native, and that’s great, but some mistakes happen when importing. No big deal but have to be noticed.

The equivalent is the Function Stack (on API endpoints.)

One thing I should mention, beyond performance and scale: even if Xano is “no-code” it is much more difficult to enter in it compared to Airtable.

I wouldn’t recommend a not tech saavy person to enter the no-code game with Xano. He/she should enter it with Airtable which is a perfect introduction (and more) to logics/database/possibilities. I would even say “you need to start with Airtable.”

Supabase, even if it’s not supposed to be a no-code tool, is my favourite. I love this product.

But anyway= with these tools, you can have a loooot of data without killing the display speed in the frontend.

And Softr should pick them all! That’s the natural way for many no-code tools now, being as agnostic as possible, concerning databases