App Review: Airtable

Airtable revolutionizes spreadsheets. Should you spread the word or hide it under your sheets?

Every two weeks I review an app based on the perspectives of a business analyst, an information technology specialist, and a pun aficionado. If you like this content, subscribe to my site and follow me on social media.

Everybody hates something about Excel or Google Sheets. I dislike how the icons in Excel don't mean anything and how it does not handle switching back and forth between languages for formulas. Google Sheets is slower than The Undertaker's entrance and does not sufficiently enable collaboration.

Airtable founders could not sit quietly and just moan like the rest of us. They'd put old spreadsheets to rest!

Airtable grants you the almost infinite power of Excel with Google Sheet's cloud-native features, plus an array of templates, plugins, and pre-made scripts to open your data to powerful no-code or low-code apps.

Business Analyst Take

As a BA, I want to see how this application can enhance my team's productivity. If I am part of a large enterprise, or consulting small businesses, I need to justify the ROI for a high-priced product. Plus, I need to prove it's not like playing air guitar.

Exploring the app

Below is what I was able to accomplish within an hour of using the app's free tier. I began by trying to import content from Notion and monday.com to average-at-best results. The Notion transfer did work but I would have had to export every wiki individually. The monday.com export/import had antiquated documentation and a csv/Excel conversion bug blocked me. After such a rough start, I went to a job applicants template, since this is a business process I know rather well. I then built an easy workflow to automate sending an e-mail if a candidate passed an interview. The pre-filled template helps set Airtable apart from Excel with easy to add colors and images. If your company's HR department manages recruitment with spreadsheets, this could give your recruiters one "a-ha!" moment right there! Yes, specialized software could do much more to streamline and scale their job (this is going to be a recurring theme of the review), but converting the spreadsheet your team knows and making it awesome can serve while you wait for the budget!

Thinking about "converting something that famously uses spreadsheets to an awesome spreadsheet", I decided to experiment with our good old risk management matrix. I created a run-of-the-mill risk Excel and then converted it in seconds to Airtable. The new document pre-populated the colours and allowed me to build a kanban and risk matrix with pre-built templates. I also experimented with formulas and automation.  The formula mode stuck out for me as very UX-friendly.

Speaking of UX-friendly, the last picture in the gallery shows my risk matrix on mobile, which blows away any risk matrix I saw on Google Sheet mobile. And not only because the Airtable one had funky dinosaurs in a scenario.

Funky Dinosaur Going to Town

I was a bit disappointed by the difficulties in creating a "messy" spreadsheet. Airtable requires users to pick a type whenever they create a new column, which can deteriorate your copy-paste frenzies. I would have preferred a toggle to allow implicit typing of the columns so as to not stop me if I want to bulk add 20 columns for the sake of it.

Recommended Use Cases

One day, your business will get embarrassed due to some file not being sent to a good place at a good time; a manager will table flip and say it is enough. Enter Airtable. Can't flip air tables, right?

An intern shows up at the office with the dopest spreadsheets that ever spread. Within weeks, everybody has emoji-ridden tables and IT sensors throw a fit over the mounting shadow IT.  

Limitations

My concern about Airtable lies within the aforementioned shadow IT scenario: Airtable is not a strategic app. Yes, it is unquestionably better than Excel and Google Drive. But almost every business uses either, and they provide many features over spreadsheets such as cloud storage, email, chat, and video conferences. It is quite an incumbent and I am certain their salespeople must be sometimes tired to trot out Excel battle cards.

I was disappointed with the about section of the website from that standpoint. I don't think the product supports the CEO's claim that Airtable is born from a desire to allow everybody to build apps. I do not feel the app's identity yet reaches out to something else than "awesome spreadsheets" and it will impact its growth in B2B in my opinion.  

Pricing

There is a generous free tier, plus ($10/user/month), pro ($20/user/month), and enterprise. Assuming enterprise costs more and knowing everyone must use Airtable for the product to deliver, I don't know how their salespeople convince clients to put money on the table (heh). For a 500-people company, assuming a discount of enterprise to pro price, it is $120,000 a year. How can Airtable yield such a ROI?

Technology Review

As an IT expert, I want to open the hood and see how this machine is built. I want to know everything about hosting, security, integrations, data processing standards, off-shore information transfers, privacy practices and what silly name the HR department came up with to name the employees. airtablished? tablers?

Hosting

Airtable is hosted in AWS data centers in the US. Personnel is located in California based on the current job postings (2022). Investments seem focused on scalability, data engineering and reliability, which suggest strong base growth.

Security

Airtable is ISO and SOC certified. The security whitepaper, aside from the software development part, feels a bit too "paint by numbers". Structure and wording are based on the SOC 2 expectations, but there is a benefit to hitting the same spots as everybody else I guess.

The public bug bounty struck me as a bit too quiet for my liking, with seemingly no findings in the last 6 months.

Where's the bug?

Based on what I could find Airtable seems to maintain enterprise-grade security practices.

My one disappointment is the pay-walling of Single Sign On to the Enterprise plan. In my opinion, there is probably a negative ROI to having users manage their passwords since it inevitably creates support tickets.

Conclusion

Pros

• Is the spreadsheet you've always dreamed of
• Fixes flaws in Excel and Google Sheet
• Fast loading times
• Easy formulas edition

Cons

• Product not yet on par with the strategic mission of allowing no-code apps to thrive in the workplace
• Questionable value proposition against Excel/Google Sheet incumbent may lead to business disruptions, pricing changes, and product realignments which could hurt the consumer base enjoying a generous free tier.

Verdict

Next time you feel like putting Excel off the table, do yourself a favour and try Airtable.

Be warned your CIO will not make money appear out of thin air for it.