Wrike vs Airtable: Your Best Option in 2024
Wrike vs Airtable: What are their benefits and downsides? Which tool is the best for your business needs?
We’ll answer these questions in this comparison article. We’ll start with an individual overview of each tool based on features, user ratings & reviews. Then, we’ll compare them side by side on additional criteria, including overall features, usability, integrations, and pricing.
For business owners who want to consider a third alternative, we’ll also introduce Productive. It can be an interesting option, as it’s a true all-in-one operations management software that you don’t have to build from the ground up.
Keep reading to learn more!
Wrike vs Airtable: Key Takeaways
SKIP TO THE FEATURE-BY-FEATURE COMPARISON SECTION FOR MORE INFO
- Wrike is a task management tool with resource management features. It helps businesses get easier completion tracking and scheduling with a balance of customization features and structured workflows. However, financial management capabilities are limited to the most advanced pricing plan.
- Airtable is a customizable platform for managing your database and turning it into visualizations through a simplified editor. It offers a lot of freedom in how you want to set up your workstreams. However, it can take a while to learn how to exactly configure your workspace, and then how to use it effectively, so it’s not a quick and easy solution.
- A third alternative is Productive — the all-in-one agency management software. Productive is another fairly customizable, but still complete solution for business management. However, it offers a wider range of features with the aim of encompassing the entire agency ecosystem, including built-in expense tracking and budgeting.
Businesses Choose Productive
Switch from multiple tools and spreadsheets to a single platform for projects, resourcing, and financial management and forecasting.
Wrike – A Straightforward Tool for Projects and Resource Management
Wrike is a project management solution for progress tracking and employee scheduling.
Get customizable fields for task editing and management with Wrike
Key features include:
- Configurable workspace with project templates and custom items for tasks
- Resource utilization insights and workload charts for managing availability across remote teams
- Essential budgeting, billable hours management, and billing features (available for the most enhanced plan)
- Workflow automation with custom logic and rules set up
- Data visualizations and report scheduling
Pros & Cons (With User Reviews)
Wrike can be a solid, affordable option for project tracking and collaboration tools. It offers a good level of customization in project views (incl. calendar, board, table, Gantt, and more), time tracking, and job scheduling features.
However, Wrike might not be the optimal choice for cost tracking and analytics:
One of them is the lack of report customization options. This can make it difficult to present data to the needs of the team or company. Although the pre-built reports are useful in most cases, I found the limited customization capability to be a barrier for those who require a higher level of customization in this area.
Source: Capterra
A user review on G2 mentions that it lacks features for agile management and reporting, in particular, when compared to a tool such as ClickUp or Jira.
Additionally, for project management, a Reddit user states that Wrike allows multiple assignees per task, which can make process change tracking confusing and messy.
Productive, for example, goes the opposite route with its project management — you can subscribe to a task to get notifications for complete tracking, but there’s only one assignee to promote accountability.
When to Consider Alternatives
A G2 user states that: “The main thing that I dislike about Wrike is that there’s no easy CRM feature”.
If you’re looking for CRM for agencies, or some additional project management features such as real-time editing on documentation, you might want to consider an alternative such as Productive.
Additionally, though Wrike has a solid range of capabilities for project scheduling, it’s lacking in budgeting and financial management.
Businesses interested in financial analysis for projects but with a limited budget will find themselves out of luck with Wrike, as you need to invest in the most expensive plan to unlock this functionality.
Productive’s budgeting is built-in in the most affordable plan
Airable – A Good Option for Managing Complex Data
Airtable is a relational database tool for building custom applications through an Interface Designer.
Manage and link complex data with ready-made templates
Key features include:
- Use tables, records, and custom fields to build and link your database
- Drag-and-drop elements and pre-built layouts (Calendar, Kanban, gallery views, and more) for visualizing data
- Custom permissions for controlling how apps are shared
- Ability to build automated workflows with trigger and action logic
- Integration with third-party software and apps built by Airtable
Pros & Cons (With User Reviews)
Airtable’s biggest benefit is its extreme levels of customization. It can be a good option to consider for businesses that offer a lot of different services and want to create a platform that covers processes from top to bottom.
You can really do anything with Airtable. Build a database, a product roadmap, an employee portal, a spreadsheet, or make marketing communication fully automated.
Source: G2
On the other hand, this flexibility is also the biggest complaint users usually have — businesses that haven’t figured out the best way to set up reliable workflows might get lost in Airtable. There’s also the risk of overinvesting in the platform and putting in effort that might be better spent on actual tasks.
Almost too customizeable, sometimes it was hard to tell where to start or what we SHOULD be using it for vs COULD be using it for.
