Every so often I get asked ‘what is the latest hot app’ and after using DabbleDB I have a new answer to that question. DabbleDB is a platform that allows you to create applications online using a web interface. The sort of applications you would create and then use are what most of us normally hack together in a spreadsheet or using some other database application that is often complex. Example applications that I created in DabbleDB are a contacts list, where I can store, share and categorise my contacts, and also an issue tracking system where I can track bugs and change requests. Other examples on the DabbleDB website are a expense report application, a conference organising app, a scheduling app and a client invoicing application.
It took me 5 minutes to create each of the apps I built, the interface is intuitive and simple to use. Once I created an app I was able to invite other users in with varying levels of permissions (read, write or build) to then enter and/or modify data, or to further customise the app themselves. When creating the application, there are a number of default field types that I can choose from such as a textbox, calendar selection, URL, drop-down selection, a link to another user and many more. At no point did I have to think twice during the building process, I visualised in my head what I needed and a few minutes later it was there on the screen and I was adding entries to it. The app building process is perfect and could not be simpler, if I realise after adding a few entries that I need another field, I just click ‘add field’ and I quickly select what I want and it is there.
When I look at all the spreadsheets that I have, I could throw all of them away except for my pure financial spreadsheets and have the rest of that information on DabbleDB within applications that I create myself. It would be a richer experience and give me more options, and I am then able to invite other people in to view this data as well as access it from anywhere. I don’t see the limit to the type of applications that can be built on DabbleDB, from complex project management applications through to the simplest contacts database.
DabbleDB has been developed over the past 12 months by Andrew Catton and Avi Bryant who run an open source and Smalltalk consulting business in Vancouver, Canada (DabbleDB has been developed in Smalltalk using a database system they developed). They expect to be able to launch within a month and currently have thousands of beta users signed up and ready to go. User will be able to try out DabbleDB with a 30-day free trial, and after the trial you will need to pick an account plan which varies based on number of users, number of applications and number of records. Andrew and Avi expect pricing to possibly start at $10 a month or lower and go up beyond $100 per month for enterprises.
Future plans include an Atom API, more rich views for data types (maps, gantt charts, and graphs) and custom forms that you can include on your own website where the information will feed back into your DabbleDB app. The upcoming plan which excited me was pre-built applications which users can install and customise themselves, giving them a start in using DabbleDB.
DabbleDB has great technology, and certainly has a market for this service with not much competition for the type of users they are targeting (ie. People who hack what should be in a database into a spreadsheet) – I am going to build my 2 apps further and add some more and use it in the future to replace the dozens of spreadsheets I have that I can’t do a lot with. These guys have solved some complex problems in building this app and I am confident there will be many personal users as well as businesses who will find that this platform for custom apps will relieve a lot of the pain they have now with spreadsheets. If you would like more information about DabbleDB, then go and sign up for the beta on their homepage or checkout their blog.
Check your linkages.
Looks like a perfect company that fits into googles office suite rumors!
I saw dabble db at the UTR conference last week and was extremely impressed. I’d like to see the ability to create forms for websites as well. It looks like a very powerful application and I agree, an easy acquisition target.
I’ll check this out but my first thoughts are:
1. tags?
2. pricing - they need to be careful about this because if it is as powerful and capable of scaling as you imply then it may be too rich for SMBs but too ‘cheap’ for enterprises
3. scale? any upper limit on concurrent users?
How does dabble db compare with Zoho Creator? I found that Zoho Creator to be an excellent db app with a lot of functionality. And currently it’s free.
Looks very impressive, but have you had a chance to try Quickbase? Quickbase has been around for years and has quite a following…. If they would lower their pricing down to a reasonable amount for small companies, I think they would have huge market share and startups like DabbleDB wouldn’t stand a chance.
I’m rooting for Dabble and I hope they succeed…. Intuit needs some competition for easy to use online databases.
I have made a note to look at both Zoho Creator and Quickbase. I am excited about DabbleDB and what the guys are planning next - there is no doubt that technically they are very competant.
Nice! Personally, I find Zoho Creator functional, but unintuitive. Jot is another player in the same arena. Also, http://www.irows.com is a more than functional online spreadsheet.
