
Airtable gets $52M in funding - prostoalex
http://www.businessinsider.com/airtable-ceo-howie-liu-interview-on-52-million-in-funding-2018-3?op=1
======
digitalbase
Airtable is awesome.

We have been throwing out a ton of self-built admin forms and CRUD pages by
Airtable bases. Now people inside the company can add new fields, versioning
by default, super simple interface.

Largest con: No webhooks. Which makes you pull data every X minutes to find
out if a record changed. I would throw them a lot more money (280$/month now)
if they just had webhooks as it could replace a TON internal systems/reports.

Second con: Ids. I would want them to support client delivered record_ids.
Right now airtable has it's own ID field (which can not be set). Therefore if
you want syncing to work efficiently you need to store that airtable_id on
your side to do REST updates (PATCH). Would be better that airtable record_ids
could be provided by the client so I can inject database primary keys and not
have to store/query their record_id

~~~
tbrock
Likewise, I am foaming at the mouth to replace some internal google sheets
with air table but as you mention, webhook capability is table stakes to front
the effort.

~~~
agent86
You might want to look into Quick Base.[1] It is actually the little known
elder statesman in this space and includes a lot of features Airtable doesn't
currently support. Specific to this thread, one of them is Webhooks.[2] And
while the product uses an autonumber for keys by default, you can change it
and then import/update against your designated key.[3]

[1] [https://www.quickbase.com](https://www.quickbase.com)

[2] [https://help.quickbase.com/user-
assistance/default.html#abou...](https://help.quickbase.com/user-
assistance/default.html#about_webhooks.html)

[3] [https://help.quickbase.com/user-
assistance/default.html#sett...](https://help.quickbase.com/user-
assistance/default.html#setting_the_key_field.html)

~~~
braum
Unless I missed something, their plans start at $25mo (annual billing) with
min of 20 users, maybe in same space but not very appetizing to get your feet
wet. but i'm sure their pricing is designed with that in mind.

------
abhiyerra
During the Sonoma County fires we had over 60 volunteeers editing Airtable
verifying shelter information, fire locations, developments, lost and found
and more. We essentially put a light Rails app in front of it to serve as a
front end for the site sonomafireinfo.com. I don’t think we could have scaled
and gotten volunteers onboard as quickly as we did without Airtable.

~~~
ProAm
You couldnt get an app to scale to 60 people without this? Something seems
off, 60 people is not a lot.

~~~
kornish
I think the better question is: during a life-and-death fire rescue effort, is
it a better use of time to use Airtable as a backend or to write, deploy, and
operate a concurrent editing backend yourself? There's a clear answer here.

~~~
ProAm
Good point but most states have disaster relief infrastructure already in
place for events like this? If this was scrounged up the day of it would make
sense.

~~~
snomad
Why do you believe most states have IT-related disaster relief infrastructure
in place? I worked for several years in CA govt, I would be surprised if
anything beyond the major metros has much in place for coordinating shelters,
etc. In fact, the sonoma fires are documented to have had lots of problems
with reverse 911.

~~~
fudged71
I have been eager to explore the available tools for disaster relief because
it seems like people scamble to DIY a solution for every disaster. I made my
own Firebase relief matchmaking service when we had a 100yr flood a couple
years ago. I would love to see easily deployed crowdsourced open-sourced tools
that can be used as soon as possible in these scenarios.

------
mjw1007
I like airtable, but the per-base row limits (50,000 before you reach "contact
us for pricing") are too small for many of the things I'd like to use it for.

And there's something a bit odd in their pricing model, isn't there?

The plus tier is $10 per user per month with a limit of 5,000 records per
base; the pro tier is $20 per user per month, with a limit of 50,000 records
per base.

Suppose I want to use it to replace a spreadsheet where our staff record some
kind of work they have done.

If I have a staff of 2 I can pay airtable $20 per month on the plus tier and
each person can do work generating 2,500 records in a shared space before I
have to upgrade.

