The Best Database for Small Business: 9 Options Scored for 2026

Every database pricing page looks reasonable until you multiply it by ten people and add the clients who need to log in.

Picking the best database for small business teams comes down to five questions: who can set it up, whether records link to each other, whether you get apps and forms on top, who sees what, and what the bill looks like at 10 users.

I scored nine options on exactly those five points, and I did the 10-user math in plain dollars (because a pricing page with an annual toggle is where good intentions go to die).

If you just want the bottom line, here it is:

Softr is the best database for small business teams that need records, apps, and permissions in one place, because its native relational database comes with client portals, internal tools, and logins already attached.

Baserow is the open-source Airtable alternative, and Airtable remains the polished per-seat favorite for teams who think in grids. Zoho Creator suits low-code app builders, while Supabase gives developers a full Postgres backend.

Microsoft Access is the Windows desktop veteran, PostgreSQL is the free heavyweight engine, MySQL is the web’s longtime workhorse, and Microsoft SQL Server is the IT-managed corporate option.

Tool	Setup skill	Relational	Apps/forms on top	Permissions	Price from
Softr	No code, AI co-build	Yes, linked records	Built in	User groups (Pro+)	Free; $19/mo yearly
Baserow	No code	Yes	App builder, forms	Roles (Advanced)	Free; $10/user/mo yearly
Airtable	No code	Yes	Interfaces, forms	Editor or read-only	Free; $20/seat/mo yearly
Zoho Creator	Low code	Unclear	Apps, portals	Unclear	$8/user/mo yearly
Supabase	Developer	Yes, Postgres	Build your own	Row Level Security	Free; $25/mo monthly
Microsoft Access	Some skill, Windows	Yes	Desktop apps	Unclear	$179.99 once
PostgreSQL	Developer	Yes	None built in	Row and column level	Free plus hosting
MySQL	Developer	Yes	None built in	Extras on Enterprise	Free plus hosting
Microsoft SQL Server	IT or DBA	Yes	None built in	Unclear	Free Express

The five-point scorecard

Every tool below gets the same five checks, each mapped to a problem a shared spreadsheet already has.

• Setup skill. Can a non-technical ops person get a working setup from a template, an import, or a prompt, with no developer on the payroll?
• Relational structure. Can a customer record link to its jobs and invoices, with lookups and rollups pulling totals across?
• Apps and forms on top. Do staff and clients get screens to enter and view data, or does everyone poke at raw tables? Strong tools ship forms, pages, and logins in the box.
• Access control. Can you decide who sees which records, down to a client seeing only their own jobs, without writing code?
• Cost at 10 users. What’s the monthly bill for a 10-person team? Annual and monthly prices differ, so every figure below names its billing basis.

For the cost math, picture 10 people on your company email domain who all log in and add or edit records, with two of them doing the building. All prices are as of October 2026.

1. Softr: best database for small business portals and internal tools

Scorecard read: No-code setup, fully relational, apps and forms built in, granular permissions from Pro, and $99 a month for the 10-person team billed yearly.

What you get: The platform starts with its native database, which handles linked records, lookups, rollups, and formulas, and you can bring data in by CSV or with a one-click Airtable import that keeps linked records intact.

It also connects to 21+ external data sources, Airtable and Google Sheets included, for data that has to stay where it is. From there you build internal tools, client portals, and vendor portals where each person logs in and sees only their own records.

The fastest route is to co-build with AI, since the AI Co-Builder drafts the database, pages, user roles, and logic from a prompt. You can also start from a template or a blank app, then switch to visual editing whenever you like.

Apps ship ready for real users with authentication, permissions, and hosting built in.

The company is SOC 2 Type II compliant and GDPR-ready, with data hosted on AWS in Germany, and Child’s Play Charity, which delivers therapeutic games to pediatric hospitals, moved 4,000+ records off Airtable and cut its ongoing software costs by about 50%.

Cost: Plans are Free, Basic at $25 a month, Pro at $119, and Business at $395 billed monthly ($19, $99, and $329 billed yearly). Builders and app users are counted separately, and app users split into Team users on your company domain and Client users on any other address, Gmail included.

Basic covers only 5 Team users and doesn’t sell extras, so the 10-person team lands on Pro: $99 a month billed yearly ($119 monthly) for 2 builders, 10 Team users, and 50 Client users. A third builder adds $10 a month yearly ($12 monthly), and extra app users start at $1 a month.