Nick, I have not used Ning, just read Mike’s review here, but since they are also about creating app’s online, it may be worthwhile to point out the differences…
Hey Zoli Ning are very much focused on social apps so they have a different focus but I will add Ning to the list since Mike didn’t review it from that point of view
Some answers for questions so far:
* “tags?”
Dabble DB provides native tagging with what are called “categories”, but with more power: categories are basically a hybrid of tags and tables from the traditional relational database model — you can add as many categories as you like to an entry, just like flat tags, and can also associate fields with these categories. For example, you could have a Person category with first and last names + contact info, but also Employee and Customer categories which would add their own fields (say, Position and Salary for Employee and Purchases for Customer). This is very powerful, but can also be totally ignored if you’d prefer to think in terms of more old-fashioned database models. I’ve been meaning to write this up in more detail in a “Tagging 2.0″ post on our blog
* pricing/target audience
We’re focusing right now on the SMBs, but of course welcome larger groups as well. It’s true that Dabble DB provides the opportunity for a lot more power than your typical SMB solution, but the important thing to note is that we’re aiming to let people *gradually* evolve their applications to use this power — you can start right away just using dabble with simple text fields and evolve it to have more interesting structure, with relations etc as you find the need. It will handle migrating the data for you.
* scale
As mentioned, we’re focusing on the SMBs, and are largely looking to replace the mis-use of spreadsheets. This means we’ve optimized for moderate data set sizes (not millions of records, currently) and user bases (up to 50 or so). This is not to say it’s impossible to go bigger, but we’re not looking there just now.
* comparisons to other products
From what I’ve seen, a lot of other web-based database systems, such as Quickbase, basically just move the traditional RDBMS model to the web. While I think Intuit has worked very hard to try to make this as easy to use as possible, going beyond single-table databases usually still requires people to start thinking about scary stuff like foreign keys and join tables, and don’t even get me started on many-to-many relations. With Dabble DB, our aim from day one has been to provide this power at the point end-users want it, without having to think about database terminology or plan up-front. So far we’ve had a very positive response to this.
The online spreadsheet products, like all spreadsheets, can be great for financial work heavy in calculations, but spreadsheets simply fall down pretty quickly when used for database purposes, in terms of modelling and in that they aren’t great for looking at your data in many different ways.
Jotspot and other wiki products are interesting entries to this space, and tend to provide a lot in terms of handling unstructured data and flexible presentation, but IMHO aren’t ideal for the task of straight-up data management, the job that spreadsheets are typically (mis-)used for now. They also have the habit of requiring people to write code, be it markup or (increasingly) javascript, etc. We’ve so far managed to keep Dabble DB free of anything that remotely looks like code.
There are a lot of good things to say about all of these other products, but I figure it’s useful to point out the ways Dabble DB diverges from them both in terms of goals and execution.
—-
Thanks all for the comments so far.
I agree with wes. Quickbase’s owner Intuit has a strong small business client base. If they try to campaign with lower price, DabbleDB is difficult to gain the market.
Michael, I think you should stop profiling companies that haven’t officially launched. What’s up with all these companies trying to get press and only have a private “beta”.
Hi Mike, Michael didn’t write the post, I did. The reason is because a large part of the Techcrunch readership want to know about what is new and coming up and like to be amongst the first to try things, know about them, talk about them etc. This is the best stage of a company for them to start having early adopters ask questions about their service and look at reviews etc.
This doesn’t just happen with web companies, I often read reviews of cars that aren’t out yet, gadgets that are going to be released in the future. You might not like it but most people love it and it’s the reason they come here.
I see your point, its just frustrating to only be able to read about things and not actually sign up - doesn’t want me to jump to these companies that try to “tease” customers.
I really like the techcrunch news, so thank you for your frequent updates.
Perhaps these guys could also compete with Filemaker/Access at some point, if they can build enough trust into their security and the fear that “what if they go bankrupt without notice with all my data” which comes along with these type solutions.
