Airtable: It's like Excel, but for people

As a publisher and someone who has crowdfunding rewards to fulfill, managing information and making it actionable is mission critical. For my previous campaign, I used Google Sheets and Excel, and they were... adequate. They kinda sorta did what I needed.

Now, I'm not saying Sheets and Excel are bad. I'm saying they're bad for much of what people use them for. If you need a spreadsheet that calculates stuff automatically, both will do that for you, and do it well. But as a way to manage information? Yikes, they are super bad.

These are pieces of software that have been stretched in usage far beyond their original intent, and it shows.

A few weeks before I started my last campaign, a friend in a slack I'm in mentioned Airtable as the way they manage information in the magazine he runs. He shared a link to a sample database, and I checked it out.

Friends, there's a reason this post kinda feels like an ad, even though it isn't. My level of excitement for Airtable is what ad copy is usually meant to emulate.

Airtable isn't really a spreadsheet app. It's a database app that does the work a spreadsheet does (including those formulas, if you need them) with a ui that is actually usable. And it is, and this may be my favorite part, incredibly customizable and versatile.

Every column can be one of many different field types, and different field types are actionable in different ways. For instance, as I manage reward fulfillment, I created a column called "fulfillment status." I chose the "single select" field, and created some possible options, such as "not yet," "sent," "partial," and "full." This way, when the fulfillment status of a reward changes, as I deliver it personally, ship it, have it picked up, I can very quickly change the status. And as I have a filter where "full" statuses are hidden, one I know the backer has the item, I never need to see it again.

Much of what Airtable does can be done with other services, but the ease of use is simply stellar.

Airtable has a large selection of existing templates to choose from, and you can also look at existing community made databases and copy them as templates. Personally, though, I found it best to import my data and then create my own fields.

Airtable is a freemium service. For up to 1,200 fields/base, it is entirely free, and that also includes 2GB for attachments (I have, for instance, an attachment column where I put pictures of shipping labels). If that number of fields fits you needs, it's a no brainer. The free version also comes with 2 weeks worth of revision history. $12 get you their first tier, "plus," with 5,000 fields/base, 5GB storage and 6 months of revision history. $24 get you their second tier, "pro," with 50,000 fields/base, 10GB of storage and a year of revision history.

I'm able to get everything I need done on the free level right now, but if I had to go to the "plus" level, I would.

If you use Excel or Sheets for anything other than the pure calculating functions for which Excel was created, I would heartily recommend you try Airtable.