In this post I am going to compare the features of several online database platforms – the aim being to provide a useful document which potential users can use to inform their choice of platform.
The latest iteration of the comparator is now available as a google sheet and will be updated on a semi regular basis as suppliers update their products and new ones are added.
The information itself can be seen here.
Hi Sam - thanks for the comments - and, yes, it's time for another update I think. Airtable automations, interfaces etc are new as are a load of features on Knack and Tadabase.
Hi Julian, a very good article & I love how you've broken it down. I see several platforms have released new functionality eg Airtable allows for automations etc.
Any chance you can publish an updated sheet & perhaps even have a date at the top of each platform showing when you reviewed that platform? It really helps to understand what is a new feature that the platform tells us about vs what is a tried and tested thing that you've already encountered in the trenches? Yours gratefully Sam
Hi, nice post. I started with Airtable but ended up picking Knack last year. I did not know about Tadabase back then, sounds like a very good alternative to Knack. However, since your post, Amazon seems to have also hopped into the field with Honeycode (https://www.honeycode.aws/). I'd love to see it added to your comparison, as going with one of the Big Guys seems safer in the long run.
Tadabase is a bit like Knack and you can have unlimited users and have pages which are login free - or require logins as with Knack.
Ninox on the other hand does NOT have unlimited users but at least they are only $100 per year. There are no public facing page features so everyone must login.
Zoho Creator is somewhere in the middle in that you can create what they call a Customer Portal for your external users. You pay for this feature but not so much as for regular users.
So, for your type of app, Knack (or Tadabase) are the only game in town really without writing bespoke API based code to provide some external access or paying…
Great comparison! I'm an avid Knack user and picked Knack because I was building frontend applications where our 5000+ customers would have access to simple customer account pages. In Airtable, we were required to have each customer registered as a user, which you can imagine got very expensive. Knack has unlimited users, solving this big issue and opening the door beyond internal use only databases. Ninox, Zohocreator and Tadabase are all relatively new to me. Can you add to your table or address if these 3 require user level login to access front-end pages like a customer account page?