Optimize Database Load Times & Performance
As your Closot databases grow — more rows, more properties, more complex formulas — you may start noticing slower load times. This guide explains what causes performance issues and exactly what you can do to fix them.
What Causes Slow Databases?
Closot identifies three primary culprits that degrade database performance:
- Large page counts — databases with thousands of items load more data and take longer to render
- Many visible properties — every visible column in a view requires data to be fetched and displayed
- Complex sorts and filters on heavy property types — filtering or sorting by formulas, rollups, or title/text properties is significantly slower than filtering on lightweight types like select, status, number, or date
Understanding these factors gives you actionable leverage over your database's responsiveness.
Architecture Improvements
Don't Embed Multiple Databases on the Same High-Traffic Page
If you have a busy page that already has multiple databases embedded in it, every one of those databases loads simultaneously when the page opens — each one "listening" for updates and fetching its full dataset.
Better approach: House each database in its own dedicated page, then use linked database views to embed only a specific, focused view of the data on shared pages. With linked databases, only the currently visible view is active and fetching data — the rest are dormant until you navigate to them.
Example: Instead of embedding your full "All Engineering Tasks" database, "All Design Sprints" database, and "All QA Tickets" database on a single operations page, create lightweight linked views of each with pre-applied filters that show only the most relevant subset. Load time drops dramatically because each view only fetches what it needs to show.
Formula and Rollup Management
Formulas and rollups are calculated on demand — every time Closot loads a view, it has to compute them for every visible row. The more complex the formula, and the more rows it runs against, the longer it takes.
Strategies:
- Minimize filters and sorts on formula/rollup properties — these are the most expensive operations. Instead, filter on native property types like Select, Status, or Date, which have pre-indexed values
- Simplify formula logic where possible — deeply nested conditional formulas that reference multiple other properties are particularly heavy
- Avoid long reference chains — a rollup that references a relation that references another rollup is compounding the computation cost at every step
Data Hygiene
Hide Properties You Don't Need in the Current View
Every visible column must be loaded and rendered. If you have 20 properties on a database but only regularly use 6 of them, hide the other 14 in your active views. They still exist — they just don't load unless you open an individual item.
To hide: settings → Property visibility → toggle off the properties not needed in this view.
Delete or Archive Unused Pages
An accumulation of old, obsolete entries slows down every operation on the database. Periodically review your database and move stale records to an archive page or delete them outright.
For very large databases, apply a Created time filter to your default view so it only shows recent entries — older records still exist but don't load by default.
Database Size Limits
Closot enforces hard limits on database size to maintain platform-wide performance:
| Limit | Cap |
|---|---|
| Per-page property data | 2.5 MB total for all property data per page (excludes files, formulas, rollups, and page body content) |
| Database-level property structure | 1.5 MB for the overall schema |
If you're approaching these limits, you'll receive a warning. To stay within bounds:
- Shorten property option names (long tag labels count toward the limit)
- Delete properties that are no longer being used
- Simplify or shorten formula expressions
- Break one large database into multiple smaller, more focused databases
If your database is regularly slow, the most impactful single change is usually to reduce the number of visible properties and remove sorts/filters on formula and rollup columns. These two changes alone can dramatically improve load times on most databases.
Up next: List view — The default and most flexible database view in Closot.