Top 14 Airtable Alternatives: Best Software of 2024
If you’re hoping to upgrade your operations with the best Airtable alternatives, we’ve got you covered.
Airtable is a low-code platform that lets businesses build a custom, scalable software solution by managing, linking, and visualizing spreadsheets. The benefit of this approach is increased flexibility, but with it comes more complexity and a steeper learning curve.
In our list of the best alternatives, we’ll explore other modular options for businesses that need high levels of customization. We’ll also consider some more structured tools that can be a great asset in supporting day-to-day operations.
Why Look for Airtable Alternatives?
Airtable is a relational database tool designed to provide a quick and easy way to build a custom solution for your business.
In simpler terms, with Airtable, you can enter data into a spreadsheet-like interface, link this data between multiple tables, and then use custom views to visualize it.
Some key features include the Interface Designer to visualize complex workflows, workspace templates, custom permissions for sharing and visibility, automations, and seamless integration with third-party tools.
AIRTABLE IS A VERSATILE TOOL FOR BUILDING CUSTOM APPLICATIONS
Airtable has positive user ratings on both G2 and Capterra. Despite this, users underline some particular negatives:
- The tool has a steep learning curve, and the UI can be complicated, especially for beginners
- Some users comment that Airtable is not quite up to par with comparable project management tools
- The way that the pricing is structured could cause issues for smaller to mid-sized companies, especially as their teams grow
As for the benefits, users enjoy Airtable’s customization, flexibility, and native integrations. A review on Capterra commented that Airtable is “a bit like a colorful spreadsheet that allows showing data in different ways”. This can be seen both as positive and negative, depending on your experience with spreadsheet software like Excel or Google Sheets.
Key Features of a Top Airtable Alternative
Some tools function similarly to Airtable by using databases and a spreadsheet-like interface. On the other hand, other tools aim to satisfy similar business needs — integrating data and workflows in a single interface — with capabilities from project management and collaboration to managing financial insights.
In our comparison, we focused on professional services automation tools and other options that satisfy one (or all) of these five main criteria:
- Customizable features: This includes various ways to depict or manage your data, such as custom views like a Kanban board or Gantt chart.
- Automation: Automation features that work in similar ways to Airtable, such as linking various actions to reduce repetition. For example, a message is sent to Slack when a task is updated.
- Reporting: Internal tools for collating, customizing, and sharing business intelligence.
- Integrations: Considers which native integrations each tool offers and how comprehensive they are without them.
- Additional features that support operations: For example, capacity planning (which can include resource plans and workload balancing), project budgeting and forecasting, and CRM tools.
No matter how complex your software solution is, it should provide a hassle-free experience. Therefore, we’ll also consider whether a particular tool is user-friendly and intuitive and how steep the learning curve is based on user reviews.
We really struggled to find a system that not only provided all the features we required but was also fast and user-friendly enough that our team could do what’s required without having to read a 30-page manual.
The Best Airtable Alternatives Currently Available
- Productive: for all-in-one business process management.
- Stackby: an affordable spreadsheet-style alternative.
- Notion: a good option for creative project management.
- Baserow: an open-source, self-hosted substitute.
- Nuclino: streamlined knowledge management option.
- ClickUp: a project and task management option.
- Asana: a good solution for business management.
- SeaTable: a streamlined alternative.
- Basecamp: a simplified tool for tasks and collaboration.
- Quickbase: an option for various industries and use cases.
- Hive: another potential solution for collaboration.
- Smartsheet: an Excel-inspired project management tool.
- Monday.com: a decent overall work management alternative.
- Nocodb: another open-source option.
1. Productive – The Best All-in-One Alternative
Productive is an all-in-one business management software for companies of all sizes. It’s especially suitable for professional services workflows, such as design, marketing, creative, and software development businesses.
Like Airtable, Productive aims to provide a single workspace for all core business processes. It centralizes business data and guides workflows with a more structured interface, though customization options exist for various collaboration features.
If you switch to Productive, you’ll benefit from more standardized workflows, quicker setup, and more reliable data at the cost of some flexibility.
With growth comes a bigger need for one source of truth, and that’s what it gives us, and that’s really important.
The core capabilities of Productive include: task and project management, automation and custom permissions, robust reporting, resource planning, project budgeting, and CRM.
Project Management
Productive’s Project Management feature offers customization options for project progress views. You can switch between a Kanban board, Gantt chart, List view, and more to tailor the workspace according to the preference of each team member.
get full visibility into your projects
On a granular level, task management is simplified with:
- Milestones, to-dos, and dependencies
- Custom fields for unique categorizations on each task
- Automatic notifications that can be customized for frequency
With the Permission Builder, you can also control who can see and do what within the platform. Additionally, you have the Automations feature to streamline various parts of your workflows and speed up repetitive tasks.