But if I have a staff of 50 and I pay airtable $500 per month on the plus
tier, each person can only generate 100 records before I have to upgrade. Even
if I pay them $1000 per month on the pro tier I'm still worse off on this
metric at 1000 records per person.

~~~
fiatjaf
The whole charged-per-user SaaS culture is stupid.

SaaS had to be priced somehow, then someday someone came up with the idea of
charging per-user and everybody followed that up, but it is not smart. Most
SMB end up sharing accounts, which makes your product look worse than it
actually is and at the same time makes your users miserable.

~~~
thirdsun
That's one of the reasons I love Basecamp's pricing model - a flat $99/month
for as many users as you'd like.

~~~
rtx
We recently decided to follow that path, but for us additional users will not
have any significant increase in cost.

------
Kagerjay
Glad to see this company get more funding. Last year I ported all of our
companys excel and access files over to airtable. Currently tweaking with
their API to work with a MS-SQL database using amazon Lambda and RDS at the
moment. Their API documentation is fantastic, some of the best I've seen as
well. They even have some of the best case studies for workflow management as
well, posted on their blog, for setting up a relational database management
setup in different use cases.

As a user who's also part of their alpha-test program, its exciting to see all
the changes they made this year. They added blocks which lets you add app-like
integrations such as forms, kanban, maps integration, page designer (think of
mailmerge for word) etc. I personally have only dabbled in about half the
things offered here, but its crazy how many things you can do with airtable.

I also wrote a popular excel VBA script for airtable too, for bulk downloading
and renaming images found here on their forum.
[https://community.airtable.com/t/bulk-image-downloader-
and-r...](https://community.airtable.com/t/bulk-image-downloader-and-renamer-
using-excel-vba/4913/3).

Airtable has lots of potential use cases for startup apps as well, I highly
suggest reading this article from a philosophical standpoint.
[http://sirupsen.com/minimum-viable-airtable/](http://sirupsen.com/minimum-
viable-airtable/)

~~~
tootie
Can I ask what actual business functions these spreadsheets are for?

~~~
Kagerjay
I use it to manage purchase orders overseas and use it as a traditional
product database. Anything that I would use MS-access for I use airtable
instead.

On this page,
[https://airtable.com/templates](https://airtable.com/templates), there's a
database called "Product Catalog". Thats what I use

------
simonswords82
I don't know man, I might not be the target audience (MD of a software
company) but I just don't get this.

It seems only slightly more useful than say a Google spreadsheet on a platform
that yes might have blocks and templates but I didn't see anything there that
made me want to switch away from Google Spreadsheets, Trello and a couple of
other systems I use to run my 20 person £1mm turnover business.

I'll keep it in mind but having played with Airtable I just don't see the
value. Still, wish them all the best.

~~~
sheetjs
Spolsky's discussion of Excel is probably the best way to understand Airtable:
[https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2012/01/06/how-trello-is-
diff...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2012/01/06/how-trello-is-different/)

> Over the next two weeks we visited dozens of Excel customers, and did not
> see anyone using Excel to actually perform what you would call
> “calculations.” Almost all of them were using Excel because it was a
> convenient way to create a table.

> What was I talking about? Oh yeah… most people just used Excel to make
> lists. Suddenly we understood why Lotus Improv, which was this fancy
> futuristic spreadsheet that was going to make Excel obsolete, had failed
> completely: because it was great at calculations, but terrible at creating
> tables, and everyone was using Excel for tables, not calculations.

