Airtable is a relational database tool that positions itself between Google Sheets, database software, and modern project management platforms. And it doesn’t need heavy process overhead.

However, when you dig into customer reviews, you see several issues and limitations, especially if you’re considering it as a project management solution.

For starters, workflows that look simple in the UI will require technical setup in the backend.

Also, setting up a well-structured, maintainable base is tough. The G2 review elaborates:

If you don’t define conventions early (naming fields, designing relationships, orchestrating automations), the base can become messy and harder to manage.

This review looks at where Airtable works well—and where other project management tools or Airtable alternatives with advanced features may be a better fit.

Airtable Project Management Review (Features, Pros, Cons, Pricing)

What Is Airtable?

Airtable Dashboard: Airtable review — via Airtable

You can use this project management tool to connect company-wide goals, enabling you to go beyond managing tasks and drive strategic project portfolio management.

With the built-in AI, you can implement intelligent forecasting to spot and eliminate project risks, generate project plans, and align stakeholders with automated project updates.

The standout feature is that it aligns with how you work best. You have multiple views, including Kanban boards, Gantt Charts, Timeline View, and more.

Airtable also lets you organize and visualize data in flexible ways using bases, made up of tables, records, and fields that support rich content like attachments, dropdowns, checkboxes, and more.

The interface designer transforms raw data into custom apps with forms, buttons, and conditional logic to form project dashboards.

⚡ Template Archive: Free Spreadsheet Templates in Excel and ClickUp

Key Features of Airtable

Here are the primary features of Airtable that support flexible data-driven project management.👇

Flexible tables and database structure

The base forms the heart of Airtable. Think of it as a workspace for each project or function. You create one or more tables within your Airtable account.

Each table is made up of:

Records (rows): Each row is one item you’re tracking (a task, a deliverable, a campaign, a vendor, a client request, etc.)
Fields (columns): Each column is a specific type of information about that item

Because Airtable’s structure is relational, you can link records across tables for complex projects.

💡 Pro Tip: One of the recent additions in Airtable is Omni, an AI assistant focused on conversational app building and data interaction.

With Omni, you can do the following with natural language prompts:

Work within Airtable permissions, keeping data access controlled
Build tables, interfaces, and automations by chatting
Ask questions and get insights from your base data
Create or update records without touching formulas or scripts

📌 Example: Link clients to projects, tasks to milestones, or assets to campaigns. Then pull related information into summaries, rollups, or filtered views. As a result, you get a connected system of data rather than isolated lists. This feature is especially useful when relationships matter in project management, such as tasks tied to dates, owners, and statuses.

📮 ClickUp Insight: Low-performing teams are 4 times more likely to juggle 15+ tools, while high-performing teams maintain efficiency by limiting their toolkit to 9 or fewer platforms. But how about using one platform?

As the everything app for work, ClickUp brings your tasks, projects, docs, wikis, chat, and calls under a single platform, complete with AI-powered workflows. ClickUp works for every team, makes work visible, and allows you to focus on what matters while AI handles the rest.

Try ClickUp for free

🎁 Bonus: How to Export Data from Airtable into Other Apps

Multiple views (Grid, Kanban, Calendar, Timeline, Gallery)

You can use different views to visualize the same tasks and records in multiple ways.

For example, use Kanban views for status tracking, Calendar views for deadlines, and Timeline or Gantt views to understand task sequencing and dependencies.

Because all views share the same underlying data, updates made in one view are instantly reflected everywhere else.

Also, you can create as many views as needed for a single table and tailor them for specific roles or workflows. Filtered views can show:

Tasks assigned to a specific person
Records in a particular status or stage
Work relevant to a specific department or project phase

With view-level permissions, users can interact only with the views they are authorized to access. They don’t need to access or modify the complete database.

Looking for better ways to stay organized at work? This video offers useful tips 👇

💡 Pro Tip: Instead of giving full base access to everyone, use Airtable Interfaces to share role-specific views with teammates or external stakeholders.

Airtable AI features

Airtable AI adds built-in AI assistance directly inside your bases to help teams work faster with data. Here’s how it helps you work faster:

Summarize and extract insights from long texts, records, or views to identify patterns or key points
Generate content or drafts, like descriptions, summaries, notes, or other text, in seconds
Categorize and label data automatically, turning raw text into fields you can use in workflows
Route work-in-progress by suggesting associations, tags, or even the right people/teams for next steps

⚡ Template Archive: Free and Customizable Project Management Templates

AI Agents

Beyond chat-style AI and app building, Airtable has introduced AI Agents that live inside your Airtable apps and take action on your behalf.

They’re autonomous agents, which means they don’t need your prompts. They work automatically based on changes in your data or rules you define.

The capabilities of AI Agents include:

Analyzing data, generating content, conducting research, and surfacing insights across thousands of records simultaneously
Reviewing documents, searching the web, and synthesizing insights from text and structured data
Updating fields, categorizing records, filling in missing information, and responding to new entries as data changes

👀 Did You Know? 52% of executives say their organizations are actively using AI agents, and more than 39% report their companies have launched more than 10 agents.

Automated workflows

Airtable’s automations are built around a powerful no-code trigger-and-action model that lets you automate repetitive tasks and workflows across your bases without writing any scripts or code. You define a trigger (an event that happens) and one or more actions (what follows next), and Airtable takes care of the rest.

