How size application can Adalo handle?

[Tommen]

Hello, does anyone have experience with application of bigger size? In terms of a large number of screens, collections and records? I am trying to develop a more comprehensive application but so far, it’s pretty slow and difficult to work with.

[sstava]

I am in process of building a larger mobile application as well. I think the key is to get an understanding of the expectation Adalo has of the app structure and work within that structure.

The general idea is to have the Users and login be part of Adalo (can’t externalize login/signup yet…I think it is being worked on).

After login/signup, the first Collection(data) screen should be a List screen (you can have filters for the list of items from a collection).

Adalo makes it easy to transition from a List screen (click an item) to the detail screen for the clicked List item (Current collection item). This is a common paradigm for apps. It doesn’t cover everything, but it is a very workable staring point.

Adalo does a great job of having an aesthetically pleasing layout by default, as you build your screens (most similar tools do not)

I am storing my data separate from Adalo in an External Collection. There are some additional considerations for doing that depending on the details of your app.

My recommendation would be to start small with a couple of their videos/tutorials. From there, build a small version of something that is uniquely yours to make sure you understand how to work within the Adalo expectations.

The Adalo community and the people working at Adalo are very responsive to questions. Make sure you ask very specific questions with as much detail and explanation of what you are trying to do. Screenshots and short videos along with what you are trying to do and what isn’t working is best. The more specific your descriptions the better chance you have of getting a timely response

Good luck! (It will be worth the time you spend with it)

[Tommen]

Thank you for your advice and opinion! Can I just ask you what are the advantages of storing the data in external collection (f.e. Airtable) rather than in Adalo itself? Is it because of the storage, or to make the app faster? Thanks!

[ldyer]

I’m also interested in them pros/cons of adalo collections vs external like air table. I know that my company is less keen on putting our data in the hands of multiple vendors.

[ChristopheHK]

Airtable integrates quite smoothly with a ton of other products using zapier and integromat, so it’s an advantage.

Using airtable as an external storage will also allow you to scale a bit more. Indeed, using the pro plans of adalo, you can get 5 to 20 Gb of storage for all your apps. Using an airtable pro plan, you can get an unlimited number of base (50k rows per base and up to 20Gb of data).

I’m also putting my data out, in airtable. The advantage I see, is that for “admin” purpose, I can work with airtable only (as a matter of admin data a’d as long as your app architecture is stable).

Performances could be a bit less better using airtable, but this is to confirm. Using external collections and filters, we have opportunities to lowerize the data coming from the external source.

And last, airtable offers tons of formula, very useful for data computation or verification. You can calculate complex values, manipulate dates, and set conditional boolean that can be used later to filter your list items.

The inconvenient of using airtable is that you can’t set relationship between your users and some data, but there are some workarounds that can help is getting what we expect.

Airtable is one of my favorite external sourcz, but you can also work and store / get data in your Google drive. If like me you pay for 1 or 2T of data, you can store in your gdrive lot of videos, create folders and so on

[Tommen]

I am considering using Airtable collection instead of Adalo. Can you guys advise me on whats better in terms of performance (if I’ve got a list stored on Airtable, is it going to load slower?) and price x storage (Airtable seems like a better option in this). Thank you!

[karimoo]

I am evaluating Airtable for the reasons @ChristopheHK mentioned, There is one more downside I am struggling with, when it comes to data structures and updates in Aritables.

It is currently not possible to update a table with the standard update function when there is a relation/Lookup in the Airtable table, because this would need to parse an array such as {id: value}.
There is a workaround using Custom Actions, but I am still struggling with this as well, because we can only update a full records (PUT) and not only a single column.

So you have to consider the complexity of you data structures and the number of updates.

In terms of performance external collections will always be less performant than the internal storage just because of the nature of additional API calls.
Airtable is controlling the volume of data retrieved and transfered by a paging mechanism which you also have to consider for additional handling in the app if you are working with big tables.

[sstava]

My main reason for storing data external to Adalo is that my Adalo mobile/web app is not the only interface that will need access to the data. I have a need for external visualization tools to have access to the data for my app as well as controlling the backup, recovery and export of data.

In most cases the UI is a very fluid and changing environment (data is “forever” ) . I may use Adalo now, but in the near future I might have a need for a different UI to access my business data. If your data is locked in Adalo it can make it difficult to use your data when and how you need to for your business.