"I was going to use this hosted, no-code spreadsheet/database platform, but then I realized it's closed source!" is not something anyone who ever would have paid for Airtable has ever said.
Yes
> "I was going to use this hosted, no-code spreadsheet/database platform, but then I realized it's closed source!" is not something anyone who ever would have paid for Airtable has ever said.
No, but “I would like, and pay for, something like that no-code database solution, but Airtable doesn’t meet our data compliance requirements and I can’t host it on ones I control to resolve that” its something I've heard.
I was building a Jamstack site for my dad[0] using Airtable-as-a-backend, and we almost ran out for rows for his Soviet camera collection. We had to work the model around this limitation. It's not the kind of thing that made sense to pay for monthly even if the plans were cheap, and they're not.
According to their support site, Airtable doesn’t even support on-prem. [0]
[0]: https://support.airtable.com/hc/en-us/articles/202576389-Can...
I’ve used a lot of pluggable admin interfaces for opening up tables to interrogation and manipulation by non tech people, and this seems better than those, and airtable was usually never on the table.
Also, while the data isn't critical for me, a self-hosted solution ensures the data is private.
Nothing wrong with building open-source versions of stuff, but I don't see open-source being a viable business model in this case.
So losing all my production data / getting it hacked and ransomed / having unacceptable downtime and instability are much worse than simply implementing AirTable features bespoke using our existing systems.