Hey guys,
Since loading times on our app are super bad, we’re considering moving to Xano or Supabase. Has anyone done that already for larger databases and can confirm that the switch makes a big difference in terms of loading speeds?
Would really appreciate any community feedback and tips 
Big hug,
Tim
Hi Tim, I’m in the process just now. Moving from Airtable to Supabase.
Even at basic Supabase tier with Nano DB compute I see speed improvements everywhere at comparable db size. However…
Support for Supabase in Softr regarding the UI details (you’ll spend ages at) is not on par with Airtable.
You will painfully struggle in places. For example Dropdowns with options. You can sync the options with Airtable (single and multiselect) but no such option exists for Supabase. Also, not all Softr controls support Supabase, and if they do there are stylistic and functional differences sometomes, so review your design first. Just a heads-up.
Regarding other thigs about Airtable and Xano.
Seeing that you have EU tacked in your handle, Airtable offers EU data locality at a steeeeep price for startups. I don’t know about Xano, but Supabase will get you EU data locality for free.
Hey Bartosz, thank you so much!
This is super valuable feedback - maybe it’s too early for us then to move away from Airtable. It would be a struggle if some features suddenly wouldn’t work anymore.
Would you say that using Supabase, the speed of the website feels highly professional or is it still slower than what we’re used from top software tools?
Currently, Google doesn’t rank some of our sites because the loading speed is so slow.
I don’t have hard performance data to share. It is faster when using Supabase but I’m still pre deployment.
Another thing to consider, I’m still on free Supabase plan, this means a nano-sized db compute, the smallest one I can get on Supabase. This means that if performance becomes a problem I can simply switch to a bigger compute instance. There are many to choose from. In Airtable you have no choice - it is what it is. Maybe there’s some autoscaling in Airtable, but I’ve seen no details about it.
As for features parity. Simply review your controls. Maybe all you have is already fully supported and there would be no degradation at all.
One thing that is not supported for sure for now is the auto-sync of options for filters and dropdowns. This is all based on single-select and multi-select fields in Airtable. So if you move to Supabase you will have to edit these in softr studio in case of change.
This is problematic if the options should be driven by users edits. But I’m sure this disparity is just temporary.
I agree. One of the most fantastic features of the Softr/Airtable integration is the synced fields in dropdowns, which is not yet available with SQL.
Additionally, if you’re accustomed to displaying percentages or formatted currencies by simply mapping an Airtable currency field, this isn’t the case with SQL.
I can also mention that SQL-related features in Softr are trending within the Softr development team and have been given high priority, as SQL is gaining significant traction among Softr users.
I can also mention that SQL-related features in Softr are trending within the Softr development team and have been given high priority, as SQL is gaining significant traction among Softr users.
Really good to hear that!
Almost everything Airtable offers can be recreated in SQL. I’m implementing automations and computed fields with triggers. It is not much different, and if SQL is not your strength, in Postgres functions can be written in JS.
Of course it’s hard to beat the development speed offered by Airtable.
@Bartosz / @acjnas – do y’all have any sense of if the supabase connector will support synced fields in 1-to-many prepopulation scenarios (like it does with airtable?). While 1:1 relationships are sync-with-source friendly, it’s a huge bummer that other relational SQL concepts aren’t given that same UI/UX first class citizenship…
Great to hear that SQL-related features are gaining priority – would love to see supabase/postgres get to parity with airtable in terms of support.
Done a full migration from Airtable to Xano - it was painful at first, but the integration has come a long way, and Xano will pay dividends in the long run for sure!
AMA.
PS: The synced dropdowns are still missing but @artur is working on it as we speak!
Would love to hear from someone who has done the same with Supabase I’m starting to map how to best migrate everything from Airtable - hoping for much faster loading times and more scalability, but I’m worried about certain features not working yet.
Anyone who has done it?
For now, I’ve done the worrying.
I’m also interested in getting my hands dirty for the sake of performance and scalability.
Hi Tim, I moved from Airtable to Supabase and I’m currently working on 2 projects with Supabase backend.
What do you want to know?
I’m currently evaluating Softr and Xano and I have a support case with Softr.
I have a Customer database and a Tag database and they are relationel (one customer-many tags). But it’s only showing the ID of the tag in Softr, not the name.
Yep, that’s correct. Xano only stores IDs for entities in other tables, but not the actual data. It’s different than a rollup in Airtable.
Interesting.
I’m looking for a new no code platform and I’ve also tested Noloco, and it shows the names, and not only the IDs.
@sahilkhosla how would you accomplish this?
We need to give the end users the ability to select multiple tags to a customer, using a dropdown field. But also give the end user the ability to add new tags to the dropdown list. Can that be accomplished in Soft when our database is in Xano?
Hey Bartosz,
Awesome! Did you encounter any issues yet?
I think Supabase is the logical next step, but I’m worried that some functionalities might not be there. Do you also store all your user data in Supabase and does it synch in real time?
A few other questionmarks I have:
That would be super helpful to understand better