Where it scores low: Builder seats past the included ones cost extra, and 2FA and global data restrictions wait on Business. Apps run on the platform’s own components, so there’s no codebase to take elsewhere, although your data exports to CSV.

2. Baserow: best for teams that want an open-source, self-hostable option

Baserow is the pick for teams that want a spreadsheet-style database today and the freedom to run it on their own server later.

Scorecard read: No-code setup, forms and an application builder on top, role-based permissions on the Advanced plan, and $100 a month for 10 users billed yearly.

What you get: Baserow calls itself “an open-source no-code database” for non-technical and technical teams alike, with Grid, Form, and Gallery views on every plan and Kanban, Calendar, and Timeline on paid tiers.

The platform also bundles an application builder with portals, automations, dashboards, the Kuma AI assistant, and an MCP server, which is a lot of kit for a free download. It runs on Django, Vue.js, and PostgreSQL, and the GitHub project says it’s trusted by over 150,000 users.

The cloud version is EU-hosted, and according to Baserow it’s SOC 2 Type II and GDPR compliant on every cloud plan. Self-hosted, the company says it “will never have row, storage, or API request limitations.”

Cost: As of October 2026, Cloud Free is $0 with 3,000 rows and 2 GB per workspace. Premium is $10 per user a month billed yearly or $12 monthly, so 10 users pay $100 a month yearly ($120 monthly) for 50,000 rows.

Advanced adds role-based, field-level, and view-level permissions plus audit logs at $18 per user yearly ($22 monthly), or $180 a month yearly for the team. Self-hosting the open-source edition is free, though premium features there are billed per user.

Where it scores low: If a cloud workspace stays over its row limit for 7 days, you can’t create new rows, and the Free cap of 3,000 rows fills fast. The Cloud API allows 10 concurrent requests, and self-hosting means someone on your side runs the server.

3. Airtable: best for teams that already think in grids

Scorecard read: No-code and relational, with Interfaces and forms on top, but per-seat pricing puts 10 editors at $200 a month billed yearly.

What you get: Airtable pairs relational databases with Interface Designer (available even on Free), automations, and Airtable AI. Since June 24, 2025, AI comes as monthly credits included in each plan, so you no longer pay for it per seat on Team or Business.

The plans scale by records per base: 1,000 on Free, 50,000 on Team, and 125,000 on Business, where you also get SAML SSO, an admin panel, and two-way sync. Airtable says it’s trusted by 500,000+ companies, and its security page lists SOC 2 Type 2 plus ISO/IEC 27001 and 27701.

Free allows up to 5 editors, which is enough for a pilot while you work out who needs edit rights.

Cost: As of October 2026, Team is $20 per seat a month billed annually ($24 monthly), and Business is $45 annually ($54 monthly). You pay for every user with edit access, so 10 editors cost $200 a month on Team yearly or $240 monthly, and $450 or $540 on Business.

Read-only collaborators and form submissions aren’t charged, so a team with 4 editors and 6 viewers pays $80 a month on Team billed yearly. If clients need to log in, the Portals add-on starts at $120 a month for 15 guests on Team.

Where it scores low: Per-seat billing punishes teams where everyone edits. At the record cap you keep your data but can’t add more until you upgrade, and keeping data in Europe is an Enterprise Scale feature.

4. Zoho Creator: best for custom business apps on web and mobile

Scorecard read: Low-code setup with apps, reports, and portals on top, a scripting language for the hard parts, and $80 a month for 10 users billed annually.

What you get: Zoho Creator builds apps from forms, reports, pages, and workflows, with 32 field types and apps that run on web, iOS, and Android. For logic the drag-and-drop editor can’t handle, you write Deluge, Zoho’s own scripting language.

External users can get in through portals, which matters if customers or suppliers need to submit or check records. Zoho says Creator is independently audited against SOC 2, GDPR, and HDS, and it lists 6M+ users, 40K+ businesses, and 7M+ apps on its homepage.

This fits an ops lead who’s comfortable with formulas and doesn’t mind learning a little scripting to get exactly the app they pictured.

Cost: As of October 2026, Zoho Creator starts from $8 per user a month billed annually ($12 monthly) on Standard, so 10 users pay $80 a month annually or $120 monthly. The next tier up unlocks unlimited apps at $20 per user annually ($30 monthly), or $200 a month for the team.

The customer portal add-on starts at $100 a month for 250 portal users. A 15-day free trial drops you onto the Free plan afterward, which allows 1 application and 5,000 records.