If you view it from the lens that most Excel users employ the spreadsheet to
create lists and tables (data organization), then Airtable is one way to
improve that workflow.

~~~
titus22
If that's the target audience, then I see Airtable failing also. Surely 80% of
the benefit of an excel spreadsheet, or google sheets, for a common user is
how bare bones and simple to navigate the two products are?

"Oh hey, I just need to fire off some data rapidly in an organized way. Boop,
done." And that's the trick, isn't it? The need to rapidly organize previously
un-organized data. It's not a case of, "I know exactly how I want to rapidly
organize some data."

With Airtable, it would be "I now have to navigate this decoupled spread out
GUI and learn what all these abstract terms mean, when all I want to do is
calculate how much we spent on ice cream last month."

In essence, it is making the workflow slower for those types of people.

On the other end of the spectrum, from a programmer's point of view, GUI's
ALWAYS slow things down. This is why programmers who used VIM / Emacs were
faster than those using modern IDE's. It's why hot-keys are important to both
technical and non-technical workers. Presentation does not equal productivity.
The presentation is what Airtable is pushing as the abstraction for non-
technical users.

If the target audience for Airtable is instead small-business startups - then
those startups are going to be in for a world of hurt when they need to get
into real business development. They will have wasted time, energy, and
resources to get set up on a lego platform that they'll need to migrate away
from.

Looking at the pricing model and data limitations, there's nothing that would
make this a better choice than just hooking up to AWS or something similar,
directly. Using Airtable would require maintaining some form of middleware for
SPA's...and there's no way in the world that you wouldn't be hitting their
caps rapidly. Just an extra cost.

I'm not saying this product won't work well for a market niche, but that niche
is a lot smaller than the buzz words thrown around in today's publications.

~~~
nojvek
52M isn’t chump change in funding. Glad to know VC’s think it’s a big problem.

Personally I am working on an Airtable/excel like product but rather than a
spreadsheet, you can easily make structured hierarchies. Think rows, which
could have more rows, or link to other cells. A very easy way to capture
relational data.

You can just start writing stuff in cells Define headings and data types
later. Like git, it stores version history, let’s you work offline and let’s
you sync with others. Let’s you upload markdown, or pictures and files into
cells. Define a stricter schemas later. Restrict editing/viewing of cells
based on formulas so others can’t easily break what you’ve created.

I wrote a little manifesto at orows.com and working on a prototype. Once I
have about a 100 users, I plan to quit my job and work on it full time.

Think github, but rather than files, an object graph.

------
d--b
Pg's startup idea YC would fund from 2008:

22\. A web-based Excel/database hybrid. People often use Excel as a
lightweight database. I suspect there's an opportunity to create the program
such users wish existed, and that there are new things you could do if it were
web-based. Like make it easier to get data into it, through forms or scraping.

Don't make it feel like a database. That frightens people. The question to ask
is: how much can I let people do without defining structure? You want the
database equivalent of a language that makes its easy to keep data in linked
lists. (Which means you probably want to write it in one.)

From:
[http://old.ycombinator.com/ideas.html](http://old.ycombinator.com/ideas.html)

~~~
2_listerine_pls
I bet every developer that has used sheets in a business setting has come to
realize that there was a need for an intuitive web database with relations and
forms. I was thinking about doing something like this the other day, also saw
it Pg's startup list.

~~~
yoshyosh
I bet there's still room for such a solution if it was targeted specifically
to developers. I personally really liked Parse because of this functionality.

~~~
kareemamin
Definitely! You should check out [https://base.run](https://base.run) \- it's
a solution targeted to developers that want to quickly build and test out
ideas or internal tools

------
whoisjuan
Well deserved funding.

Airtable is one of those products that really changes the way you work or even
think about building workflows. I use it as a middleware for uploading content
to a side project website I own. Nothing out there is as flexible and easy to
use as this (their API is also a piece of cake.)

They care deeply about their user experience and are always shipping features
at an impressive pace. Really happy to see them growing.

Simply put. Airtable is like Smartsheets but for cool people :D

~~~
presspot
+10000 Airtable is badass. It is simple and elegant and fills a niche

------
igammarays
We've used Airtable for replacing various parts of our internal backend
dashboards for non-technical people. Syncing over the API + Zapier is doable,
but I wish they made two-way sync easier. And the fact that they don't have
cross-base lookups is a __major __pain point.

For anything that requires quick fiddling and no API access, I still prefer
traditional spreadsheets. Airtable's strict relational limitations means you
cannot quickly enter some static data in an arbitrary field (e.g. a currency
exchange rate). This makes quick back-of-the napkin calculations really
awkward, even impossible.

------
callesgg
Airtable seams cool but i have a hard time understanding where in the market
they are.

