I just saw Airtable for the fist time and it looks awesome. Yet I am a little concerned about the vendor lock in. Does anybody know a self hosted alternative?
Well, getting the data out of it is just one part. I mean everything what makes Airtable better than excel, will be gone when they turn off their service.
That's a major issue if you want to use their service for anything that actually matters. You never know how fast a change is coming to such a platform and how much time you have to adapt.
For comparison: I am not a particular fan of MS Access, but I think the use-cases for Access and Airtable have much in common. With Access you have a certain vendor lock in too in terms of technology. So when Microsoft stops developing Access, you have to search for an alternative as you do not know if the runtime will be available on the next OS generation. Nevertheless, you can use the software as long as you have a machine which can run the current version (probably years).
In contrast, if Airtable gets shut down and will not be available in 3 month (e.g. if they get bought by someone who wants to integrate their tech into another product and shuts down the current service), you will have exactly 3 month to find/develop/deploy a replacement. Not cool.