Hi Mike,
We certainly don’t intend to “tease” anyone.. In many ways I’d actually prefer to be fully launched before getting techcrunch-level attention. That said, as Nik mentioned, this is in large part “how the game is played” — I will say we’re doing everything we can to release as soon as possible. Believe me, we’d love to have everyone come in
As for Filemaker/Access, they are absolutely in the same space, and tend to have a fairly poor collaboration story relative to web-native systems. Luckily for us people are getting more an more used to entrusting their data to this sort of solution (in many ways it’s *more* secure), so I don’t find security to be nearly as common a complaint as it would have a few years ago. Mechanisms for “backing up” by exporting your data to your local machines can help ease fears too.
Thanks for your comments..
I for one aren’t a fan of Filemaker, we built a very complex solution using Filemaker and when they changed to Filemaker 7, the supposedly easy migration option never worked, the program basically became unusable and is now stuck in version 6, and we simply don’t want to throw the resources at it to rewrite it again for version 7 and now 8.
If your solution provides some collaboration and web sharing options, I think it will be a tremendous package. We look forward to its full release.
This sounds like Sharepoint as well. I think its great that you profile companies that haven’t launched. The earlier we know about it the better. Especially if its your competition.
Guys you really have to stop profiling companies and be excited about things without researching the space. Quickbase is super rich in features and has been around for years with a strong following. Your post will be valuable only when you research the space and write only after you try to understand the space, the business model and the pros/cons for a startup addressing the space. Lets get some sanity and sane thinking. It seems like you are just searching for any new company out there and write about it….
* anon:
For what it’s worth, some of the people who are most positive about Dabble DB are those who have worked with existing database tools, including Quickbase. Quickbase has done an admirable job of taking the traditional database model and putting it on the web. I agree that it is feature-rich, and I’m certain it has a strong following — no one should underestimate Intuit’s footprint in the SMB market. That said, Michael’s post on CrunchNotes hits the point of differentiation dead-on: Dabble DB “bridges the gap between Excel and Access or FileMaker” (or Quickbase): we’re not aiming to just be another web-enabled database, we’re trying to give people for whom products like Quickbase are too scary the opportunity to benefit from database power, gradually, at their own pace.
I may be wrong, but I think Intuit might have acknowledged this themselves by taking Quickbase out of the lower-price market (I believe it now *starts* at $250/month!) and going after the enterprise, where consultants and IT staff can be hired to build solutions.
Obviously, there isn’t enough here to show this difference yet, but we’ll see if we can provide some more material to help with that.. launching might help too
* Kris:
I think Dabble DB and Sharepoint are very different beasts. Sharepoint is, in my view, a general intranet portal, whereas Dabble DB is more focused on the specific task of managing structured data easily. The Microsoft products it has the most in common with are actually Excel and Access — we’re just trying to take the good parts of both and share the result over the web to boot.
—
Again, thanks all for commenting
anon: DabbleDB is aimed at the consumer, which is where most of the Techcrunch focus is. Saying that product xyz is better and our review is somehow wrong because we didn’t mention is defunct because none of the products mentioned in the comments here give me an option that costs a few dollars a month while delivering rich functionality and an app that people will actually use. I was aware of Sharepoint and Quickbase but DabbleDB is more of a competitor to Jot and what they are trying to do with apps (still it’s not going to be of any use to compare the two now since they are so different).
To you it may seem that we just come up and blast away but a suprising amount of work goes into reviewing all the products that we see.
We are starting to look more at business apps and the Salesforce review was the beginning of a trend that will continue.
Well said,Nik.
Yeah, definitely one of the best services out there, in my opinion. I played with it a few months back… December, and I was very impressed. I created an application for timecards, contacts, todo list, and bookmarking. Then when I got the hang of everything, I was even able to build up a bookmark system with tagging using multiple tables (categories) and views. There is definitely a lot possible but does take a little getting used to.
As in relation to a service like, Zoho Creator, I feel that Dabble DB definitely blows it out of the water, but is a bit more on the advanced side. Zoho is more of a get in, build and go. But Dabble DB is very powerful. Also very powerful with import and export which is a major plus.
Nice to see they made a choice on pricing. Back when I wrote about it, they weren’t sure about how they were to handle it and asked that I didn’t mention it yet. But it’s definitely a great move to have a monthly cost and an enterprise edition. Definitely well worth the money with the figures they gave as example. Actually, on second thought, I think its worth even bumping up the prices a bit more for the non-enterprise monthly version.. just my opinion though.
