Airtable Reviews & Product Details
Airtable is a powerful visual project management platform that synergizes data, workflows, and execution teams on a unified dashboard. Streamlining work streams, the platform provides a synced and up-to-date information database that can be accessed by all stakeholders across different departments. Customization is at the heart of Airtable, allowing teams to create personalized apps and a tailored interface allowing easy access to relevant information and giving clear sightlines to the next steps. While customization is a key benefit, it also offers ready-to-use and pre-loaded industry-agnostic templates while extensive integrations and expandability make it scalable and agile.
| Capabilities |
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|---|---|
| Segment |
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| Deployment | Cloud / SaaS / Web-Based, Mobile Android, Mobile iPad, Mobile iPhone |
| Support | 24/7 (Live rep), Chat, Email/Help Desk, FAQs/Forum, Knowledge Base, Phone Support |
| Training | Documentation |
| Languages | English |
Workflow management is a critical part of any job. It’s what keeps a project moving, and a team motivated to see it through. But, how do you support effective workflow management?
You start with understanding better what tools, platforms, and software are out there that can support your team’s ability to effectively manage workflow and collaborate within their teams and beyond.
To that end, we’ve identified Airtable as a strong market leader in workflow management software. So, let’s dive into Airtable’s features, capabilities, and price points to help you better understand your options.
What Is Airtable?
Airtable is a workflow management application with highly customizable database management tools used predominantly for collaborative project management.
The focus on having accessible, easy-to-use software to help with project management is increasing, and Airtable is a top choice. It features a familiar spreadsheet interface, but unlike traditional spreadsheet software that only records data, Airtable can also help you organize, sync, and manage your data and customize exactly how you need it.
For example, let’s say you’re using Airtable to manage vendor management workflow for an event. This would entail designing the database to include fields for:
- Vendors’ contact details
- Links to their websites
- Inputting key information, such as lead times, product availabilities, and prices
- Uploading order confirmations
- Uploading invoices
- Important notes and comments about the vendor
The option to invite collaborators to this database is also critical so individual users can easily update data in real-time. Having all these features in a single platform means users can clearly follow the progression of a particular project and keep everyone in the team up-to-date on their tasks and next steps.
How Much is Airtable
Airtable’s interface is very flexible and is ideal for numerous industries. While it has been marketed to larger corporations, most users who have had hands-on experience with the platform say that it is just as useful for smaller businesses.
This is reflected in Airtable’s pricing, which follows a monthly subscription model. This subscription cost increases depending on the number of features and ‘seats’ you choose to purchase, making it highly scalable depending on your organization’s needs.
Airtable’s features are grouped into four levels, and the price per seat rises accordingly. A breakdown of each level can be found below:
Free
- Designed for very small teams or individuals
- Up to 5 editors and unlimited ‘read-only’ users
- 1200 records per base
- 2GB of attachments
Plus
$10 per seat – Billed annually
$12 per seat – Billed monthly
- For small to medium-sized organizations
- Eliminates information silos within a team by connecting applications
- More advanced collaboration features
- 5,000 records per base
- 5GB of attachments
Pro
$20 per seat – Billed annually
$24 per seat – Billed monthly
- For medium to large organizations who need to streamline and collaborate on top-priority data
- More advanced features
- 50,000 records per base
- 20 GB of attachments
Enterprise
- Price is customized to your organization’s needs
- Enterprise-wide admin panel
- For organizations who need a scalable product to keep up with workloads
- Unlimited workspaces per organization
- 250,000 records per base
- 1,000 GB of attachments
How Airtable Works
Airtable was built to be as customizable as possible, giving users the ability to display their data in a way that meets their specific needs—whether that means a simple presentation or a more complex one.
Getting started is simple.
You start with an empty Airtable, which is essentially your ‘base.’ From here, you just fill it with your data. You can either use a template and bring in data from another source or construct a database from scratch. Whatever the case, you can leverage Airtable’s features to tailor the platform to meet your needs. For example, you can use the Interface Design feature to visually present data in a way that makes the most sense to you and your team.
Familiarizing and understanding all of Airtable’s features and capabilities may require some effort, but the payoff is worth it. Taking the time to learn the platform will ensure users have full control over their data and workflow management.
Features
Access to Airtable’s numerous features will depend on your subscription and, subsequently, the scalability of your projects. However, all subscription options should include:
- Unlimited bases
- Sync integrations
- The ability to add attachments
- Revision and snapshot history reporting
- Field and editing permissions
- Extension add-ons (e.g., data visualization or reporting extensions)
Airtable also provides:
Customizable Views
With a click of a button, this feature gives users the flexibility to switch between different data views. Users can view project timelines via the Timeline View, and easily switch to managing team tasks on the collaborative Kanban View. Other viewing options are also available ensuring that you can customize your viewing experience so you can maximize the platform.
The Timeline View
The Kanban View
Automations
Airtable Automations lets users streamline their work processes and boost team efficiency by providing customization options for notifications and creating multi-step workflows. The feature is helpful in terms of tracking project timelines and helping eliminate manual, repetitive tasks. Additionally, it can also minimize the risk of user error.
