Airtable vs. Microsoft Excel

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Airtable
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
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.
$10
per month
Microsoft Excel
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet application available as part of Microsoft 365 (Office 365), or standalone, in cloud-based and on-premise editions.
$6.99
per month
Pricing
AirtableMicrosoft Excel
Editions & Modules
Plus
$10.00
per month (billed annually)
Pro
$20.00
per month (billed annually)
Enterprise
Contact Sales
Excel with Microsoft 365
$6.99
per month
Excel for 1 PC or Mac
$139.99
perpetual license
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
AirtableMicrosoft Excel
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
AirtableMicrosoft Excel
Considered Both Products
Airtable
Chose Airtable
Airtable is:
  • More customizable.
  • Simpler to use than Excel or Sheets—you don't need to write formulas
Microsoft Excel

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
AirtableMicrosoft Excel
Project Management
Comparison of Project Management features of Product A and Product B
Airtable
8.0
221 Ratings
6% above category average
Microsoft Excel
-
Ratings
Task Management8.3185 Ratings00 Ratings
Resource Management9.0181 Ratings00 Ratings
Gantt Charts7.881 Ratings00 Ratings
Scheduling9.2154 Ratings00 Ratings
Workflow Automation8.4131 Ratings00 Ratings
Team Collaboration9.3204 Ratings00 Ratings
Support for Agile Methodology8.6100 Ratings00 Ratings
Support for Waterfall Methodology8.174 Ratings00 Ratings
Document Management8.9158 Ratings00 Ratings
Email integration6.8106 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile Access3.5180 Ratings00 Ratings
Timesheet Tracking8.188 Ratings00 Ratings
Change request and Case Management8.196 Ratings00 Ratings
Budget and Expense Management8.3117 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
AirtableMicrosoft Excel
Small Businesses
FunctionFox
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Score 8.3 out of 10
Google Sheets
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Score 8.5 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
SAP Ruum
SAP Ruum
Score 9.0 out of 10
Google Sheets
Google Sheets
Score 8.5 out of 10
Enterprises
Quickbase
Quickbase
Score 9.2 out of 10
Google Sheets
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Score 8.5 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
AirtableMicrosoft Excel
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(225 ratings)
9.5
(57 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.0
(3 ratings)
9.9
(5 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(22 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
8.2
(29 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
In-Person Training
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.0
(2 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Configurability
9.0
(1 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.0
(1 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.0
(1 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.0
(1 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
AirtableMicrosoft Excel
Likelihood to Recommend
Airtable
Airtable is very well suited for a niche environment that finds other project tracking or collaborative tools to be limiting. The ability to build out a single pool of information to best suit each team member's visual or functional needs is amazing. While the setup time can be lengthy, depending on your particular needs, it is really worth it when it's finally ready.
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Microsoft
For tasks like financial analysis, budgeting, forecasting, and data visualization, I frequently use Microsoft Excel. I can develop financial models, use pivot tables to examine enormous datasets, and produce eye-catching visualizations thanks to its comprehensive features. I have, however, also come across circumstances in which Excel isn't the best tool.Excel falls short of alternatives like Google Sheets when I need to collaborate with my team in real-time. I favor employing robust database management systems or data analysis tools like SQL, Python, or R for managing very big data sets or sophisticated calculations. I use specialized tools like SPSS, SAS, or programming languages for better outcomes when complex statistical analysis or machine learning are necessary. And finally, for formatting elaborate reports, In conclusion, even though I consider Excel to be a great tool for many finance jobs, there are some limits in collaborating, processing big amounts of data, performing complex analysis, and creating documents that I take into account when choosing the best tool for the job.
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Pros
Airtable
  • I can create tables, create and customize fields
  • 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.
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Microsoft
  • It is very good at embedded formulas and tying cells to one another
  • It allows me to compare deals terms on a side-by-side basis and talk my clients through it easily.
  • It is very helpful as well in terms of allowing me to filter/sort results in many different ways depending on what specific information I am most interested in prioritizing.
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Cons
Airtable
  • While working on the Airtable I have noticed that it is not open to uploading of the files for large sizes, most of the time files are not uploaded or links may get broken.
  • In addition, they do not talk much about the time tracking tool and how we can calculate our hours, I still do it with just estimation and by the calendar.
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Microsoft
  • Counting conditionally formatted cells (e.g., you have 5 green cells, 10 red ones, and 3 orange ones in a row).
  • Merging cells in a table; I have to remove the table first and then re-add the table to merge cells together.
  • Offering more preset colour categories for formatting graphs.
  • Built-in functions to run ANOVAs, Multiple Linear Regression, Factor Analysis, etc.
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Likelihood to Renew
Airtable
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.
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Microsoft
It comes with MS Office. Unless we stop using PCs or Microsoft Office, it's highly unlikely, even imperceivable to not continue to use Excel. It would be nice to see more Excel functions used, though, beside basic tables and calculations.
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Usability
Airtable
Airtable has fantastic usability. I personally am fair when it comes to most technologies off the bat. I can understand a lot after being taught but most take me a little when I am teaching myself. Airtable was EXTREMELY easy to use off the bat. It was easy to understand or quickly figure out answers to my questions if i ever felt confused. Someone who has little technological experience could figure out Airtable quite easily.
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Microsoft
Microsoft excel stands out in its User Interface as compared to any other software which offers same functionality. It can be used by a beginner as well as the expert in the same field. It is having many features as we dig deep in it like advance functions, dynamic arrays, pivot, VBA and Macros.
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Reliability and Availability
Airtable
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
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Microsoft
I have rarely, if ever, had issues with its availability.
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Performance
Airtable
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
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Microsoft
Again it does what I need it to do with little to no issues.
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Support Rating
Airtable
I haven't contacted customer support yet, so I wouldn't be able to give a fair response. We also use the free version of the app. They do have document files, which we have looked at to answer key questions. Because it looks like there are a lot of people that use airtable, we've been able to find a lot of resources online.
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Microsoft
I have not had to use it often, but it is good.
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In-Person Training
Airtable
This training was done in-house, but the Airtable team provided resources and how to guides to ensure that we covered all components of the system
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Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Online Training
Airtable
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
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Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Airtable
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.
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Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Airtable
Airtable exceeds all competitors I’ve seen. The feature set is full and only growing. The UI is intuitive for non-tech employees. Any competitors that match Airtable are really operating in a different space. Airtable is the industry leader in this category. Period.
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Microsoft
We utilize Tableau and Alteryx in addition to Excel. We use Excel since we have a data dump that could be utilized in feeding for these two solutions. We select Excel for some manual work then plug the data into the other two tools for further analysis around text analytics like word clouds in Tableau, or text mining in Alteryx. Excel is an input data source that we use in conjunction with these two.
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Airtable
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
N/A I was not involved in this process.
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Scalability
Airtable
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
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Microsoft
It integrates well with all cross functional teams
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Return on Investment
Airtable
  • The performance of the platform has been key to generate revenue and compensate for the investment we made at the beginning.
  • Since the results were good, we proceeded to continue using the software, and in this way we obtained a large amount of profits, increasing our ROI to 5.
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Microsoft
  • Excel has positively impacted the business as it has increased our efficiency.
  • It also saves us the time that we would have spent on making the calculations that it does for us.
  • Since it works on all devices and is compatible with both Windows and Mac, we do not have to invest in any other alternative.
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ScreenShots

Airtable Screenshots

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