Where it scores low: Standard is limited to one app, and records and storage are metered per user (25,000 records per user on Standard). SAML SSO is an add-on below Enterprise, the audit trail skips Standard, and Deluge adds a learning curve for non-technical staff.

5. Supabase: best for developers building a custom app backend

Supabase is the right call when a developer is building your app and wants real Postgres underneath it.

Scorecard read: Developer setup, fully relational, Row Level Security for access control, no ready-made staff app, and $25 a month at 10 users before usage charges.

What you get: In Supabase’s words, every project “gets a full Postgres database,” which you can work with visually in the Table Editor, query in the SQL Editor, or connect to programmatically.

Around the database it bundles Auth, instant REST APIs, Edge Functions, Realtime, Storage, and vector embeddings, so a developer starts with most of a backend already wired.

Its homepage quotes Lovable on powering millions of AI-generated apps with a Supabase backend, and eXp Realty on empowering 2,000+ employees to build production software.

Cost: As of October 2026, prices are monthly with no annual rate published. Free is $0 with a 500 MB database and 50,000 monthly active users, and Pro starts at $25 a month with 8 GB of disk, 100,000 monthly active users, daily backups kept for 7 days, and $10 of compute credits.

Ten app users sit comfortably inside Pro’s 100,000 monthly active users, so the plan price stays at $25 a month before disk, egress, or compute overages. The bigger cost is the developer time to build the screens your staff will use.

Where it scores low: Free projects pause after a week of inactivity, with a limit of 2 active projects. SOC 2 and ISO 27001 coverage starts on the Team plan at $599 a month, and a non-technical team will need someone else to build the front end.

6. Microsoft Access: best for Windows offices that live in Microsoft 365

Scorecard read: Approachable desktop setup, relational tables and forms on Windows only, and $235 a month for 10 users on a Microsoft 365 plan you might already pay for.

What you get: Access is a desktop relational database app for building database apps from templates or from scratch, which Microsoft pitches as possible “without being a developer.” It can also store its data in SQL Server or Azure SQL, although that needs a separate subscription.

Microsoft says it will “continue to invest in Access Desktop databases,” and Access 2024 is the latest one-time-purchase version. Each database file holds up to 2 GB, minus system objects, with up to 255 concurrent users and 255 fields per table.

For an office where everyone already has Excel open all day, the learning curve is gentle because the menus and habits carry over (Excel muscle memory is a powerful thing).

Cost: As of October 2026, Access is included in Microsoft 365 Business Standard with Copilot at $23.50 per user a month paid yearly, and in Business Premium with Copilot at $32.00. Ten users on Business Standard pay $235 a month yearly, which also covers Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

You can also buy Access outright for $179.99 per copy for Windows 11 or 10, so ten copies come to $1,799.90 once. Microsoft 365 Business Basic doesn’t include it.

Where it scores low: It’s PC only, so anyone on a Mac is out of luck. Access web apps were retired by April 2018, which means no browser or phone access to your Access apps, and the 2 GB file cap means splitting data across linked files as you grow.

7. PostgreSQL: best for a free, serious engine with a developer on hand

PostgreSQL is the pick when you want an engine you’re unlikely to outgrow, ever.

Scorecard read: Developer setup, deeply relational, row- and column-level security, no apps or forms of its own, and a 10-user cost that depends on hosting.

What you get: The project describes PostgreSQL as “a powerful, open source object-relational database system,” with roots in the 1986 POSTGRES project at UC Berkeley. It’s been ACID-compliant since 2001 and runs on all major operating systems.

The feature list covers foreign keys, JSON and JSONB, full-text search, replication, point-in-time recovery, and extensions such as PostGIS. PostgreSQL 18 is the current stable release, supported until November 2030.

The license is “a liberal Open Source license, similar to the BSD or MIT licenses,” so it’s free to use, modify, and distribute. With 35+ years of development and 725+ contributors behind it, it isn’t going anywhere.

Cost: The software costs $0, so the 10-user bill depends on hosting and on who runs it. As of October 2026, managed options include Supabase, whose Pro plan starts at $25 a month.

Where it scores low: There’s no built-in hosting, forms, or app interface, so you need a developer or a managed host plus someone to build screens. Major upgrades need a dump and reload or pg_upgrade, and a new major version ships about once a year.

8. MySQL: best for web apps and teams with hosting know-how

Scorecard read: Developer setup, relational, extra security features only on the paid Enterprise Edition, no staff-facing app, and a 10-user cost that depends on hosting.

