I’m dealing with a huge database of customer prospects that has grown way beyond what traditional spreadsheet tools can handle smoothly. Right now I’m hitting major slowdowns and API restrictions when working with this much information in standard platforms. The data management is becoming a real headache because of performance issues when the dataset gets this large. I need something that works well with n8n workflows and doesn’t crash or freeze when processing bulk operations. What alternatives would you suggest that can handle enterprise-level data volumes while still being user-friendly? Looking for recommendations from anyone who has faced similar scaling challenges with large prospect databases.
Been through this nightmare myself about two years ago when our CRM data exploded past 500k records. What saved us was migrating to MongoDB Atlas with a custom React dashboard. The document structure handles prospect data really well since customer info isn’t always uniform, and performance stays solid even with complex queries across massive datasets. Integration with n8n was straightforward using their MongoDB node - haven’t had a single timeout or crash since migrating. There’s a learning curve but their docs are decent, and once you get comfortable with the query language it’s second nature. Costs around $200/month for our volume, which beats most enterprise spreadsheet solutions. The horizontal scaling means you won’t hit another wall when data grows again.
PostgreSQL with a decent frontend solved this exact problem for me. Hit the same walls with spreadsheets, so I moved our prospect database to PostgreSQL and threw Retool on top as the interface. Night and day difference - no more freezing during bulk ops or hitting stupid row limits. Got n8n hooked up through standard SQL connectors without much hassle, and now we’re pushing millions of records like it’s nothing. Yeah, you need someone who knows databases for the initial setup, but once it’s running, it scales great and costs way less than SaaS options. Definitely worth it if you’ve got the technical chops on your team.
Hit this exact wall last year - prospect database crashed our workflows daily. Storage wasn’t the real issue, it was the automation pipeline falling apart at scale.
Latenode completely solved it. Their database nodes handle millions of records without the performance drops you get from spreadsheet tools. No more API timeouts or crashes during bulk ops.
Best part? It seamlessly connects different data sources. Pull from PostgreSQL, MongoDB, whatever backend you’re using, then automate all your prospect workflows in the same platform. Way more reliable than trying to connect n8n to external databases.
I used to spend hours debugging connections between tools. Now everything runs in one platform that actually scales. The workflow editor handles complex data operations without custom code.
Check it out at https://latenode.com
i totally feel u! i switched to airtable too, it’s way better for big data than sheets and works fine with n8n. just be careful with the pricing, it can get pretty high with larger datasets!