Airtable
Airtable review! Disappointing for individual use, but excellent as a productivity tool for team collaboration.
There are many productivity apps out there, but one app stands out for its early release and its focus on the spreadsheet format, which has made it popular despite the proliferation of competitors. This is Airtable. Initially, I didn’t have a good impression of it, but as the app continued to develop, it gradually improved. I will write about it more.
Table of Contents
- Airtable
- Airtable review! Disappointing for individual use, but excellent as a productivity tool for team collaboration.
The fact that Airtable’s default format is in spreadsheet form is its biggest characteristic.
The app’s most prominent feature is its inherent structure in a spreadsheet format. This is like how Trello is structured around Kanban boards. However, since the default format is in spreadsheet form, it’s a more functional tool for storing, organizing data, or presenting work environments to others. But if it were just about being in a simple spreadsheet format, people would just use Excel instead of this app, wouldn’t they? It’s also possible to transform the table format into various productivity tools like Kanban boards, calendars, grids, and more.
Depending on the work environment, it’s natural to create multiple tables or other forms. There are automation features, allowing you to set up actions to occur automatically based on data inputs, for example. While setting up these features initially can be quite cumbersome, once properly configured, they enhance productivity, which is beneficial.
However, I’m not sure if it’s because I’m not yet familiar with it, but when creating a new base (which is created within a larger workspace called Workspace), it can feel somewhat awkward and empty, posing a challenge on how to structure it. Of course, many productivity tools like ClickUp also face similar challenges. It seems the developers are aware of this issue, as there are plenty of default templates provided, and users can also access templates commonly used by various companies from a separate page to use them. The template quality is good, so it would likely take a long time to create something similar from scratch alone.
Since the app has been around for a while and has gained recognition, there are many usage examples available, with new ones being continuously added. “In particular, there are examples used by actual companies like Expedia, and with so many ‘bases’ available, it gives you a sense of how these companies use the platform. As a result, it serves as a great example where you can learn about the productivity methods of actual companies while also understanding the true capabilities of Airtable. Personally, I wonder how they create something like this. It would take several days just to create something like this…
Airtable also had several drawbacks, but it is constantly being improved.
It used to be a rather crude app.
To be honest, I thought little of this app in the past. This is because the interface was rather crude. The rigid design of the Android version was a particular disappointment to me. Many productivity tools, especially Excel, which has a similar design to Airtable, have pretty good mobile designs. However, they improved the design aspect and I particularly like the ability to differentiate between work and presentation designs, which you can configure in the “Interface” window. The “Interface design” stands out to me, and I can’t help but wonder how it would have been if the new design also allowed for task performance.
Airtable used to be quite expensive and not very cost-effective. The paid version is quite expensive at $20 per month. Instead, they are accumulating the benefits of the free version. Previously, users could only create three Workspaces, but now they can create multiple Workspaces. Although there is a reasonable limit on the number of tables that users can create, there is no longer a limit on the Workspaces themselves.
This has both advantages and disadvantages, but it means that individual users can effectively use it for free unless they are highly specialized experts. Of course, some features, such as extensions, Gantt charts, and timeline views, are only available in the paid version, besides the number of bases. Gantt charts can be quite useful for some people, but as expected, this kind of feature is only available in the paid version.
Updates are quite frequent, and they often share news through newsletters and other channels. Many apps have slow update processes, and it’s often difficult to determine if they have been updated. However, Airtable not only frequently updates its features but also shares news about new template additions, which constantly leaves a good impression. Oh…
Airtable has many shortcomings when used alone.
Of course, if you use different apps for different purposes, this can even be an advantage.
Another downside of Airtable is that its app structure is more geared towards displaying and organizing documents for others to see, making it great for simple data organization but somewhat limited if you primarily want to use it for that purpose alone. Nowadays, there are so many productivity apps available, so it’s disappointing if you’re only using it for basic data management. Of course, Airtable is convenient for data organization, but these days, most popular apps have templates, so they’re not too difficult to use initially. This app solely focuses on data organization, while other apps handle both data organization and document creation.
Of course, some people prefer using multiple tools tailored to specific purposes. In such cases, if people handle document tasks in other apps and use this one solely for data organization, it could improve productivity. Ultimately, it varies depending on the user’s preferences. However, I prefer having more features available upfront.
I hope the app continues to gain popularity.
The app was surprisingly popular… even featured on Forbes.
This app has more users than I thought. It’s even listed on the prestigious Cloud 100 by Forbes. As you can see, the list includes various companies such as OpenAI, Notion, ClickUp, Grammarly, Canva, 1Password, Automattic (the parent company of WordPress), and Webflow (a website-building tool). This shows that Airtable is a fairly large app, especially considering that it made the list in 2023. Despite having quite several competitors, Airtable seems to operate just fine. I hope it will continue to improve, and I will use it more in the future.
Airtable Conclusion
Good point
- It’s highly specialized in data organization and tidying up.
- While spreadsheets are its basic form, Airtable surprisingly offers a wide range of features.
- With a large user base, Airtable boasts a wealth of use cases and templates of remarkably high quality.
Bad point
- The premium version is quite expensive.
- There are many formidable competitors out there.
- It might be disappointing for personal use.