Syncing
Airtable’s ability to synchronize data means users have a central repository of information that is updated in real-time across all users and departments. It’s a useful tool that promotes seamless collaboration and data integrations, allowing everyone to enjoy a comprehensive understanding of project status or workflows at the speed of need.
Reporting
To enhance your project’s reporting capabilities, Airtable’s powerful reporting tools and extensions let users create highly customized reports that visualize your data in a simple understandable way. You can choose from a variety of charts, graphs, and tables to ensure that information is presented in a way that is easy to understand.
Integrations
Airtable offers robust integration that lets you connect the platform to a wide range of software; ensuring that all the project management tools that you use operate seamlessly. Airtable’s integrations mean multiple applications can be streamlined to automatically sync data, share information between different platforms, and automate tasks so workflows can be further improved.
Templates
Airtable’s templates can be used to effectively organize every aspect of your project’s workflows. Their pre-designed databases can be used as a great starting point for your projects. Conveniently, Airtable templates are also organized into several categories and industries, which helps you save time and effort from creating a new one from scratch. As always, these pre-populated grids are highly customizable.
Airtable Pros and Cons
Pros
- Facilitates easy collaboration between teams with company-wide visibility of plans, calendars, and workflows.
- Both Google and non-Google users can take advantage of all the features and integrations to support workflow management and collaboration
- Highly customizable bases and effective reporting features
Cons
- The platform’s user interface can be complicated for beginners
- Requires a significant learning curve
Airtable Alternatives
A great way to decide whether Airtable is the right software for you is to compare it to other options in the workflow management space.
Eliminate the hassle of comparing options by choosing from your top choices below. With the ability to review features and relevant information in one place, you can utilize our comprehensive product reviews to gather the necessary data you need to make well-informed decisions.
ClickUp
An all-in-one project management application, Clickup is designed to be used across any industry. From solo users to larger organizations, Clickup focuses on task management to help teams streamline their workflow.
ClickUp offers numerous workflow features and data views, including a built-in Table View to ensure your team always has access to a condensed, actionable snapshot of your projects.
Notion
Designed for smaller teams or individuals, Notion is an all-in-one SaaS note-taking app and database for streamlined project management. Some features include:
- A web clipper so you can easily save images and sites
- A real-time messenger feature
- Allows for category and page hierarchy organization
Hive
With a focus on automation tools, Hive aims to simplify overly complicated work processes through email and task automation. Boasting a user-friendly dashboard, Hive aims to help teams of all sizes automate time-consuming work tasks to give time back to a project’s creation and growth.
A Final Findstack Opinion
Overall, Airtable is a highly comprehensive and customizable workflow management application.
Airtable’s app offers flexibility by allowing you to switch views and integrate reporting extensions, ensuring your data is suitable for various applications. Additionally, its extensive list of integrations enables you to consolidate all your preferred tools and their data in one convenient location.
It’s important to keep in mind, however, that these features are only useful for those willing to take the time to learn them. Airtable’s interface can be quite overwhelming for new users so our advice is to scale to higher subscription packages only after you’ve taken the time to learn the app’s features and familiarize yourself with them.
I like the attractive, intuitive interface as we as the ease of onboarding new users.
Some of the simplicity leaves further customization off the table, but I think it is worth it to keep things clean and easy to use.
Airtable helps our team manage our workload, no matter where they are. We can make quick updates on the fly, which keeps the tool super fluid and relevant.
Airtable is the best tool for managing people, projects, and service deliveries in an innovation company because its versatility and flexibility to adapt to my reality!
At this moment the price is so high for small companies or startups, especially to access news features, do a collaborative jobs, integrate some managing views.
Visibility to manage innovating projects.
Airtable has many ways to display information
I wish it offered more languages for you to use
Connect databases
the mix between microssoft excel and access in the same app. API helps to integrate with another systems as well.
Maybe the price is a little bit expensive for our reality in brazil.
We use airtable to run our company. we did a ERP inside airtable.
The degree to which I can customize anything I build in Airtable is incredible. I use it for archiving and workflows in my career, for budgeting and retaining documents at home, and even for organizing client portfolios when I freelance. It is incredible!
Like all powerful tools, Airtable requires a lot of experimentation to use it to its fullest capacity. While you can jump right in and create something useful in minutes, it takes considerable time to get the most value out of it.
My favorite use for Airtable is for saving information and documents that overlap into multiple categories so that no matter what grouping I'm looking at, I can find the information I need quickly and without having to search in half a dozen folders and subfolders. It saves me so much time!
Airtable gave me the opportunity to upgrade my small business operations from a pile of spreadsheets to an integrated ERP tailored to our needs for a fraction of the price of dedicated, ready-made software. It makes my work and my staff's easier, quicker, more organized and productive and on top of all that, with automations and integrations it takes lots of tasks off of our hands plus avoids mistakes
I wish there was an intermediate plan before enterprise to access more functionality.