Like between Excel and a relational db app? Not sure about that.

Some things that often fail in excel is:

* You cant easily verify what the user writes.

* It is hard to stop users from destroying the formulas that make it work.

* It becomes slow when the row count starts to go up.

* You cant have user roles where some users is suppose to be able to see one thing and edit another and another user is to edit another thing and see something else.

* Data relationships are also mostly not there.

~~~
FLUX-YOU
>* You cant easily verify what the user writes.

Sharepoint somewhat handles that with file locking and had some revision
history and permissions support. Most people just put spreadsheets on shared
folders, so of course they get blown up.

Airtable is basically an enterprise swiss army knife for solving trench-
fighting issues. That's basically the market, freeing up developers to handle
main projects to make it worth the company's time to employ them.

Some rando department needs a form for their new employees or needs to
spreadsheet-collaborate? Instead of building some custom webapp, Airtable is a
central point for those kinds of things where a more specialized workflow
solution doesn't exist.

------
pcurve
I wish our company had this 10 years ago. Everybody was using and mis-using
Excel for everything, whether it's requirements, project tracking,
documentation, manually updated dashboard and dashboard.

We're not abusing Excel anymore, but we've ended up specialized software for
everything. Ironically we've lost ability to create something that is exactly
tailored for each person's need.

~~~
ubermonkey
Excel is SUCH a double-edged sword, isn't it?

------
jaredcwhite
I think Airtable's marketing hasn't always been ideal, because I don't really
think of it as a spreadsheet product. In fact, I've actually tried using it to
do spreadsheet-like number crunching and it's just not that good at it.

What it really is is a darn-fine visual database that only looks like a
spreadsheet (potentially...there are other views as well). The ability to
create fairly sophisticated, structured data models along with an easy to way
to collaboratively edit that data is pretty impressive. I've been using it
both in my freelance business as well as to manage lots of household planning
stuff along with my wife, and it's done a great job. I wish the Pro plan were
cheaper...I'm only on Plus right now and want the features of the Pro plan.
But I understand the need to charge for good tooling. (Also a happy paying
customer of Basecamp here.)

------
krisroadruck
Happy to see these guys doing well. Got turned onto their product middle of
last year and have started using it for all sorts of stuff. Its a great middle
ground between an excel file and building a custom app for things. Super
flexible with very little learning curve. Girlfriend and I even use it to
track which wines we've tried, like, and ratings and stuff for them.

~~~
fiatjaf
Would you use a spreadsheet for that?

I'm asking sincerely, since most of open examples I see of people using
Airtable and Fieldbook and other similar software is for these simple use
cases -- in fact for tracking wines or whatever, a spreadsheet is maybe much
better.

Now when I tried to use Fieldbook for a somewhat complex bunch of data that
gets currently added, 5 tables with references between them it has quickly
bloated and become slow to the point of not being usable anymore.

So I'm left with the impression that people mostly use these apps for simple
use cases where a spreadsheet, or a Trello board, or even a text file would be
better; and that complex use-cases are not supported at all -- as they
wouldn't be in a spreadsheet.

~~~
porker
> Now when I tried to use Fieldbook for a somewhat complex bunch of data that
> gets currently added, 5 tables with references between them it has quickly
> bloated and become slow to the point of not being usable anymore.

I've had the same experience, glad it's not just me. It was a few months ago
so I don't remember the exact details, but I could not model the complex
relationships I wanted in Fieldbook (which I've used before) or Airtable (my
first time). I didn't gel with the Airtable UI either.

~~~
nojvek
Care to elaborate what kind of complex data modelling you wanted to do?

------
austenallred
Airtable is a fantastic product. We use it religiously.

For those that may be interested, one of Lambda School's students has been
building out an ORM for Airtable to abstract away some aspects of the API.
[https://lambda-school-labs.github.io/Airtable-ORM/](https://lambda-school-
labs.github.io/Airtable-ORM/)

