Airtable vs Notion: Which Tool is Better for Project Management?
In the market for a project management tool and looking to compare Notion vs Airtable? Both of these software apps offer powerful features and capabilities, but they are designed with different users in mind.
So, which should you choose? Before making any big decisions, let’s thoughtfully compare Airtable vs Notion based on features, performance, collaboration capabilities, customization options, scalability, and cost.
By evaluating each product through identified criteria it will be easier for you to make an informed decision about your next project management solution.
We’re also going to suggest a third tool that can save you even more time and money!
Let’s take a look at each tool’s individual pros and cons to find the best fit for you!
What is Notion
Organize your personal and business related tasks and projects with Notion. This project and productivity tool is a simple but intuitive application that is great for personal and team productivity. Notion is a highly customizable cloud-based application to help manage tasks, personal information, and other records. Users looking for simpler project management tools than will find Notion a great alternative to help you stay organized and productive.
11 Best Notion Alternatives for Your Company Home
Best Features
- Easy to use and customize according to your needs and preferences
- Offers features to help with goal setting and lead management
- Drag and drop interface for ease of use without the need for trainings
Limitations
- Note taking features can be slow
- Limitations with the actions that can be performed within software integrations
Pricing
- Notion offers a free plan for individuals
- Plus: $8 per user per month
- Business: $15 per user per month
- Enterprise: Contact sales for pricing
User Ratings
G2: 4.6/5 (1000+ reviews)
Capterra: 4.7/5 (1000+ reviews)
“Notion is an extremely flexible software. Thanks to their databases and multiple views like calendar, Kanban, tables, and lists. I found it to be extremely intuitive and fun to use. I can definitely see how it could replace a Google Doc and be a central place for your team.” - Jason Edward N., Marketer
What is Airtable
Airtable is a relationship database and project management tool that focuses on data organization and collaboration. It uses a spreadsheet format for structuring and organizing data. Airtable allows teams to track workflow and automate processes and has the ability to create relationships and link records from one table to another. Airtable is a great online software spreadsheet or database replacement for organizations needing project management and collaboration tools all in one application.
Best Features
- Actionable views such as Timeline, Kanban, Gantt, Calendar, and Grid View
- Single to multi-sequence workflow automation
- Robust API and has built-in support for popular apps
Limitations
- Paid plans are costly
- User interface can be improved
- Learning curve due to user interface
Pricing
- Airtable offers a Free plan
- Plus: $10 per seat/month; billed annually
- Pro: $20 per seat/month; billed annually
- Enterprise: contact for pricing
“Overall, I've found Airtable to be a powerful and flexible platform that has greatly improved my productivity as a small business owner. Its customizable fields and views, integration with other tools, and collaboration features have all been invaluable in helping me manage my work and stay organized.” - Felix P., CEO
Airtable vs ClickUp: Which Tool is Better for Project Management?
Notion vs Airtable in the Community
When looking for reliable information about Notion vs Airtable, it is important to include resources from the community. This is because the community perspective offers a unique view on each of these tools, as members are unbiased and have likely used both options themselves.
Using the G2 Grid for a comparison of each productivity software is also a great way to quickly evaluate the two tools and make an informed decision. G2Crowd sources from a diverse set of user reviews to create this measurement to help potential customers compare different solutions side-by-side.
As you can see, Notion and Airtable are quite high up on the charts.
Depending on your use case, you may want to consider these scores and rankings as they are a very good reflection of current user satisfaction and indication of future potential.
Notion vs Airtable on Reddit
What better way to really get a feel for a tool than reading through what users on the internet are candidly sharing? Check out some Reddit posts on both tools’ key features.
Notion Reddit Review
“I noticed that after about a week of building, I was already using it many times a day. The things that were getting utilized the most were my daily to-do list, my shopping database, my notes page, and various other lists. Two weeks in, I was adding to my goals and projects and keeping track of my cleaning. Three weeks in, I finally nailed my habit tracker. Now, I’m using all of the above, and I just started a new project that has been so enjoyable to work on in Notion. The reason Notion works so well for me is not because I’m using everything all the time. It’s because everything is THERE for me to use whenever I need it” - via Reddit
Airtable Reddit Review
“Airtable is my main hub for everything I do. I use it as a CRM where I can send thousands of emails with a click of a button (integrated with Zapier, SendinBlue and Drip), SEO, time management/project tracker, budgeting and campaign tracker. It took a lot of time but we’ll worth it.” - via Reddit
Now, onto our honest opinions on different categories of comparison between Airtable and Notion.
Usability and Feature Comparison
Notion's Usability and Features
Source: Notion
Notion is a great workspace app that combines note-taking, task management, to-do lists, and a database organization feature to help users manage their day-to-day tasks and work. It is a great app for storing, organizing, and sharing important information and documents.
Notion is a simple yet flexible tool for tracking personal goals and project tasks. It provides a clean canvas that you can customize according to your needs. The app has a great community offering fully developed templates that you can use to start creating your own board.
