Airtable is the Excel replacement of this developer's dreams.
April 10, 2018
Airtable is the Excel replacement of this developer's dreams.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Airtable
We are using Airtable as a database back-end while we prototype new operating systems to run our nonprofit, which includes 2 improvised theatre performances every week year-round, a busy improv school with new classes starting every week, and a corporate training program. My first impression was that we'd use Airtable until we needed to move to a "real" database, but now I'm not seeing any reason to leave. As a developer, I appreciate not having to build authentication or basic CRUD functionality and being able to provide any customized business logic or reporting that I need via scripts which operate against Airtable's comprehensive and self-documenting API. As a manager, I appreciate the version history and audit trail that is automatically provided. Airtable provides a perfect blend of user-friendly front-end that is approachable for staff accustomed to working with spreadsheets and a robust back-end that provides rigorous data typing and validation. One minor gripe is that I would prefer if forms had a little more flexibility for updating existing records, instead of just generating new ones.
- Airtable has robust API access with a self-documenting API. It's vital for us to be able to access our data via an API and it's easy to do all the operations we need using an open source Python client library.
- Airtable has robust column definitions and the ability to create formulas, lookups, and rollups so data integrity can be guaranteed.
- Airtable handles user access and authentication and provides all the 'interface' elements of a database system so we can focus on writing business logic.
- Forms can only create new records, not update existing records with additional information.
- Forms do not make use of 'default' values when creating new records.
- 'Default' values are limited to certain field types.
- Airtable has helped us totally automate our complimentary pass system, saving printing costs and staff time.
- Airtable has helped us to prototype systems and have them go live in minutes or hours.