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
Smartsheet
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
Smartsheet is an online project management and collaboration tool. It includes automated alerts, instantaneous updating and sharing across team members, resource management, nested tasks organized in a hierarchy, a Gantt chart view, exportable and automated reports, and integration with email.
Originally we were using Smartsheet but it didn't empower us to build such a robust database - data entered in one sheet wasn't automatically added to other sheets and it created a lot more manual labor for us.
I enjoy using Asana for task lists, but I don't love the mobile app and I didn't get the most out of it since my projects are usually not collaborative. Smartsheet has a good gantt chart tool, but the UI is terrible and it isn't as dynamic as I'd have liked. Airtable combines …
Trello - It was hard to print relative fields and hard to export usable data. Smartsheet - Its still growing but didn't really have documents and jpeg insertion the way I hoped, and less "fun" to work on. Excel - Good spreadsheets, but not a lot of extras.
Airtable is much more affordable than Smartsheet, and more capable than Google Sheets as far as related tables, integrations, data views, and team collaboration.
Airtable is much more user friendly than Smartsheet in my opinion. Though Smartsheet has a lot of functionality as well, it comes off as cold and technical. Airtable is fun to use, and kind of addicting to be completely honest. I've also tried Sheets instead of Airtable, but …
While a very capable tool, Smartsheet ultimately didn't provide the ease of use we required for our scenario. Monday was a great tool that felt very similar to Airtable, except its mobile app actually lead to some mismatched information and difficult use in time-sensitive …
We have tried to use smart-sheet before but it is nowhere as good as Airtable. The user interface with Airtable is much better and it also has much more functionality.
Airtable is the only system that gives us the flexibility to both store information related to our clients and event details while also managing the workflow and responsible parties for the tasks associated with these clients and events. The way these two key components of our …
For us, the most important things to consider were the relational aspect (linking one record to another record) and the ease of use. We found Smartsheets clunky and unable to add relationships, and introducing relationships in Google Sheets or Excel was just too difficult to …
Our needs are broad and general. We needed a trued database solution that would take us beyond spreadsheet management, and also a product that could be used for CRM and project management. Airtable was the only solution we found that could meet all our needs at an affordable …
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Asana has a nicer interface but it expensive for what you get. Airtable works well. I would prefer Airtable over Smartsheet except it does not have the capability to fill out the DocuSign's we need. Otherwise, I would solely use Airtable for this. Google Sheets is great and …
.Asana is more task-oriented when I first tried it. I needed something that offered higher-level reporting and aggregation. Smartsheet's automation is also tighter. Podio is great for project-based intake workflows. It has very flexible and customizable fields allowing the …
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.
For teams and users who are very familiar with Excel and its mode of operation, Smartsheet will feel like a walkover. If you have a number of users who use Excel or Google Sheets for their personal project management then you will find this tool to be very useful and somewhat familiar.
Teams that may be used to other project management suites or styles would find Smartsheet a bit challenging to adapt to, as formulas and formatting can be challenging to adapt to.
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.
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.
Smartsheet set up is similar to Excel, yet when you upload an Excel file, things like conditional formatting are lost. Smartsheet has its own conditional formatting, and you have to reinstate the rules. It would be great if those would apply automatically once a file is uploaded
Some Smartsheet management and access rules can take some tweaking to work properly. This may be a case of offering more info to admins so they can apply these better and with more efficiency
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.
It definitely meets our needs as far as organizing and archiving our tasks and files. As we train more staff to view it, I see opportunities for more improvement, which I am sure this program can handle. I look forward to seeing continued improvement from Smartsheet on their capabilities and functionality.
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.
Smartsheet is very easy to learn. However, while I have been able to pick it easily, Microsoft Excel and Project super users that I have trained on Smartsheet get bogged down in the differences and can find it frustrating. Explaining the differences ahead of time and why Smartsheet is being chosen instead of a different software seems to counteract those reactions
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
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.
I give this rating because it fills a niche in the market. MS Project scares many away from proper task management but there are limited tools our there, especially cloud-based that are mobile-friendly. Smartsheet fills this market gap, especially for small to medium-sized businesses. IT is not fair to compare it to MS Project, but fairer to see what gaps it fills.
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.
It's absolutely paramount to take a few minutes to actually play with the software. It's nearly impossible to do anything wrong or make a mistake which cannot be fixed easily. Under the help menu is Live Training option. After you familiarize yourself with the commands, watch the live training for some in depth understanding of how to make the software fit your needs perfectly.
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.
Jira and Redmine are much more robust and technologically advanced project management solutions. I enjoy using either when managing a very large project. However, I prefer to use Smartsheet for my smaller to medium sized projects. As for Google Drive - I would say that Google sheets and Smartsheet are almost identical in my opinion when it comes to functionality. Personally I prefer to manage smaller projects via Google Drive, but it is a personal preference!
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
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.