Source: G2
When to Consider Alternatives
Learning to use Aritable to its maximum efficiency and setting up your custom workflows will take some time. It’s not the best choice for business owners who are looking to get task scheduling and team collaboration in order in the shortest amount of time possible.
If you are not the DIY type, or you simply don’t have time, you’re going to need a likely more expensive, but turnkey solution.
Source: Reddit
Additionally, some reviewers believe the tool isn’t very budget-friendly, especially for smaller businesses that aren’t on the enterprise scale.
You can check out our list of the best alternatives to Airtable, which includes other database-building tools and more structured solutions for workflow processes.
Productive – An Alternative for Comprehensive Business Management
Productive is a professional services automation software solution for organizations of all shapes and sizes. It includes features such as project management, resource scheduling, and financial tracking in a single platform.
Manage your project time tracking with a timer, manual input, or automatically
Key features include:
- Customizable views for project management, including Kanban and Gantt, and private dashboards for tracking tasks
- Custom task fields and the ability to save your project templates
- Billable hours management and project budgeting for controlling cost overrun
- Resource capacity planning with integrated sick leave tracking, utilization insights, and financial forecasting
- Reporting templates or the ability to create customizable reports from scratch with custom fields for agency-specific parameters
- Additional features: built-in sales pipeline, Docs with AI, workflow automation, role-based permissions, project accounting with customizable branding
Manage everything from financial forecasting to accounting with real-time monitoring
Pros & Cons (With User Reviews)
Productive offers a range of powerful tools, including real-time analytics, dashboard creation, file sharing and management, and real-time scheduling.
All of this is included in one platform, which can be beneficial for multiple reasons: it helps consolidate data, reduces your tech stack (improving both workflow and cost efficiency), and provides more reliable performance tracking and portfolio management.
Learn more about ERP benefits for your organization.
With growth comes a bigger need for one source of truth, and that’s what it gives us, and that’s really important.
Productive supports businesses by combining robust functionalities with user-friendly design.
While Productive can be used as a generalized work management solution, it’s at its best when utilized for professional services, such as marketing, design, consultancies, development companies, and others.
When to Consider Alternatives
Unlike Airtable vs Wrike, Productive has no free version, so if this is your primary criterion, it will not be suitable for your business. However, you can test it out with a 14-day trial period for free to grasp some key features and what the platform looks like.
Businesses Choose Productive
Switch from multiple tools and spreadsheets to a single platform for projects, resourcing, and financial management and forecasting.
Learn more about Productive and the top Productive io alternatives.
Wrike vs Airtable vs Productive: Key Features
- Customizability: Wrike or Productive both have a fair amount of customization options, such as the ability to customize your project dashboard and create custom fields for tasks (priority, status, etc.). However, Airtable wins in this category as an interface-building tool based on entering and linking data.
- Overall features: For built-in functionalities, Productive takes the cake. It includes collaboration features such as time tracking, docs, task management, and automation, along with budgeting and project accounting. Wrike is next up, but it lacks some advanced capabilities like time off requests, docs, and financial forecasting, while Airtable is what you can make out of it.
- Usability: The three tools are more or less evenly matched when it comes to their user interface. For Wrike and Productive, it will come down to preference, as reviews for both tools are overall positive. Airtable offers complex data management, so this varies based on your own skills and time investment; it can be simple to use if you can set it up right, or complex if not.
- Customer service: All three tools have overall high rates of customer satisfaction, with fairly high ratings on review sites and mostly positive feedback on customer support. Productive is a standout in this category, as users often underline customer support as one of its best features: “Almost every SAAS has 1 or 2 key differentiators, but Productive stands out in terms of their support and dedication to ensuring a positive customer relationship experience” (Source: Capterra).
- Third-party integrations: Wrike’s most notable native integrations include the Adobe Creative Cloud. Airtable offers a wide range of app integrations, including other productivity tools such as Trello, Jira, and Miro. Productive has an even spread of useful integration options. Some include HubSpot, QuickBooks, Slack, and Google Calendar (see more Integrations).
- Pricing: Wrike pricing includes a free version for unlimited users. This tier omits some key features, such as Gantt charts, real-time data, financials, etc. Something to consider is that Wrike only offers billable hours tracking and financial management in the most advanced plan. Airtable’s free version includes unlimited boards for up to five editors. Productive doesn’t have a free version but offers a 14-day free trial to test out the software (learn more about Pricing).
Best Tool for Project Management and Remote Work
Wrike and Notion are two very different software solutions. Notion is best for complex data management, while Wrike provides a straightforward project management app with some customizability and additional features.
For a complete solution for businesses, from remote work and project management to financials, consider a third alternative such as Productive.
It’s specifically designed to support agencies, from mid size businesses to enterprise organizations. Book a demo today to find out more.
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