Nice post, Nik.
I am surprised no one mentioned wikiCalc by the man himself, Dan Bricklin, creator of VisiCalc.
http://softwaregarden.com/wkcalpha/
Free, Open Source, but only in Alpha.
Is there any calculation functionality? Can’t see it or I’m being thick.
Dennis: calculations are fairly limited for now. You can get the sum and average for any numeric column in a view (see how at http://smallthought.com/blog/?p=19), including subtotals if the view is grouped. You can also do some calculations on time values, like deriving the duration of a timespan or the age of an event. But there’s not (yet) any support for arbitrary formulas. We’ll be fleshing this out over time.
Maybe caspio (http://www.caspio.com/) is also worth looking at in the area of web databases, and of course Salesfore.com. Even if Salesforce.com is at first a CRM Solution, their ability to create custom objects and custom fields can solve quite a lot of webdb related problems. Yes, both solutions do cost a monthly fee, but often this is prefered, over an add supportet model by customers of the services.
Oracle do a version of this called HTMLDB. It will import an Excel spreadsheet and generate a db App. Its not as hard as writing SQL, nor is it as easy as it should be. You can get completely free account on htmldb.oracle.com.
Potential acquirer?
“I am surprised no one mentioned wikiCalc”
Maybe because it’s unrelated. Dabble DB is a database service, not a spreadsheet.
Intuit had a nice little service with QuickBase but it’s obviously difficult for a big company to market a non-core app like that effectively.
I am surprised folks here have not yet made the AppForce & AppExchange analogy b/w Salesforce and DabbleDB.
Salesforce’s Appforce platform and the new AppExchange (Application Exchange) were designed for precisely the same purpose: to allow non-programmers to build simple or sophisticated on-demand applications without writing code.
Salesforce markets this as enabling “The Business Web”: one web-based platform to run all aspects of your business; replace spreadsheets, collaborate easier, etc, etc. Salesforce is no longer just CRM, it’s an on-demand business platform wherein CRM was just their entry solution.
DabbleDB seems to be starting with a pure-play platform approach which is cleaner, but may not see comparable adoption due to lack of initial industry, vertical or domain focus. While on the surface it appears DabbleDB is ready to jump in with a more compelling platform than QuickBase (albeit less mature) — it is prudent to note that QuickBase took the same approach and it has taken them many years to grow their userbase at a sluggish pace compared to successful SaaS vendors. I think this can be attributed to lack of domain focus and also to shoddy marketing which they still need a lot of help with. In general Intuit failed to effectively take advantage of a significant timing advantage they had on Salesforce which now blows Quickbase out of the water and increases its lead every 4 months.
The key takeaway with this example is that Salesforce focused initially on a particular domain to build a massive userbase, then began expanding beyond that domain in effort to gain massive upsells from within the 20,000+ existing customers and beyond. Will DabbleDB stick to its pure-play platform approach or pick a domain and dominate it with a powerful underlying platform? Seems to be the former.
At this stage Salesforce is quite a bit ahead of the game with their platform, and with respect to pre-built applications users can work from: over 100 and growing. See:
http://www.salesforce.com/appexchange
This includes an easy model for “developers” (i.e. users who build apps using Salesforce’s UI) to publish apps for others to use, and free developer accounts. The good news is that the SMB market is huge, with millions of businesses, so I think there is room for several SaaS platforms like Salesforce, DabbleDB and QuickBase. All differences aside they can be grouped together as a “roll your own database application online” type of solution. (Others less publicized but worthy of note are NetSuite’s NetFlex and WebEx’s WebOffice).
I’m really looking forward to having a more detailed look at DabbleDB and interested to see how their generic pure platform play works out in the marketplace in terms of real user & customer adoption. Best of luck to them!
Matt
DabbleDB looks like a very promising product. can\’t wait to try it out.
Fits well in google’s portfolio of webapps.
DabbleDB fits well in google’s portfolio of webapps. would complement apps like writely.
steins gardens and gifts
http://azholidaygifts.com/stei.....gifts.html