Alberto G., says “My favorite thing from Notion has to do with its flexibility. I use it mainly to draft essays, blog posts, and articles. It's easier for me than any word processing software because Notion allows me --beyond being a multiplatform app-- to reorganize both my text and my files very smoothly. The heaps of templates available are also a great deal.”
Airtable's Usability and Features
Airtable is a great online collaborative platform for various business functions and managing structured data. It is a user-friendly tool to help manage and organize a database with a spreadsheet-like function. This makes it a great option for inventory management, knowledge management, and team collaboration. Airtable is made for project teams, businesses, and organizations who want to align their goals across their team members and departments.
The tool features various functions such as workflow automation, integrations, and reporting. With Airtable, you are able to build your own dashboard for reports with its no-code interface. Airtable has a flexible UI that you can customize according to your need and preference.
Kate H., a Development Associate describes: “Airtable does a great job at taking the basic functionality of an Excel worksheet and making it easier to sort, update, and change views so everyone can find what they need quickly. My organization uses it as a means of tracking Grant deadlines and progress; we are able to sort the list by due date, change the status of in progress to submitted to awarded easily, and quickly see what has been stalled in order to keep the ball rolling. The views are definitely the best part, allowing me to see the data from many different angles to figure out what's falling through the cracks.”
A Project Management Tool with Better Features and Usability
Before you limit yourself to just these two tools, you might want to throw our favorite, ClickUp, into the mix. While both Airtable and Notion are great tools in terms of features and usability, ClickUp is one of the top project management software. Regardless of getting a free or paid plan, you are able to enjoy better functionality than the paid versions of both Notion and Airtable.
Search your entire Workspace to find tasks, Docs, Whiteboards, and more with ClickUp’s advanced search. With hundreds of flexible tools, drag-and-drop functionality, and over 1,000 integrations to streamline your workflows, ClickUp takes your productivity to new heights.
Check out ClickUp’s multiple features.
Collaborative Capabilities Comparison
Notion's Collaborative Capabilities
Improve communication and collaboration with your remote team in real-time with Notion. This online application allows multiple users to edit the same document at the same time. Edits and comments are updated instantly to keep everyone in sync.
The application shows a record of all the updates made by each user at a specific time. To communicate with an individual user, you can mention users to directly address them regarding certain matters. Notion pages can be shared with anyone.
Aryan G. says this about Notion’s collaboration features: “The thing I like the most about Notion is the ability to limit who I share information with and the clean interface allowing me to focus on what comes first. It has helped me form habits, info-dumps & create SOPs for my team to asynchronously learn from while I'm away.”
Airtable's Collaborative Capabilities
Source: Airtable
Airtable makes communication and collaboration by providing a centralized system to manage projects, tasks, and deliverables. Visualize schedules and upcoming projects or tasks with Airtable’s views. The app offers the option to work with a Kanban, Gantt, or Timeline view among other options to help keep everyone on the same page with task status, goals, and objectives. While some features are limited to premium plans, Airtable allows you to keep all your important communications, files, and reports in one place to help maintain a smooth collaborative workflow.
Vasilis Filippos S., a web developer describes Airtable’s collaboration features: “Airtable is fast, secure (supports SSO login as well), provides easy data visualisation and it's from the best tools that can be used from teams to communicate. It can also be used as a task assignment software and thanks to history recall and commenting functionality, teams within an organisation can really talk to other things without being experts on other's team field. For instance a support agent can create a bug request to the development team without the support agent having to access more complicated bug mangament software.”
Next Level Real-Time Collaboration with ClickUp
If you’re looking to keep your hybrid, remote, and in-office teams connected and working together efficiently, ClickUp can do the job, and do the job better.
ClickUp's collaboration features make it an ideal choice for distributed teams and remote work. Its wide range of features allows users to communicate quickly and effectively, no matter where they are located.
ClickUp's Chat View is also an incredibly useful feature that allows users to communicate and brainstorm easily in a specific List or Folder without having to switch between different applications. There's also an in-built Calendar feature that syncs with Google and Outlook calendars to help team members decide on important dates and team meetings.
Our idea of a great choice for team leaders and project managers. Just sayin’!
Learn more about the types of teams that ClickUp can support.
Customization and Scalability Comparison
Notion's Customization and Scalability
Source: Notion
Notion has a simple user-friendly interface that makes it easy to navigate and personalize according to your needs. Set up your system the way you want it with custom templates or a variety of ready-to-use templates for various uses such as project management and note-taking.
Drag and drop to create your ideal dashboard and modify it whenever needed. While its blank and clean interface may be tricky for some to navigate around, it provides tools to help quickly create, assign, and track tasks. Notion can be integrated with popular apps to create better workflows for you and your team.
Clea S., a customer support manager says: “What I like best about Notion is the variety of ways information can be formatted, shared and stored paired with clean communication tools. I love the various media types I can include and the number of useful plug-ins grows regularly.”