~~~
jamestimmins
Do you know what documentation tool this uses to handle the layout? It looks
awesome.

~~~
austenallred
It's Slate [https://github.com/lord/slate](https://github.com/lord/slate),
which could use some updated docs, but it looks good

------
benatkin
This is pretty similar to DabbleDB. I wonder why this was so much more
successful than DabbleDB. [https://techcrunch.com/2006/03/11/dabbledb-online-
app-buildi...](https://techcrunch.com/2006/03/11/dabbledb-online-app-building-
for-everyone/)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wZmYMWKLkY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wZmYMWKLkY)

~~~
MattRix
Because DabbleDB was ugly and not very user friendly?

~~~
benatkin
Yeah that sounds about right.

------
veritas3241
Does anyone know how this compares to Coda[0]? I saw a post a while back about
Coda and signed up to get an invite but haven't heard anything since.

[0][https://coda.io/welcome](https://coda.io/welcome)

~~~
psteinweber
I know a bit about that, as I tried both. Spoiler: We kept using Airtable and
Dropbox Paper instead.

Pros Coda: \- As implied above: it is quite good at merging the features of a
"word processor" (more like Google Drive, Dropbox Paper) with Airtable like
functionality (Spreadsheets that are very easy to use, filter, display
differently... I.e. building small pseudo apps. Basically: you can add text
above and below your "Airtable" \- Multiple documents inside a document
(navigation on the left side). Pretty good for Wiki like things

Pros Airtable: \- Better in displaying data (colors etc), adding attachements,
e and other visual benefits that make it accessible to non nerds. \- I know
the pricing model. Coda doesn't tell (me) what they will charge. I simply
didn't want to become dependent on something I don't know I can afford (many
users)

~~~
veritas3241
Thanks for the insight! I haven't played with either but this is pushing me a
bit towards airtable :)

------
sirmike_
Airtable is exactly what [https://transpose.com/](https://transpose.com/)
Transpose could have been. But better. Been using it for just about everything
you can think of. Did not know about the Blocks feature. Awesome. I got fairly
good with Transpose until they closed up shop. Fieldbook and Airtable
definitely can do things that Trello (cannot do tables) and Evernote (can do
tables but very limited) cannot. There is a huge middle ground between Goog
Spreadsheets and MSFT Excel. I hope they do not sell out to anyone. The day
they do will be the end of their flexibility.

~~~
dyarosla
I hate to burst your bubble- but taking on investments like this probably
indicates they’ll be looking for a buy out/sell out eventually

~~~
skellera
The article literally says that's not the case. They hope to get an IPO. I
know doesn't mean it's 100% true but it's still right there.

"Airtable isn't yet profitable, Liu said, but can be "cash flow positive at a
moments notice." And an IPO is the eventual goal, he says, because he doesn't
want to sell his company again. "

~~~
apetresc
To be fair, lots of founders say this to press, and tell a completely
different story to investors. I don't know anything about Howie Liu but in
_general_ there's roughly zero correlation between what a founder tells
reporters about acquisition plans and reality.

------
petervandijck
Airtable runs businesses and I can easily see them becoming a platform (with
other businesses being built on top of them) in the next few years. Amazing
product and they've nailed something no-one else has for decades (merge excel
and db advantages into one product).

------
digitalbase
For everyone that does not get what makes this different from Google Sheets
have a look at this video
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGUCqWa0Msc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGUCqWa0Msc)
where the CEO of Airtable (Howie Liu) is live coding an example on top of
Airtable

Google spreadsheets is a collaborative excel Airtable is much more than that
(forms, views, versioning)

~~~
conanbatt
Using zeit's now on that demo. Damn that service is so convenient.

