I'm in the process of starting up a small 2-man business and we need a database to store client information. As well as storing the usual contact details for a client, we want it to store some information that is unique to our business, and in a 1-to-many relationship (eg each client may have multiple cars).

This is the sort of thing that I could easily knock up with Microsoft Access (I used Access extensively 10+ years ago). But because cost is a consideration, and I run Linux, I thought I'd look for some alternatives to Access. Whatever the solution is it has to be multi-user and allow for two users connecting from different locations, allow data to be displayed/updated in forms, forms must be able to handle 1-many relationships (eg sub-forms within forms). The solution I came up with was a MySQL database on a web host to store the data and a front-end that would run on local PC's and store/handle forms, queries and reports.

I looked at LibreOffice Base, as I saw some people claiming it to be the closest thing to Access. Initially it seemed to tick all the boxes: it can connect to a remote MySQL DB and it allows for forms and reports and sub-forms. But the more I played with Base the more I found it was very unpolished; in 3 hours of experimenting it crashed 4 times, the report builder seemed to have a mind of its own when dragging fields around and would often place the field miles away from where I thought I'd dragged it to, it doesn't seem possible to specify a size for a form so that it always open to that size (all forms open in the same size window), if using a MySQL DB as the data source you have to enter the password for the MySQL DB every time you initially connect to it (eg once per session).

Are there any other free/low cost databases that I can consider or is LibreOffice Base the closest that comes to Microsoft Access?