What you get: Oracle calls MySQL “the world’s most popular open source database,” and its About page lists Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Yahoo! among the users. The free Community Edition is available under the GPL license and runs on 20+ platforms, including Linux, Mac, and Windows.

Community Edition already includes replication, Group Replication, InnoDB Cluster, partitioning, stored procedures, triggers, and views, plus ODBC, JDBC, and .NET connectors. MySQL Workbench handles visual modeling and administration, which helps whoever designs the tables.

If you don’t want to run servers yourself, MySQL HeatWave is Oracle’s managed cloud service built on Enterprise Edition, offered on Oracle Cloud and AWS.

Cost: Community Edition is free, so a 10-user setup depends on hosting plus the developer time to build an interface. Enterprise Edition is sold through the Oracle Store, Oracle’s sales team, or partners, so treat it as quote-based as of October 2026.

Where it scores low: You need someone to host and administer it, and Transparent Data Encryption, the firewall, audit, and data masking are Enterprise Edition only. Workbench is an admin tool, so your staff will need an app built on top before they can use the data day to day.

9. Microsoft SQL Server: best for companies with an IT partner on call

Scorecard read: IT-level setup, relational, a generous free Express edition, no forms or apps of its own, and $3,289 in licenses for 10 users on Standard.

What you get: Microsoft markets SQL Server as “the AI-ready enterprise database,” with vector embeddings, semantic search, a native JSON type, RegEx support, Fabric mirroring, and Azure Arc. It runs on Windows and on Linux, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Ubuntu.

The free Express edition now allows relational databases up to 50 GB, limited to the lesser of 1 socket or 4 cores and 1,410 MB of buffer pool memory per instance. That’s likely plenty of room for a small company’s orders, customers, and inventory, and Access can use it as its data store.

For a small business, SQL Server makes sense when software you already run expects it, or when your IT partner manages Windows servers for you. Without that support, the setup and licensing work lands on whoever owns the office’s tech.

Cost: As of October 2026, Express is free. Standard costs $989 per server plus a $230 client access license per user or device in estimated retail pricing, so 10 users come to $989 plus $2,300, or $3,289 before hardware and IT time.

Subscriptions run $1,418 a year per 2-core pack for Standard, or $73 a month per core pay-as-you-go through Azure Arc.

Where it scores low: Express skips backup compression, encrypted backup, log shipping, and failover cluster instances. Paid editions are licensed per core or per server plus CALs, and you’ll want a database admin or IT partner to install and maintain it.

How should you read these scores for your own team?

Start with the first two checks, because a database nobody can set up or link together fails before price matters. Then match your situation to the closest line below.

Nobody on staff writes code, and clients or field crews need to log in. Start with the no-code tools that include apps and permissions, then compare the 10-user bills side by side.

Your team already lives in Airtable and only a few people edit. Count only the people who edit, because Airtable doesn’t bill read-only users.

You have a developer, or budget for one. Supabase gets you Postgres plus auth and APIs, while self-managed PostgreSQL or MySQL makes sense if your host already runs them.

You’re a Windows office on Microsoft 365. Access covers desktop record-keeping, and SQL Server is the step up once IT gets involved.

Whatever wins on paper, run a trial with your own data. Import your messiest spreadsheet, build one form, and set up one user who should only see their own records.

Choose for the person who types in the data

The best scorecard result means nothing if the least technical person on your team can’t use the database correctly. That’s the teammate entering the orders, job notes, and customer changes all day, so their mistakes become your data.

So pick the tool that person can open, understand, and fill in without a cheat sheet taped to the monitor. If they get it right on day one, the relations, permissions, and reports you set up will hold, and the “status (NEW)” column can finally retire.

FAQ

Which database is cheapest for a 10-person team?

On license price, PostgreSQL and MySQL Community Edition cost nothing, though you’ll pay for hosting and a developer. Among no-code tools billed yearly, Zoho Creator Standard comes to $80 a month and Baserow Premium to $100 for 10 users.

Is Supabase good for small businesses?

Supabase is a strong fit when a developer is building a custom app for you, and a weak one when nobody on staff writes code. Free projects pause after a week of inactivity, so a live business app belongs on Pro, which starts at $25 a month.

Can a small business database have a customer portal?

Yes, as long as the tool adds logins and per-user permissions on top of the stored records. Baserow includes portals in its app builder, Zoho Creator sells a portal add-on from $100 a month, and Airtable’s Portals add-on starts at $120 a month for 15 guests.