~~~
digitalbase
The video made me discover zeit. It changed my life :-0

------
sargshep
I think Zoho Creator is everything that is being asked for in the threads
below for airtable. Cheap Pricing, Tonnes of drag and drop field types,
powerful webhooks and api for integration (in fact there are a lot of
integrations out of the box) , good partner network with hundreds of
developers already running multi million businesses from the platform, able to
scale to over 3 million users per app, big plans at reasonable prices, drag
and drop approach PLUS developer IDE for coding if you want to get into
detail. Dashboards, HTML combined with CSS and javascript type language. I
have met the CEO of Zoho Creator and he is NOT going to sell out to the VC's
or a large company any time soon. It has been bootstrapped for over ten years.
One of the major problem I have had with platforms is them being BOUGHT OUT by
large companies (ie Podio and Citrix, Foxpro and Microsoft) and then they KILL
them or don't keep upgrading them like the orig founders had envisioned.

------
Tomrn
Anyone else getting a bit of a dodgy PR vibe about this post and all the
glowing comments, or is it just me?

------
viraptor
I'm really happy about airtable. My use case is basically "shared
access/excel-like with easier row grouping and simple projections". I used the
API as well.

The feature I miss most is charts/graphs. Really hope they'll add them one
day.

~~~
oddgoo
It seems that charts exist as part of their blocks offering:

[https://airtable.com/blocks](https://airtable.com/blocks)

But only for customers in the Pro tier.

~~~
viraptor
Thanks. I looked at blocks, but on a mobile view it only shows the maps
option, not everything else :-(

------
jhinds
I was actually looking for something like this, good to know a product like
this exists.

I use a combination of Trello and Google Drive for most things, everything
from my personal life, to hobbies, to side projects, and work items. I love
Trello but sometimes I want something a little bit more. I think I'll to
duplicate things I'm working on for a few weeks or so in here to see how I
like it. Maybe I'll replace Trello or maybe there are some integrations out
there already to sync somehow, or maybe If I'm bored and have time on my hands
I'll try writing something myself.

The app looks great but hopefully they add Kanban support for iPhone soon.

~~~
nojvek
Have you used fieldbook. It’s pretty amazing too. Like spreadsheets, but more
involved.

------
toomuchtodo
Original Show HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8373914](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8373914)

[alternatives link removed]

~~~
Kagerjay
all the alternatives are fairly mediocre, I tried them all. The closest thing
is google spreadsheets, which really is not designed for RDBMS / light
database work. You can read my review on alternativeto.net as well.

[https://alternativeto.net/software/airtable/reviews/](https://alternativeto.net/software/airtable/reviews/)

~~~
toomuchtodo
I see above you mention moving a lot of your business processes to it from
Excel and Access. What would you do if Airtable was acquired and sunset? I'm
in risk management, so a lot of my day to day is planning for the unexpected,
hence my concern and interest in alternatives (perhaps an open source front
end paired with OpenFaaS on the backend for integrations).

~~~
Kagerjay
That's a risk I'm willing to take.

Airtable doesn't have an official, automated local backup system yet. Their
forum post indicates it as well [https://community.airtable.com/t/offline-
local-backup/754/77](https://community.airtable.com/t/offline-local-
backup/754/77).

Ideally, airtable should download a copy of all my database files into dropbox
at least once/day, but that feature doesn't exist.

It should also have a automatic file downloader backup (e.g. when you upload
an image, it goes to their amazonS3 server → that should ideally be backed up
locally as well). Doesn't exist either. Just have to use the plugin I wrote
for the time being

There is a 3rd party solution for backing up airtables using its API. Its on
this forum post. [https://community.airtable.com/t/zenbackups-airtable-
databas...](https://community.airtable.com/t/zenbackups-airtable-database-
backups/3582?source_topic_id=5052). Personally, I have not used it.

Another thing from a risk management standpoint. Airtable has only 1 API key,
and that key has access to EVERYTHING. If someone knows both your API key +
your airtable's base ID, they can do anything with it. Issue GET requests for
data, PATCH and update values in your database, etc.

------
inthewoods
Feels to me a bit like Filemaker Pro!

Other than that, isn't their real competition Quickbase?

------
blunte
I'm always shocked when I discover something tech-related that "millions of
people are using". How did I miss this?

------
doctorbellario
As an avid Excel and GSheet user, it's nice and slick with a few more bells
and whistles. Very clean and probably good for an organization with members
who are not very good with sheets in general or have a hard time mapping data
mentally; akin to a better designed SmartSheet.