From Bill of Materials for cost an price calculation and instant quotes on custom-made products, to planning and reporting of marketing actions and assets, through inventory, sales and purchases. Easy to use and create interfaces for every staff member
Accessible, ultimately portable and highly user friendly
Nothing! Even the free version works exceptionally well
Managing material, connections and clients
Ease of use. I can get to what I need in seconds. Creating a new database takes minutes.
Would be nice to be able to link Airtable to other applications like mail merge without dumping a txt file first.
Tracking employees.
Airtable provides powerful ways to ingest and view information without the rigidity of spreadsheets.
Tablet/mobile support is still not ideal.
Airtable enables my business to store information and shape it into valuable views for each target audience. It can serve as the single source of truth for stakeholders and project team members alike.
Easy to learn, and has lots of useful features. Intuitive interface. Regularly updating and improving.
I don't really have things I dislike. It just works
Airtable tracks my leads, portfolio, and contacts,
The capabilities beyond Excel spreadsheets, and it being user friendly. I like being able to add team members as necessary. The free version has so much that we can use, and we feel comfortable moving forward to a paid subscription in the future.
Nothing, really. Everything has worked well and we love what using.
Airtable is helping me across multiple areas of my professional and personal life. For my businesses, we use to track our editorial calendars, deliverables, action items, and projects. For personal, I keep track of tasks and meal plans.
I love being able to build whatever I need to do for so many different use cases. The flexibility of the fields is excellent! I love the ability to automate most of our tasks saves time and resources.
The restoration options create issues since we have many team members working in our base simultaneously. We also have issues with the interconnectivity of the base because one change can affect the entire ecosystem of the platform for us. The new dependencies feature is great, but I'd like to see a list of all changes made in the last 48 hours.
Airtable is the BEST way for us to traffic assets from one media partner to another. Through the customizable fields we are able to keep clean records and create consistency among marketing campaigns.
Database setup is easy and requires no knowledge of SQL or other database languages.
Nothing. The app does everything I need it to do.
I use AirTable to keep track of a large library of technical standards, as well as continuing professional development activities, and my vehicle service records.
We use this tool to manage our faculty rosters of over 100 providers that support multiple subspecialties. We work collaboratively with several administrative leaders and marketing to keep external resources up-to-date and even utilize different specialized views that we share in a limited way to support external outreach.
That the pricing model limits our ability to invest in enhanced tools. We have many passive collaborators looking at and supporting updates on the tool, but a per-user cost is too expensive for our limited administrative resources. It would also be very helpful to have a HIPAA-secure way to store patient information.
Internal resource/roster management with the ability to share a limited view of this information on webpages and externally to others who would benefit from that information.
Our team was able to self teach on getting onboarded and we quickly got most of our organization on board. At its core, it's easy to get into, but the capability is a mile wide if you continue to dig.
The proofing tool could use some work. This was perhaps the biggest sticking point for our team in getting universal adoption. If they worked on upping that capability, they'd be ready to take on just about any PM software out.
Our team needed to be able to prioritize what we were working from a higher level than task-based, and Airtable has allowed us to self manage so much within our own team to not only assign work, but to be able to prioritize projects against one another.
Multiple users can work in the same field simultaneously. Very stable information platform. Great analytics with the free version. Works right out of the box. No need for an IT department.
App on Android is slow to sync to the rest of your information, on PC this has never been a problem.
Project Tracking between multiple locations with multiple people working in the data at the same time. We tried this with Microsoft products but it was clunky and difficult. Airtable worked right out of the box.
Able to do multiple tasks in a single application.
Sometimes automation features are a little bit confusing.
I don't have to use multiple applications for all the tasks, even developers can use them. It will save cost and increase productivity.
Easy to use Database for end users having REST-API to connect in Apps.
Only one access token per user can be created. Acces tokens should be creatable per Airtable base to be more secure and flexible.
Created several web apps together with students and pupils, like: - https://muelli.app - https://www.aktion-kauf2.de/ - just started: https://regiosports.netlify.app/ (11/2022)
I've incorporated airtable into every research question I design, and it has been extremely useful for data entry and exploratory research. I like that it is customizable but at the same time very easy to use in terms of user interface. I can adapt it to the user's needs but also maintain control over the data entry process.
Some functionalities that are present in other spreadsheet systems are not present in airtable, but could be. Working with strings is particularly difficult. Downloading charts would also be highly beneficial.
Data entry, data management and exploratory data analysis. I don't have to design a separate MySQL database for every project and I don't have to do with makeshift excel solutions either.
I can create almost any framework for task management, knowledge base, inventory handling, you name it. And I can make it quickly and conveniently.
One time I lost an entire database with track records of my allergy occurrences - it had a 3 or 4 years history. I still don't know how and why the database was removed. Since DB removal is irreversible, I can't restore it and see which actions led to it.
1. Prototyping. When I deal with a situation with lots of entities involved, I try to model everything in Airtable before anything else 2. Tracking things. I used to track my allergy occurrences and sickness of other kinds, spending and earnings, physical activity 3. Managing projects. I use three databases to manage products in my company.