Way back in yonder day, in freaking 1990, Claris, a subsidiary of Apple, released FileMaker Pro for both Mac and Windows (though it had existed in previous forms with different names even earlier than that). It was a database app that allowed you to keep track of, well, whatever you really wanted to, via graphical layouts you designed yourself.

The intent, or at least as I imagine it, was that a non-programmer would be able to make useful record-keeping and business tools for themselves, while someone with programming skills would be able to explode those into powerful, automated apps.

So what, you ask? Well, we have several clients who run their business on FileMaker Pro today. I myself recently used it for a personal project to keep track of my record collection. FileMaker Pro is up to version 21, it still exists, it’s still useful, and there’s no real product that’s equivalent to it. It’s become too expensive for home tinkerers (a one time purchase is $594, with no upgrades and a pretty short support life, though it will probably run fine for many years; or you can also get a reasonably priced developer’s subscription).

But if a business can get value from it, subscriptions start at $990/year for 5 users, or, practically speaking, $1,260 for included cloud hosting from FileMaker. You need the hosting if you need to run FileMaker on more than one computer at a time. A third-party host I like a lot called FMPHost also offers somewhat cheaper pricing with a more boutique level of service, though I worry about them now that Claris has entered the cloud hosting business themselves.

Backstory

Here’s some history you may not care much about, but I do, and it’s my blog, so. Back in the 80’s and 90’s, databases were a standard product for personal computers, and a typical “office software suite” consisted of a word processor, a spreadsheet, and a database. (In fact, Microsoft Access, a database program conceptually similar to FileMaker Pro first introduced in 1992, is still included as part of Microsoft Office on Windows computers.) If you’re a longtimer and ever used ClarisWorks (or, as it was later called, AppleWorks), on either Mac or Windows, it had a database component that was a lot like a stripped down version of FileMaker Pro.

Ultimately, spreadsheets won the day, and consumer database software stopped being a thing. You can’t search in spreadsheets nearly as powerfully as you can in a database, but it’s all out there in front of you, in an unsightly but straightforward grid. And, if you do have some programming inclination, you could do some pretty sophisticated things with those, too. But you still can’t get data like you can in a database.

If you think of a spreadsheet that has all of its data categories in named columns across the top, and then all of its data in rows beneath, that’s the same structure as a simple “two-dimensional” or “flat-file” database. In database-speak, the sheet is called a table, the column names are called field names, and the row of data entries is called a record. (Though professional database developers will often refer to fields as columns, and records as rows, also). The database equivalent of putting something in a spreadsheet cell, is entering data into a field (column) in a record (row).

Anyway, in 1995, version 3.0 of FileMaker Pro came out, and that brought the into the big leagues of relational databases — that is, not just a glorified two-dimensional spreadsheet, but instead glorified two-dimensional spreadsheets that could talk to each other. This allowed for very powerful searching, meaning powerful business applications. (Or record collection hobby projects.) The product continued to advance over the years, providing web access so that you didn’t necessarily need the software, and kept expanding its capabilities.

However, sometime in the 2000’s or so, the Web became all-important, and even though FileMaker Pro had Web capabilities, that was never its primary orientation. Furthermore, it cost money, as opposed to developing a Web database app using open source software, where all you had to pay for was hosting fees. The downside, however, is that if you wanted to make any kind of database-driven Web app, you either needed coding skills, or you were gonna have to hire one or more professional developers — someone had to do the visual layout (HTML/CSS/JavaScript), and someone had to do the back-end programming (the logic).

FileMaker, at this point, was the only product still sold by Claris, so the company renamed themselves to FileMaker, Inc; but, a few years ago, they changed their name back to Claris. They’re still a subsidiary of Apple. And while they do sell other stuff, they really exist to sell good old FileMaker Pro, now on version 21.

Claris/FileMaker/Claris decided that rather than make themselves a platform that could compete with the free Web, they were just gonna position themselves as a “low-code” development platform where businesses could build nice-looking stuff fast and flexibly, running on native apps for Mac, Windows, and iOS (with Web as an option), most likely (but not necessarily) with the assistance  a professional FileMaker developer.

Back to the present

In 2024, you still need web development skills, or you’ll hire someone who has them, to build a database-driven Web app. Because of this, subscription “low-code” alternatives exist, like AirTable and Retool, and as Web-first applications, they feel considerably more modern than FileMaker Pro. But, if what you really want is a database app on your Mac or Windows computer or iOS device…FileMaker really still offers a kind of power those other apps don’t. You can do everything, if you’re determined enough.

I’m musing about all this because, having completed my first FileMaker development project in over a decade, I was amazed at how much it does, and how satisfying it was to work with and how useful the end product ended up being. The nice thing about it is that three months later, if you’re like “oh, I wish this screen had that thing on it”, well, you just make it happen. It’s very flexible, and changes are quick.

It’s not a database platform I’d encourage someone to learn if they were wanting to learn database development — I mean, it’s expensive, proprietary, and not Web-centric. It’s, well, from another era.

But if you’re a Mac (or even Windows) business that wants to keep track of art inventory or sales or really anything at all, and like the idea of having a proper app for it rather than a Web interface, that presents its info to you exactly as you want it, with relatively quick development speed, and with ability for you to even do basic modifications yourself…I mean, FileMaker Pro’s still here, and it still works quite nicely. I like it. And I can do basic development and/or tweaking of existing systems, and work with an excellent full-time FileMaker Pro developer for large new projects or anything else that’s not in our wheelhouse.

FileMaker Pro: old and expensive, but unique and powerful.