------
emddudley
Just went to sign up using my Google account... why do they need to view my
contacts?

~~~
conanbatt
To filter out the users that are not worth the effort to do support for.

~~~
firefruit
So privacy aware users?

------
graeme
I’m having trouble understanding what I would use Airtable for.

I run an online business and work with a few long term contractors. We mostly
communicate in trello or slack. There isn’t really any inventory to mamage.

I’m assuming there’s an airtable use for me. But I haven’t been able to figure
it out from their marketing. Is there a use case in particular I should look
at as a start?

(Personal life management stuff would also be useful. I do have a small
inventory system for both my office and apartmnet, for example. Mostly just
keep some in stock, add to list when low)

~~~
infinite8s
Your profile says you are an LSAT tutor. How do you keep track of everyone you
tutor, whether they've paid, etc?

~~~
graeme
Oh I should update that. I very rarely tutor now. Mostly my site is set up to
sell courses.

When I do occasionally take a single student, I just put an entry on a pending
money section of my finance tracking spreadsheet.

------
gmankelow
I looked at air table, I just wasn't sure it would give me (or my clients)
what I wanted. Having looked around I opted for Zoho Creator, one of its tag
lines used to be MS Access for the Web :-), and back then it pretty much was
but its moved on leaps and bounds now, unlimited records, customer portal,
mobile, its own script style programming language. Integration isn't bad
either with its own API, and a number of Inbuilt integrations to Apps like
Onedrive, GDrive, Quick Books etc.

~~~
parthac
Very True. We are solution partners of Zoho, and have used Zoho Creator to
develop really complex workflows for our customers involving inbuilt/custom
integrations. I would say Deluge (Creator's scripting language) is its
strength on top of being a flexible low code platform, which I haven't come
across elsewhere yet.

------
orliesaurus
It's pretty, it works, it's pricey..i like some of the marketing around it and
the buzz features they have. Honestly I found that like a Google spreadsheet
with the Blockspring addon works best for most of my scenarios..

P.s. Along the funding they announced a new feature, and the blog post that
goes with it has an embedded map that breaks responsiveness on mobile...did no
one really double check before announcing a major feature release?

------
akurilin
I really want to use it, but I'm not fully clear on the use-cases. We already
have specialized tools for project management such as Asana. We already have
specialized tools for sales, such as Salesforce.

Seems like Airtable is the step between a simple CSV / excel file and a hyper-
specialized tool for that problem. So if you're not quite ready for the
latter, but you are experiencing pain with Excel, then Airtable is the way to
go?

------
jlarocco
So... time to dig through the terrible ideas of 20 years ago, and see which
ones are now good ideas when adding "... on the internet"?

And I'm only being partially sarcastic. Their implementation looks neat, but
having seen ugly Excel "apps" in the past, the idea of "spreadsheets
programmed by anybody" makes me cringe.

IMO, if they're smart they'll have some kind of easy migration to "real"
applications.

~~~
quickthrower2
They do seem to have a schema which I like. You can say a column is a "pick
from list" or a "date" and it'll enforce it and provide the best ux for
picking the thing you need. This is much better than Excel. It's like an
Excel/Access hybrid but for the web and very usable.

Alas, it's not an application development environment

------
JepZ
I just saw Airtable for the fist time and it looks awesome. Yet I am a little
concerned about the vendor lock in. Does anybody know a self hosted
alternative?

~~~
digitalbase
Why worried about vendor lock in? Every base comes with API and export
options. It's very easy to take your data with you?

Actually we mirror all the data every 24 hours with some simple GET requests
in combination with postgres JSON columns

~~~
JepZ
Well, getting the data out of it is just one part. I mean everything what
makes Airtable better than excel, will be gone when they turn off their
service.

That's a major issue if you want to use their service for anything that
actually matters. You never know how fast a change is coming to such a
platform and how much time you have to adapt.

