Introducing Plato: Airtable in your database
Immediately we’re thrilled to launch Plato. Plato is Airtable in your SQL database. It’s the best strategy to make your database accessible for enterprise operations equivalent to buyer help, buyer success, and gross sales ops. Plato is free as we speak for anybody to play with our pattern DB or join their very own.
We created Plato as a result of we observed one thing unusual. When serving to our pals at a fintech startup, we noticed that whereas that they had spent weeks constructing an admin panel from scratch, their accountants seldom used it. They typically needed to run new queries and observe new knowledge that their admin panel didn’t help. Somewhat than ready for options, they resorted to dumping CSVs into Airtable, which rapidly grew out of sync.
We constructed Plato to make inside instruments like admin panels extra versatile and adaptible for the whole staff.
???? PM wants a single view on every consumer? Be a part of tables collectively right into a single digital desk. No SQL wanted.
???? Success supervisor wants to trace notes and different ad-hoc fields to help new operations? Observe new fields solely in Plato with digital columns.
???? Gross sales agent wants to increase a free trial? Replace the trial size with inline updates.
Offering your staff with direct entry to your database will be scary, which is why Plato permits you to configure tables to be read-only and by no means shops your row knowledge. We’re additionally quickly rolling out on-prem and an inside API shopper.
Most suppose low-code platforms are constructed to convey energy to these outdoors of the engineering division, or “citizen builders”, however the main inside software builders are all marketed solely to engineers. What offers?
Immediately’s launch is simply our first milestone on the best way towards creating a brand new type of tooling platform: a sandbox. A sandbox is a protected playground for anybody to construct and prolong their very own workflow instruments: admin panels, scheduling apps, stock administration, job trackers, and many others.. Engineers floor inside techniques as constructing blocks that operators can then safely assemble into new instruments. Knowledge groups already perceive the significance of offering their teammates with a sandbox for self-serve analytics. We imagine engineers will likewise come to see the significance of offering a sandbox for instruments.
Plato’s mission is to be the perfect sandbox for inside instruments, the place everybody can construct new instruments on a dependable basis. For a lot of, that basis begins on the database. To help a wider vary of instruments, we’ll quickly be rolling out customized views, pages, and automations. We hope you will comply with us for additional developments.