I am beginning to flesh out my app with users and content bound to users via collections. My app relies almost entirely on collections to populate it with content.
Would it be better, in terms of speed and performance, to write all my content on Airtable and bind it via external collections or should I use Adalo’s internal collections? Which option provides a better, faster experience for the end user?
Hi @sladerose
Actually in one of my apps I use both, Airtable has some filtering limitations in some cases and I use that logic then in Adalo collections. For Heavy volume apps I don’t recommend Airtable for now until Adalo improves external collections speed.
You would be better off in this case with something like Xano, Backendless, Firebase/supabase.
With everything else the same, if I have the same number of records on Airtable and Xano, how much better will the app perform with a Xano/Backendles/Firebase than Airtable? Asking because if it’s faster, I might move to one of these (right now using Airtable and it’s quite slow and unresponsive)
I had assumed so far that the main bottleneck for external collections is in pulling in the data externally, so the “native speed” of the platform being used won’t be that much of a difference.
Thank you for replying!
When you say I would be better off with Xano, Backendless and Firebase, is that in comparison with vanilla Adalo or Airtable?
Why is using Adalo’s internal collections not the best option?
All are different, so really depends on what features and filters you will use. In some cases I use Adalo, others Airtable, but mostly I use XANO (Has a bigger learning curve though).
I don’t use personally due to keeping data inside Adalo, and data limitations, XANO has no record limit for example (Only Media limit), not sure if ADALO is the same. Also my preference, I prefer to separate Frontend from Backend.
With XANO for example or even Airtable, you can create relationships between collections and pre-filter before sending data to Adalo.
Example: I can say in Airtable, I want only users that have not posted a comment in the last 2 weeks, and create a view for that, that will create an endpoint for that. While in Adalo you cannot filter directly in the Collection, you would need to apply that in the frontend itself while using lists or Dynamic conditions/visibility. Hope it makes sense.
@AddyEdwin I am actually converting one app now from Airtable to XANO. I keep you posted on speed results.
There really isn’t a “no code” or “low code” way to get Airtable and Adalo to talk to one another if you’re using single-select and multiple select fields in either system. Adalo doesn’t export multiple select fields through it’s CSV and doesn’t pull in single or multiple-select fields very well. Unless you code, it’s a serious challenge. I’d say keep it all in Adalo until they improve their integration with Airtable.
Thanks for the reply. I’ve decided to stick with internal collections, especially after seeing the effort they intend to put into speed and performance soon!
Hi @sladerose ,
FInal remark from me. You can always mix internal/external if you have separated datasets that you can use.
For example, static data or user data I use internal collections, than I mix the collections depending on the complexity. You can do some fun stuff by mixing them 
.