For comparison: I am not a particular fan of MS Access, but I think the use-
cases for Access and Airtable have much in common. With Access you have a
certain vendor lock in too in terms of technology. So when Microsoft stops
developing Access, you have to search for an alternative as you do not know if
the runtime will be available on the next OS generation. Nevertheless, you can
use the software as long as you have a machine which can run the current
version (probably years).

In contrast, if Airtable gets shut down and will not be available in 3 month
(e.g. if they get bought by someone who wants to integrate their tech into
another product and shuts down the current service), you will have exactly 3
month to find/develop/deploy a replacement. Not cool.

------
poyu
Airtable is such a nice product. My friend actually uses it as a headless CMS,
in that regard it's so much easier to use than Contentful IMO.

------
gandutraveler
It's amazing how we are still using grid design for every thing and not much
has improved other than few UI improvements. Maybe it's natural for our brains
to map lists and tables.

And why do we need so many of these sheet apps. I remember my colleague
showing me smartsheets. I wasn't impressed then too. Why spend so much time
and energy to move to slightly better sheet.

------
amelius
I just played with Airtable a little, but I was a bit disappointed about the
performance. If I copy+paste 250 rows, it takes 10 seconds.

------
viksit
I for one hope Salesforce acquires Airtable and integrates them into Quip.
That will be a kick-ass workflow and documentation system.

~~~
cyberferret
Doesn't the article state that the founder of Airtable sold his previous
startup to Salesforce and regrets it and doesn't want to go down the same path
again?

~~~
viksit
Ah yes, the etacts debacle. Agree. I meant more the Quip integration (which
would make sense) vs Salesforce as a company. But good point.

------
uloweb
Good product, but they are still making something very similar to
spreadsheets, instead of creating something new.

IRL It looks, like they have created more powerful and effective internal
combustion engine, but still not a Tesla, thereby keeping more market for old-
looking software and leaving less place for something really new.

------
quickthrower2
I had a quick play to create a project plan for the team. Yes it's very nice
indeed. And intuitive if you happy with Excel/Google Sheets. However I like
how you can effortlessly create a 'schema' on the fly. So it isn't as fast and
loose as Excel.

------
erlend_sh
Airtable is fantastic. My only wish is that they formalize a “Airtable open
format specification”. At the moment, in spite of all its shortcomings, an
excel file is far more portable than an Airtable doc. We need the Airtable
data structure to become an open standard.

------
PeOe
It's great to see, that people see real value in the market for project
management SaaS solutions. We started developing Zenkit
([https://zenkit.com](https://zenkit.com)) 1 1/2 years ago and have since then
seen an explosion of new and amazing solutions coming to the market. I take
that as a sign, that we're in the right market. I'm very excited about our
future, and Airtable's. Congrats to Airtable for closing a new funding round!

~~~
chenster
Airtable is more than just project management as Howie put it that the goal of
Airtable was to go after all potential business cases right away by creating a
one size fits all platform, a horizontal approach. Project management market
is already too crowded IMO.

------
nikkwong
Can someone tell me what they use airtable for/what it replaced? Is it kind of
like sheetsu? (www.sheetsu.com)

------
lphnull
this makes me sad because this is the idea I've been building in my head for a
long time now. :( I need to make a free and open source alternative based off
of my ideas..

~~~
artpar
maybe you can contribute to one of the existing open-source alternatives ?

------
flashman
What's the major difference between Airtable and FileMaker?

~~~
mkempe
Theorem: All great Mac software is re-created as web-based apps.

Corollary: coming soon to your browser, HyperCard.

------
2_listerine_pls
How does sheets, airtable, etc... store data in the back end?

~~~
chenster
It appears to be that Airtable stores data in relational database, perhaps
MySQL or PostGres. Not 100% sure.

------
mrfusion
This kind of reminds me of FileMaker. What am I missing?

~~~
rubatuga
You are right, it is actually quite similar

------
davidgust
I hope they will finally implement webhooks.

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sedkis
I don't get it

~~~
moocowtruck
me neither, but i also don't use spreadsheets much

------
jasonwilk
Nice Howie!

------
matte_black
Anyone used this for inventory tracking and management?