Reporting
Productive offers extensive Reporting features for collecting insights from various platform data sources, such as time tracking, resourcing, budgeting, and more. The pre-built templates can be further customized with custom fields for business-specific parameters.
According to a G2 user:
Airtable really fell short of reporting features. There are not really many reports that could be exported and analyzed for tracking team performance.
Since Productive covers so many business processes, it can offer detailed reports for project, team, utilization, and budget tracking. Productive also has financial forecasting capabilities, which is especially beneficial for advanced business analytics. You can predict revenue and profit margins for individual projects to perfect your prioritization and resource management.
Time Tracking
Productive simplifies Time Tracking with customizable options for billable hours tracking. You can create entries by starting timers directly from tasks, inputting time retroactively, or using automatically generated entries synced with your resource bookings.
Using time tracking software for employees is crucial for a number of reasons: you’ll benefit from improved future estimation, know exactly what has been done and when, and get insights on your overall efficiency.
track and manage your billable hours
Productive also includes time-off management: creating agency-specific categories, allocating days and hours across employees, and processing requests.
Resource Planning
Productive offers a comprehensive Resource Planning feature to help you manage your business resources effectively. You can create a responsive resource plan for streamlining the project management process with easy allocation and workload balancing.
MAKE SURE YOU’RE GETTING THE MOST OUT OF YOUR RESOURCES
Resourcing also provides advanced forecasting on budget burn, profit margins, and revenue. You can tweak your resource allocation (extend deadlines, allocate other employees, etc.) and check how this impacts your metrics in real time.
Additional functionality includes:
- Tentative placeholders: Used for unconfirmed projects or tasks and can be converted to confirmed bookings.
- Placeholders: Account for future staff or external team members.
Budgeting
Productive’s Budgeting feature allows for various budget-building models, including fixed prices, hourly rates, recurring budgeting, and hybrid pricing options. You can get insights into key financial metrics with real-time data customized to your agency processes. This also includes integrated client invoicing and purchase order management.
Check out some of the top project budget management tools.
Sort your data across multiple projects
Additional features include: Sales, Docs, Productive AI.
Integrations include Xero, QuickBooks, Breathe, Zapier, Slack, Jira, Google Calendar, and more.
Productive offers a desktop version for Mac and Windows, as well as a mobile app.
Pricing
- Plans start with the Essential plan at $9 per user per month, which includes essential features such as budgeting, project & task management, docs, time tracking, expense management, reporting, and time off management.
- The Professional plan includes custom fields, recurring budgets, advanced reports, billable time approvals, and many more for $24 per user per month.
- The Ultimate plan has everything that the Essential plan and Professional plan offer, along with the HubSpot integration, advanced forecasting, advanced custom fields, overhead calculations, and more for a custom price.
- You can also check out the Enterprise Plan with custom pricing for companies that would include more than 50 active users per month.
Productive offers a 14-day free trial, so you can decide if it’s the right choice for your business.
Choose the Best Airtable Alternative
Tailor your software to your business needs and workflows with Productive.
2. Stackby – An Affordable Database Software Solution
Stackby can be a good option for those looking for a spreadsheet-style database with no coding knowledge required.
Key features:
- Custom database creation with Excel and Google Sheet import
- Numerous column customizations and types for easier data management
- Various ways to view and organize data, including Kanban and Table
- Extensive app integrations and powerups for complex workflows
SOURCE: STACKBY
Stackby is one of Airtable’s closest competitors when it comes to the platform’s philosophy and target audience. Users on Capterra who switched from Airtable to Stackby usually comment that they did so for the more affordable pricing.
In general, if users want a spreadsheet-like platform but have simpler needs, Stackby is a good substitute. Before you make the switch, consider that users have reported some issues with Stackby’s performance, such as long loading and refresh times and bugs.
3. Notion – A Good Tool for Creative Collaboration and Documentation
Notion is a versatile cloud-based software for work management. Its collaboration tools and visual design make it a great alternative for streamlined communication and enhanced team productivity.
Key features:
- Customizable user interface with board, table, timeline, and more customization options
- Multiple ready-made templates for various types of work management
- Team collaboration features with tasks, subtasks, and progress bars
- Native documentation and file-sharing capabilities
SOurce: NOTION
Notion is most frequently praised for its collaboration tools and intuitive user interface. Businesses that mostly use Airtable for project and task management can switch to Notion for a more streamlined approach.
However, consider a different alternative if you’re looking for an end-to-end project management tool. Notion is built for the needs of both businesses and individuals (such as freelancers, students, etc.) and doesn’t have the comprehensive type of support that you can get from more robust options.
4. Baserow – A Self-Hosted Custom Database Tool
Baserow is another open platform for creating databases and applications and one of the latest Airtable competitors.
