Hi,
I selfhost a lot of tools for personal (and professional) use, so this surprised me, but maybe I am missing something regarding simple tools that are “open source enough” for relational databases.
My (small, broke) company has a problem with tools, and I figured that open source would be the answer, but if I look at the usual suspects that would allow for a simple way to create/update/sort/search clients and missions, that everyone could use, everything seems either very limited or very expensive (or both!).
I looked at the pricing for Baserow, Grist, NodoDB, Nocobase, and for 100 users and 5000 rows, it means around 12 000 euros per year to get something usable. And the open source selfhosted versions are quite limited everytime. I saw someone rage about open core some months ago, but never realized how true this was.
The only thing that seems truly open source (and a lot more limited than the others) is Mathesar. Maybe it will be good enough. There isn’t much content about it, I will have to look at the documentation to get a better feeling of what it can offer.
Is there some truly open source no code relational database tools around? Enough to create rows, have advanced (AND OR) search, and a tag system to look for “all clients in country X with type of mission Y in sector Z in 2024” or “all missions for clients A or B”
For those wondering, of course we have a tool to manage missions, clients, billing, etc. but it is truly awful, and I was hoping to propose something simple to manage search of past references, but nothing seems as easy as I thought it would.
I use self hosted baserow free tier at work and no issues in 3 years. Why does it not work for you? My only complaint is the API can’t use the views that exist on the web interface.
Self-hosting NocoDB has gone very well for me. Do you know which features you need that are enterprise only?
Simply the fact of having 70+ users. There’s also the number of records, but that may be a non issue (for now).
What you wrote about search looks exactly like common SQL queries in relational database, also you mentioned that you are not alone working with this data so you’ll need to provide an access to that data to control who can do what.
If you have any even completely inexperienced or aspiring developer inside your team they would be able to do something just fine, not fast though.
I’m not sure how do you intend to use it precisely but you can also just create database and learn basics of SQL and I mean really basic stuff to just be able to join few tables.
And then it’s not clear where you current data is persisted.
For more complex scenarios you’ll probably need actual development.
And one more thing, there is this thingy called excel. It can connect to datasources such as postgres, with a bit of tweaking and vlookup you can create really complex and detailed spreadsheets
Sounds like you might just be better off using an SQL database and writing a simple frontend yourself.
I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this, especially for advanced search, everything else is quite basic, indeed.
On the plus side that means it’ll be pretty quick and easy to implement.
But as always, I’m sure they’ll ask “ok but can it also do this?” and at that point you need to weigh the cost of your time vs buying one of those products.
The only other options I’m aware of are just using something like phpmysql or whatever the postgres equivalent is called, or maybe some FOSS alternative to powerbi. Maybe libreoffice calc can connect to SQL?
That’s the way it goes with the scale from simple to “something that fits our needs”. Either something is too simple or it is so complex that you can’t let your more challenged users at it. So you end up rolling your own solution.
That’s how many companies end up with monstrous Excel or Access applications.
The upside of having your own app that uses common open source components is that integration with other tools is easier later down the line. Make it web based and it can run on basically every computer on the planet. Use PostgreSQL or MySQL in the backend and you can easily add other frontends if needed.
I have been looking at Saltcorn for this purpose, and it seems quite interesting. I can’t verify it or vouch for it, however.
If I had more time, I would love to play with it and try and build things. But I am pretty busy. So I am also looking at replacing my specialized CRM with something open source and self-hosted.
It’s not pretty, but I will probably settle on Dolibarr as it’s non-American, comprehensive, and there are docker implementations.
Edit: rereading your use case, I think you should look harder at Dolibarr as it is FOSS, widely used, and comprehensive but you can disable what you don’t need. Save your team the development time.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters IMAP Internet Message Access Protocol for email IP Internet Protocol SMTP Simple Mail Transfer Protocol VPS Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting)
4 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 7 acronyms.
[Thread #187 for this comm, first seen 24th Mar 2026, 15:30] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
There is no such thing as no code, just code that someone else wrote. Not that such code isn’t trivial to get from a basic LLM that you can run locally for pennies a year.
https://blog.mlc.ai/2024/04/20/GPU-Accelerated-LLM-on-Orange-Pi
Just setup a standard PostgreSQL database and then work with the LLM to write some C# code to connect to it and create, update and delete data per your own system needs. Hire a part time programmer if you need more help. They usually can get you where you want to be cheaply if they are FSF developers and you don’t restrict them from using the code they write for you.
For more discussion on the value of the term “No code” I can recommend this: https://vger.to/lemmy.ml/post/35466470
Thank you for the recommendation.