Airtable's Customization and Scalability
Airtable is a flexible platform with customizable features to improve work management and organization. While it currently does not have a dedicated chat feature, it can be integrated with applications such as Slack and Trello to improve communication. Airtable is a great tool to build a database or a tracking system for any kind of project or goal. The app’s customizable fields and views as well as integration with third-party applications help organize and manage your work according to your process or workflow.
Lars S., a Team Lead says: “We are able to customize pretty much everything, which allows us to do things the way that best fits our workflows. And with the automations, we're able to save a ton of time and integrate our task management with the other tools we use. It took us a long time to really make use of the more advanced features like calculated fields and automations in general, so we didn't get the full value from day 1. But once we did start exploring these things, we've only gotten more and more value out of using it.”
Consider ClickUp’s Highly Customizable and Scalable Tool for Your Team
Take ClickUp’s massive feature set, collaboration and customizability, and put it together. You get scale. ClickUp's rich set of fully customizable features is ideal for aligning each team member, working together, and delivering high-quality products on time and on budget. The tool can be customized as a personal board or a resource management tool.
Its scalability is enabled by the multi-dimensional structure - for instance, ClickUp’s organizational hierarchy allows users to structure their workspace in whatever way works best for them. ClickUp also offers extensive reporting capabilities which can be adjusted depending on the size of an organization.
This makes it a great solution for organizations of all different sizes and types that are looking for an intuitive yet powerful management tool.
Cost Comparison
Notion's Pricing
Source: Notion
Notion’s free plan offer basic features and integrations. The free version also has a limited block trial for teams. For bigger teams, a Plus plan starting at $8 may be a reasonable option for small organizations and businesses. Plus plan users can access a 30-day page history, invite up to 100 guests, and have unlimited file uploads.
Companies looking to use Notion for management can get Plus features and more. These features include SAML SSO, private teamspaces, 90-day page history, and a limit of up to 250 guests. Bigger organizations can upgrade to a custom Enterprise plan which includes custom guest limit, advanced security controls, workspace analytics, and more.
Nitin S., a senior graphic designer comments about the pricing: “Even if it's affordable, its paid plan doesn't have much for freelancers compared to the free plan of Notion. More features make things complicated and sometimes heavy in terms of getting a quick overview.”
Airtable's Pricing
Source: Airtable
Airtable is a great tool can be used by individual users for free. This version offers unlimited space but with a 2GB limited attachment space per base. A 5GB attachment space is offered at a Plus Plan starting at $10 per user/month.
Organizations that need a bigger attachment space and other advanced functionalities such as custom branding, Gantt and Timeline views, limited sync integrations among others will have to pay $20 per seat/month. This can be on the steeper side even for larger businesses with more people within their teams.
Ahmed A., Biomedical Engineer & Data Scientist talks about Airtable’s pricing: “We chose Airtable over the other products because it offered the best combination of features and price, It has a simple, intuitive interface that allows us to quickly create and manage databases, build powerful automations, collaborate with team members, and much more, It also has great integrations with popular cloud storage solutions and third-party apps, as well as a variety of tools for managing data, Also the pricing was very reasonable, making it an affordable solution for teams of all sizes.”
A More Cost-Effective Plan with ClickUp
Save and get the best value for your money with ClickUp. Choose from a variety of plans ranging from the Free Forever plan to the Enterprise Plan. The Forever Free plan is perfect for small teams who need basic project and task management capabilities and don’t require the comprehensive feature set of a premium plan.
If you need even more advanced management tools and unlimited storage, the Unlimited Plan and Business Plan provide access to powerful features such as unlimited Gantt charts, timelines and workload management. ClickUp also offers an Enterprise Plan for more complex organizations.
Get started with ClickUp today, for free!
Airtable vs Notion: Bottom Line
Choose Notion if:
- You're looking for a simpler application to setup
- You're working alone or with a small team
- You're looking for a drag-and-drop functionality
Choose Airtable if:
- You're looking for a no-code database management system
- You're building a custom application that is unique to you and your team
- You create and share relational databases
Get All Features Combined with ClickUp
Now that you have a better idea of each of these tools’ advantages and disadvantages, you are now better equipped to make a better decision when it comes to picking the right tool for your needs.
If you’re still not sure about the best project management software that will help you achieve your project goals and team objectives, why not get an all-in-one solution like ClickUp that will allow you to grow and scale as your team gets bigger.
ClickUp offers not just project management solutions but collaboration tools, flexible views, detailed reports, and so much more all under one single application. Take advantage of organization-wide permissions to help teams stay aligned with common goals and objectives.
Save time, stay focused, and improve overall productivity by creating and customizing the perfect workspace. Choose from a library of templates to get started and handle any task or project with ease. Try ClickUp for free today and discover the best tools to improve your overall workflow and productivity all under one application.