Key features:
- Database Builder with designated field types, filtering, and linking features
- Application Builder with drag-and-drop components and templates library
- Options for enterprise, cloud-based, and self-hosted implementation
- Integration with Zapier for data synchronization and workflow management
SOURCE: BASEROW
Baserow is quite a young product, but users believe it brings some unique benefits. The biggest one is that it provides self-hosting and is open-source:
I also worked with Airtable before and I think that Baserow can substitute both those platforms. But it exceeds them because Baserow is open source. That’s what I like about this app. You can host it wherever you want and you get a solid user experience.
Source: Capterra
However, it also has some downsides, including its more limited feature set. Some reviewers also believe that Airtable has a smoother performance and better user interface: “The product is stable but not fully mature yet. Do not expect the perfect UI/UX that other solutions like Airtable might offer” (paraphrased from Capterra).
5. Nuclino – A Simplified Knowledge Management Option
Nuclino is a “purposefully simple” tool for organizing knowledge, managing projects, and sharing ideas.
Key features:
- Four views for workflow management: list, board, table, and graph views
- Collaborative documentation for note creation, task assignment, embedding files, and more
- Whiteboard canvas for brainstorming and diagramming
- AI integration for writing, summarizing, creating visuals, and more
SOURCE: NUCLINO
Nuclino can be compared to Notion, as it’s a simple tool for collaboration and documentation. Users usually enjoy the following:
One positive aspect of Nuclino that I appreciated was how easy it was to use. The interface is intuitive and simple, making it easy to navigate and find what I needed.
Users often choose it as an alternative to Google Docs, which is more formal and “rigid.” Overall, it’s a very streamlined and simplistic knowledge and work management option.
6. ClickUp – A Versatile Solution for Tasks and Collaboration
ClickUp is a project management tool that offers a variety of task management and collaboration tools.
Key features:
- Task management with completion and project status updates
- Workflow automations for streamlining and speeding up repetitive tasks
- Time estimations and time tracker to monitor employee productivity
- Workload views and dashboards for resource management
Source: CLICKUP
ClickUp is a project management software with essential features for streamlining business processes and day-to-day workflows. As the most notable downside, users note that the reporting capabilities are not as robust as in some comparable ClickUp alternatives. Additionally, some have reported issues with slow loading times and bugs.
7. Asana – A Streamlined Workflow Management Software Solution
Asana is a project management software that offers a wide range of key features for task tracking and keeping project timelines on track.
Key features:
- Integrated time tracking with an embedded timer and manual tracking
- Templates library for projects and tasks and custom task fields
- Five customizable project views, including Gantt, board, list, and more
- Reporting dashboards and data visualization
source: AsANA
Asana can be a good option for users looking for a project management tool that provides most of the capabilities needed for efficient collaboration. Growing businesses might want to consider a solution that provides more extensive budgeting and reporting features, such as Productive.
You can also consider a comparison between Asana vs Wrike if you like Asana, but you’re looking for a tool with advanced resource management features.
8. SeaTable – A Streamlined Substitute
SeaTable is another spreadsheet-like solution for linking data, building customizable processes, and integrating them with other solutions.
Key features:
- Ready-made templates for various teams and use cases (HR, marketing, operations, etc.)
- Sorting, grouping, filtering data, and custom permissions
- Real-time collaboration with comments and notifications
- Various visualizations: gallery, statistics, Kanban, and more
SOURCE: SEATABLE
Users who choose SeaTable as their project management solution enjoy its flexibility and ease of use: “With its straightforward and user-friendly design, SeaTable is usable even by those with little technical knowledge” (Source: G2).
Compared to Airtable, SeaTable is usually preferred due to more affordable pricing and streamlined functionalities.
9. Basecamp – A Good Option for Project Coordination
Basecamp is a solution for streamlined project management and easy collaboration between cross-functional and remote teams.
Key features:
- Personal dashboards for improved oversight and self-management
- File sharing, creation, and storing within the platform
- Customizable views with a Kanban and Gantt-like approach and team chat
- Third-party integrations with Google Drive, Slack, and other apps
source: BASECAMP
Basecamp can be a good project management tool alternative thanks to its simplified interface and user-friendly features. It can be especially suitable as creative agency project management software for designers and other teams that might be less experienced with similar task-tracking tools.
You can also check out our list of WorkflowMax alternatives to learn more in-depth info on Basecamp and similar tools.
10. Quickbase – An Advanced Solution for Data-Driven Operations
Quickbooks is a no-code platform that provides custom apps for project management and automated workflows.
