Airtable for Your Workflow: Everything You Need to Know
Workflow management is a critical part of any job. It’s what keeps a project moving, and a team motivated to see it through. But, how do you support effective workflow management?
You start with understanding better what tools, platforms, and software are out there that can support your team’s ability to effectively manage workflow and collaborate within their teams and beyond.
To that end, we’ve identified Airtable as a strong market leader in workflow management software. So, let’s dive into Airtable’s features, capabilities, and price points to help you better understand your options.
What Is Airtable?
Airtable is a workflow management application with highly customizable database management tools used predominantly for collaborative project management.
The focus on having accessible, easy-to-use software to help with project management is increasing, and Airtable is a top choice. It features a familiar spreadsheet interface, but unlike traditional spreadsheet software that only records data, Airtable can also help you organize, sync, and manage your data and customize exactly how you need it.
For example, let’s say you’re using Airtable to manage vendor management workflow for an event. This would entail designing the database to include fields for:
- Vendors’ contact details
- Links to their websites
- Inputting key information, such as lead times, product availabilities, and prices
- Uploading order confirmations
- Uploading invoices
- Important notes and comments about the vendor
The option to invite collaborators to this database is also critical so individual users can easily update data in real-time. Having all these features in a single platform means users can clearly follow the progression of a particular project and keep everyone in the team up-to-date on their tasks and next steps.
How Much is Airtable
Airtable’s interface is very flexible and is ideal for numerous industries. While it has been marketed to larger corporations, most users who have had hands-on experience with the platform say that it is just as useful for smaller businesses.
This is reflected in Airtable’s pricing, which follows a monthly subscription model. This subscription cost increases depending on the number of features and ‘seats’ you choose to purchase, making it highly scalable depending on your organization’s needs.
Airtable’s features are grouped into four levels, and the price per seat rises accordingly. A breakdown of each level can be found below:
Free
- Designed for very small teams or individuals
- Up to 5 editors and unlimited ‘read-only’ users
- 1200 records per base
- 2GB of attachments
Plus
$10 per seat – Billed annually
$12 per seat – Billed monthly
- For small to medium-sized organizations
- Eliminates information silos within a team by connecting applications
- More advanced collaboration features
- 5,000 records per base
- 5GB of attachments
Pro
$20 per seat – Billed annually
$24 per seat – Billed monthly
- For medium to large organizations who need to streamline and collaborate on top-priority data
- More advanced features
- 50,000 records per base
- 20 GB of attachments
Enterprise
- Price is customized to your organization’s needs
- Enterprise-wide admin panel
- For organizations who need a scalable product to keep up with workloads
- Unlimited workspaces per organization
- 250,000 records per base
- 1,000 GB of attachments
How Airtable Works
Airtable was built to be as customizable as possible, giving users the ability to display their data in a way that meets their specific needs—whether that means a simple presentation or a more complex one.
Getting started is simple.
You start with an empty Airtable, which is essentially your ‘base.’ From here, you just fill it with your data. You can either use a template and bring in data from another source or construct a database from scratch. Whatever the case, you can leverage Airtable’s features to tailor the platform to meet your needs. For example, you can use the Interface Design feature to visually present data in a way that makes the most sense to you and your team.
Familiarizing and understanding all of Airtable’s features and capabilities may require some effort, but the payoff is worth it. Taking the time to learn the platform will ensure users have full control over their data and workflow management.
Features
Access to Airtable’s numerous features will depend on your subscription and, subsequently, the scalability of your projects. However, all subscription options should include:
- Unlimited bases
- Sync integrations
- The ability to add attachments
- Revision and snapshot history reporting
- Field and editing permissions
- Extension add-ons (e.g., data visualization or reporting extensions)
Airtable also provides:
Customizable Views
With a click of a button, this feature gives users the flexibility to switch between different data views. Users can view project timelines via the Timeline View, and easily switch to managing team tasks on the collaborative Kanban View. Other viewing options are also available ensuring that you can customize your viewing experience so you can maximize the platform.
The Timeline View
The Kanban View
Automations
Airtable Automations lets users streamline their work processes and boost team efficiency by providing customization options for notifications and creating multi-step workflows. The feature is helpful in terms of tracking project timelines and helping eliminate manual, repetitive tasks. Additionally, it can also minimize the risk of user error.
Syncing
Airtable’s ability to synchronize data means users have a central repository of information that is updated in real-time across all users and departments. It’s a useful tool that promotes seamless collaboration and data integrations, allowing everyone to enjoy a comprehensive understanding of project status or workflows at the speed of need.
Reporting
To enhance your project’s reporting capabilities, Airtable’s powerful reporting tools and extensions let users create highly customized reports that visualize your data in a simple understandable way. You can choose from a variety of charts, graphs, and tables to ensure that information is presented in a way that is easy to understand.
Integrations
Airtable offers robust integration that lets you connect the platform to a wide range of software; ensuring that all the project management tools that you use operate seamlessly. Airtable’s integrations mean multiple applications can be streamlined to automatically sync data, share information between different platforms, and automate tasks so workflows can be further improved.
Templates
Airtable’s templates can be used to effectively organize every aspect of your project’s workflows. Their pre-designed databases can be used as a great starting point for your projects. Conveniently, Airtable templates are also organized into several categories and industries, which helps you save time and effort from creating a new one from scratch. As always, these pre-populated grids are highly customizable.
Airtable Pros and Cons
Pros
- Facilitates easy collaboration between teams with company-wide visibility of plans, calendars, and workflows.
- Both Google and non-Google users can take advantage of all the features and integrations to support workflow management and collaboration
- Highly customizable bases and effective reporting features
Cons
- The platform’s user interface can be complicated for beginners
- Requires a significant learning curve
Airtable Alternatives
A great way to decide whether Airtable is the right software for you is to compare it to other options in the workflow management space.
Eliminate the hassle of comparing options by choosing from your top choices below. With the ability to review features and relevant information in one place, you can utilize our comprehensive product reviews to gather the necessary data you need to make well-informed decisions.
ClickUp
An all-in-one project management application, Clickup is designed to be used across any industry. From solo users to larger organizations, Clickup focuses on task management to help teams streamline their workflow.
ClickUp offers numerous workflow features and data views, including a built-in Table View to ensure your team always has access to a condensed, actionable snapshot of your projects.
Notion
Designed for smaller teams or individuals, Notion is an all-in-one SaaS note-taking app and database for streamlined project management. Some features include:
- A web clipper so you can easily save images and sites
- A real-time messenger feature
- Allows for category and page hierarchy organization
Hive
With a focus on automation tools, Hive aims to simplify overly complicated work processes through email and task automation. Boasting a user-friendly dashboard, Hive aims to help teams of all sizes automate time-consuming work tasks to give time back to a project’s creation and growth.
A Final Findstack Opinion
Overall, Airtable is a highly comprehensive and customizable workflow management application.
Airtable’s app offers flexibility by allowing you to switch views and integrate reporting extensions, ensuring your data is suitable for various applications. Additionally, its extensive list of integrations enables you to consolidate all your preferred tools and their data in one convenient location.
It’s important to keep in mind, however, that these features are only useful for those willing to take the time to learn them. Airtable’s interface can be quite overwhelming for new users so our advice is to scale to higher subscription packages only after you’ve taken the time to learn the app’s features and familiarize yourself with them.
