Airtable

Airtable has been a genuinely game-changing piece of software for my business. I can't think of another tool that makes managing the content lifecycle so effortless. The way you can organise bases, set up automations, and easily manage everything from social media to email campaigns to content assets is exceptional, to the point where I've made it an integral part of our content processes with clients.

Overall, Airtable is an excellent tool. If I was being picky, the two negatives that have stood out to me are the pricing (it gets quite expensive if you have multiple users working in a base) and the fact that it's not great at certain types of data management due to the way records work. You can't necessarily replicate everything you can do in Excel/Sheets here; it's much better as a way to track and manage assets than as a mathematical tool.

The best feature of Airtable, in my opinion, is its unparalleled flexibility in organizing and visualizing data. The combination of a spreadsheet-style interface with the power of a relational database opens up a world of possibilities. The ability to create custom views, link records, and collaborate in real-time makes it a dynamic tool for projects of any scale.

The pricing structure, especially as the team size grows, can become a consideration. More transparent pricing tiers or additional features in the lower tiers could enhance accessibility for smaller teams or individual users.

When I first started to use Airtable, I came away deeply frustrated with it's usability. It's sometimes slow, straightly obtuse to use and has many "pending features" that would be extremely helpful for some of the simplest of tasks.

However, there came a time when I had to organise a league table for a tournament over the internet, and all of sudden, Airtable clicked.

What Airtable is good at is creating a database of entries for a specific use, so for example, making an internet registration form where a user can enter data and "register" their interest in a particular thing is so quick and easy to do.

I created an application form which auto stored the data into a highly organised table that I could then use however I wanted (I created a league table from the registered users with ease and shared the results of the league as the scoring progressed) - all via the internet, I don't know of a way that I could have achieved this without AirTable, Google Docs would have been a possible solution, but Airtable allows you to add attachments easily (so images, etc) as well as allowing you to manipulate (And hide) data in any way you can think of using Rollups and Lookups - two of it's most powerful features.

Once you get used to it, Airtable becomes useful, and I can see myself using it again and again when I want to organise a very specific and distributed task on the internet.

Don't think this is Excel in a different disguise, it's not, it's not as adaptable and not as powerful as Excel. You couldn't use it to track a project or manage a holiday system or anything like that, but creating a full customer list for a newsletter? Yep, easy, that's the kind of thing it DOES do really well.

It could use a few more features on the free tier of the software (the paid tier unlocks "blocks" - which is a strange name for plugins, which allow you to view the data in different visual ways but ultimately it's not as well integrated as it should be and therefore has a limited use)

Another thing is that Airtables mobile interface is woeful compared to it's desktop version, and for some reason you can't access the desktop website via mobile. I have no idea what compelled them to make this decision but it's something they need to address in the future. The mobile layout is next to useless.