Key features:
- App builder for creating custom applications
- Automations and flexible permissions models
- Dynamic reporting with tabular and summary reports
- Advanced reporting and analytics capabilities
source: QUICKBASE
Both Quickbase and Airtable are platforms for creating custom project management solutions. Quickbase does require some technical knowledge to use, and one of the main downsides of the tool is that:
The UI is not as good as Airtable and is less intuitive. This is the main complaint.
Source: Capterra
Additionally, Quickbase offers support for some more niche industries, such as solar or government, which can make it a good specialized alternative.
11. Hive – A Solid Project Management Tool for Agencies
Hive is a project management and productivity platform for agency teams of all shapes and sizes.
Key features:
- Resource planning
- Time tracking
- Project management
- Collaborative documentation
source: HIVE
Hive can be a good project management option as it has a wide range of features to power up agency workflows. However, users underline that some advanced features that would make it a fully comprehensive software solution are missing, such as the ability to send quotes. Check out which Hive alternatives offer advanced project management functionalities.
12. Smartsheet – A Good Alternative for Google Sheets Experts
Smartsheet is a project management tool known for its similarities to spreadsheet-based solutions.
Key features:
- Project & task management
- Capacity management
- Client permissions
- Reporting dashboards
source: SMARTSHEET
Smartsheet can be a suitable option for those familiar with Airtable, as it’s similarly inspired by Excel in its approach to business management. However, some users report that Smartsheet’s interface is slightly unintuitive and outdated compared to more modern solutions:
I think the user experience is not that good, meaning it looks a little clunky and looks and feels more rigid as compared to something like Airtable.
Source: Paraphrased from G2
Check out our guide to the best Workfront alternatives to learn more about Smartsheet and other similar solutions.
13. Monday.com – A Customizable Platform for Comprehensive Project Tracking
Monday.com is a project management tool that supports easy project management, task tracking, and team collaboration.
Key features:
- Kanban and Gantt charts
- Resource scheduling
- Real-time collaboration
- Automation features
source: MONDAY.COM
As Monday.com has a free version with limited features for project management, it can be a suitable option for startups or small agency teams. However, it’s not the most comprehensive solution, as it lacks key financial management features such as billable utilization forecasting or detailed reports.
Learn more about how Monday.com compares to other popular management solutions, including Monday vs Asana vs Trello.
14. Nocodb – A Popular Free Substitute
Nocodb is another open-source substitute for custom database building.
Key features:
- Spreadsheet interface for creating databases
- Versatile views: Grid, Kanban, Gallery, Form
- External data access
SOURCE: NOCODB
Nocodb and Baserow are both great options if you’re looking for an open-source option for database management. The differences are slight, and often come down to preference. For example, a Reddit user states:
Both are good in our testing but we went with Nocodb only because you can import csv multiple times to the same project while in Baserow every import makes a new table in our postgresql.
Airtable vs Productive vs Other Alternatives
- Tools like Productive provide a single platform for your data, but focus less on flexibility and more on offering a structured approach to business management.
- Baserow and Stackby are both very similar to Airtable, though they offer slight differences. Stackby is considered more affordable and streamlined, while Baserow is open-source and offers self-hosting.
- Notion and Nuclio are streamlined task and knowledge management solutions that are best suited for supporting collaboration and teamwork.
The right software can integrate project management, resource planning, and client collaboration, responding to dynamic requirements from various agencies. All this with a user-friendly interface and responsive customer team to make implementation and onboarding a smooth experience.
Book a demo with Productive, the best Airtable alternative for comprehensive business management.
FAQ
Which Airtable alternatives are open source?
The most notable open-source Airtable alternative includes Baserow and Nocodb. Other options are Grist and Rowy.
What are free Airtable alternatives?
Some free Airtable alternatives include Baserow, SeaTable, Notion, and ClickUp.
What is the difference between Airtable vs Baserow?
Airtable and Baserow are both low-code relational database software solutions that offer the creation of customizable apps. The biggest difference is that Baserow offers self-hosting and is open source, while Airtable is a cloud-based SaaS software solution only.
What are Baserow alternatives?
Some of the most popular Baserow alternatives include Airtable, Stackby, Nocodb, and Productive. Airtable is a well-known low-code relational database software, though it doesn’t offer self-hosting features. Stackby is another good alternative and is often picked for being more affordable than Airtable. Nocodb is the most similar, as it’s also open-source.
Productive can also be a good option for teams interested in a more unique solution for agency management software.
What is the difference between Airtable vs Notion?
The main difference between Airtable and Notion is how they approach workflow and business needs. Airtable is a spreadsheet-based tool popular for its high flexibility and customization. Notion, on the other hand, is a visual work management software. It’s best for teams that want to collaborate, but don’t need complex database functionalities.
What is the difference between Airtable vs Nocodb?
Airtable vs Nocodb are both low-code relational database platforms for businesses. The main difference is that Nocodb is open-source.
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