Airtable is a project management and collaboration platform designed to enable content pipelines, product management, events planning, user research, and more. It combines spreadsheet,database, calendar, and kanban functionality within one platform.
$24
per month per seat
Zoho Tables
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
Zoho Tables is a work management software that aims to bridge the gap between overly complex tools and those lacking essential features. Combining the simplicity of a spreadsheet with the power of a database, its interface is designed so that anyone can quickly adapt to it. Zoho Tables enables users to view data in five ways: Grid, Gallery, Kanban, Calendar, and Form. This tool is both function and industry-agnostic, to support the creation of customized solutions…
Airtable is an ideal platform for small and growing businesses to keep track of just about EVERYTHING they need to keep things running smoothly. It's a great way to keep tasks organized, and keep everyone on the same page with progress on all things. Our company finds the kanban particularly useful, as products go through a lifecycle from ideation to retirement, it's good to keep a database of what is in production, what's working, and what we've tried before. I can see the platform being challenging with much larger businesses, but for the small to medium businesses I've used the platform with, it is ideal.
Zoho Tables has been great! I have outlined many of my descriptions in my previous answers. It works great for many things, and could do with just a bit more refinement in the ability to customize what it can turn into. However, the best part of Zoho Tables is the simplicity of its original "blank" state. With the right pre-made User-defined automations for primary zoho apps such as projects and CRM, this would become our commonly used tool as a central hub for all our operations.
Airtable has capabilities commonly found in spreadsheet applications, but also has some of the features found in databases.
The ability to filter fields. I set up a filter on the status field, so when a project is marked, complete, on hold, or canceled, that record is hidden from my current projects table view. If it is marked complete, the record is moved to the completed projects table view. In this way I can easily access a record of past projects
Being able to duplicate tables and create alternate views
Collapse and expand records. When I collapse the rows, I can easily scan current projects, next steps, project status, and due dates. When I expand the row, or field, I can see more detailed information about that field or record very easily. I can also expand or open the entire record. This is is helpful, when I am entering a lot of information to multiple fields in that record.
Ability to create subgroups in a simple fashion in the Zoho Tables. That allows for drop downs. Does not change the formatting of any cells unless specifically addressed by user. But a light column is added at the start of the table with a button to dropdown each row.
Ability to fill a cell with color without reason or specific selection of field options, add an option for a simple color bucket fill.
It would be great to have an efficient way of updating tasks, projects, etc all on one table easily set up by the user! (Ie. When column "Next Action" equals "Add Task to Project 1" without using deluge)
The best pre-made automations for Zoho Tables would be with all {} being user defined selections:
- Update {Selected Task Field} on {Task} when {Column}...
- When {Row} on table is created or edited: Add {Column} as a Task on {Project} in {Task List} then map {Related Table Columns} to {Project Columns}
We will 10/10 renew the use of Airtable because it has brought great value to our team. Not only is Airtable affordable, but it's also user-friendly and helps our team be efficient. We no longer need to rely on Excel spreadsheets being passed from person to person via email. Furthermore, we aren't dealing with corrupt Excel spreadsheets and the need to salvage data when a file is accidentally altered.
IMO the usability of this product is its greatest asset. The UI is clean and the menus are intuitive to the point where I'd feel confident having a non-spreadsheety colleague take on building an Airtable for the first time with next to no training. I can't say that about every table-like software product that I've used such as Notion.
Simple to use and as a Zoho user, for over a year, I had no issues whatsoever implementing tables almost within minutes to replace Airtable and other databases that were being used as intermediaries, without the automation. Highly recommend (note: in very early stages of testing)
I have rarely experience downtime, compared to other tools, and given how much time we spend on the tool. Even if there were to be, their updates on it are very timely, and our support team are able to provide any questions regarding
I never had any issues with load time, even with the integrations that we use today (google sheets) However, I'm curious if adding additional layers of integrations would slow down performance. We do carry quite a bit of data in Airtable, but, again, no impact on overall performance
Airtable has great support. They have a variety of support features to answer any questions. They have great self teaching instructions for templates and product tours. They also have support for teams and project management. They also have a fantastic customer help line. They are able and willing to answer customer questions and never have customers waiting long
Recorded trainings were provided by the Airtable team. Great as an evergreen resources to new team members and for anyone that wants to refresh their Airtable knowledge
Training all users was an important part of the implementation, which did take considerable time and effort. At first glance without training, the content calendar can be overwhelming because of the amount of data. The features within Airtable seem to be endless but our team was able to identify the most important to be successful.
Airtable was a really good fit for this specific use case as it provided a huge number of collaboration features in an intuitive and pleasant-to-use interface. The free tier worked initially with our work, and the upgrade pathway was fair and made sense for us.
Zoho Projects is great for it's intended use to track and manage projects, and the CRM is also great for it's intended use. However, when you are managing operations, everything essentially "ties" together when you are needing to make next decisions. This really comes into play for meetings, and to do lists, etc. Sometimes, all of the detail does not matter when you are trying to operate efficiently. For example, during a meeting, many times we will review KPIs (comes from CRM but in Analytics), then projects, and then general topics. At all points throughout the meeting, tasks are coming up which need to be added, etc. All range vastly resulting in a lot of different places. With Zoho Tables, I am basically working on a blank canvas of cells that can pull data from where I need it too and the more user friendly the ability to set up automations and workflows to be a central hub/home base type tool, the better it would be!
There are TONS of opportunity to scale, but I think it's a matter if you have the time and resources to do so because the initial setup can be fairly time consuming and prioritized dedication
Through this platform, I always have the idea bout which of my team member is working on which particular part of the project, I can easily track their progress, and also I can easily correct them where it is required by adding sticky notes, by sending the attachments and URLs.
I have not had much ROI on this specific tool just yet. But I do foresee the ability to streamline a lot of our operations as we are beginning to scale.