Once you set up an automation, Airtable can handle things like:

Advancing a record’s status when a deadline is reached
Sending notifications to Slack, Teams, or email when tasks update
Creating new records automatically based on specific events
Generating documents or updating related tables without manual steps

When paired with AI, Airtable automation workflows can go beyond simple task triggers.

Airtable also supports conditional logic and repeating tasks. This means you can set automations to run based on specific triggers or to perform the same action across a list of records.

Airtable dashboards

Build your own reporting with Airtable’s no-code dashboard interface. Use these dashboards to group or sort your data.

Airtable also gives you out-of-the-box extensions to create dashboards of charts, graphs, and other metrics to suit your team’s reporting requirements.

Pre-built templates for project management

Within Airtable, you have a library of ready-to-use templates that are also customizable. They include Airtable templates for project management, marketing, product management, and more.

Airtable also supports record templates that let users pre-define frequently used record structures within an Airtable base. They help you create consistent records (like standard task formats or repeatable events) with a click.

Airtable pricing

Airtable offers multiple pricing tiers, including:

Airtable Free Plan
Team Plan: $24 per user/month
Business Plan: $54 per user/month
Enterprise Scale: Custom pricing
Airtable AI: Included with plans via monthly AI credits

Pros of Using Airtable

For project managers, Airtable’s biggest advantage is its adaptability — you can build a custom interface and connect it to your broader ecosystem without heavy customization or technical debt. It feels user-friendly to those used to working with spreadsheets.

Enterprise key management and data loss prevention are available with its Enterprise plan.

Summing up the pros of Airtable with a G2 review:

What I like best about Airtable is how it combines the familiarity of spreadsheets with the power of a full database. It lets me organize complex information in a way that’s still very intuitive. I also really appreciate the flexibility, and being able to customize fields, create different views, and set up automations makes it easy to adapt the system to whatever workflow I’m managing. The collaboration features are also a big plus because everyone can see updates in real time without creating confusion. Overall, it saves time, keeps everything organized, and makes my processes run a lot smoother.

Common Pain Points Airtable Users Face

While Airtable is widely appreciated for its flexibility, long-term users often point out a few recurring challenges, like:

Steep learning curve and complex user interface that make onboarding difficult
Limited integrations with other project management tools
Limited formula and advanced analysis capabilities compared to Excel
Unclear change tracking and edit history visibility
Inconsistent support, especially for billing issues
Clunky mobile experience compared to desktop
No sandbox or staging, making changes risky in live bases

Airtable Reviews on Reddit

Here’s what real users are saying about Airtable on different platforms.

On r/Airtable, a user explains that Airtable offers flexible and cost-effective sharing through read-only users and public views:

Read only users are free. So you can grant pretty broad access to a login. You can also share base Views and interface pages publicly. These would be read only too and just use a URL. This limits to just specific data.

A user on G2 is frustrated with the limitations when managing large amounts of data (although Airtable is a database software).

One thing I dislike about Airtable is that as your base grows, it can sometimes slow down or get a bit cluttered. Managing large amounts of data or multiple linked tables can require extra organization. Also, some features, like advanced automation limits and interface options, are restricted unless you’re on a premium plan.

A user on r/Airtable also highlights the recurring challenges of using Airtable at scale:

When it comes to per-seat pricing, I usually start by auditing exactly who needs edit access versus who can be a “comment only” viewer, but once you hit 10–20 editors it still feels like you’re paying extra just for breathing. A few of my clients even asked to build a custom Next.js front end, only to discover Airtable’s REST API is painful to page, rate-limit, and keeps throwing 401s on complex lookups. We shelved that idea pretty quick.

📚 Read More: Best Task Management Software to Try

Airtable Alternatives: Project Management Software to Consider

For teams that need flexible data modeling, Airtable works fine. However, limitations start surfacing when the projects grow beyond lightweight workflows.

This is where ClickUp stands apart as an Airtable alternative.

ClickUp is the world’s first converged AI workspace that combines project management, collaboration, automations, and your tech stack in one unified platform.

Hear it from a ClickUp user on G2 about the project management features:

The best thing about ClickUp is its incredible flexibility and customizability. You can really tailor it to fit any workflow or project management style. The ability to create custom views, dashboards, and fields is amazing. I also love the wide range of features it offers, from task management and time tracking to document collaboration and goal setting. It’s truly an all-in-one workspace.

Airtable vs. ClickUp comparison at a glance

Before we explore ClickUp’s features in detail, here are the key differences between Airtable and ClickUp.

Aspect	Airtable	ClickUp
Best for	Flexible data modeling, internal tools, lightweight workflows	End-to-end project execution, cross-team collaboration, scalable operations
Learning curve	Steep for non-technical users due to the base design and field logic	Moderate, with guided structures and faster onboarding
Tasks & ownership	Records must be designed and maintained as tasks	Native tasks with owners, priorities, statuses, and dependencies
Views	Grid, Kanban, Calendar, Timeline, Gallery	Table, Kanban, Calendar, Gantt, Timeline, Workload, and more
Contextual AI	AI inside bases for summaries and data interaction	Workspace-wide contextual AI across tasks, docs, and tools
Workflow automations	Trigger-action workflows scoped to bases	Cross-project, task-centric workflow automations
Real-time collaboration	Comments and shared views; relies on external chat tools	Built-in chat, comments, docs, clips, and async syncs
Mobile experience	Functional but limited for complex workflows	More complete, task-first mobile experience
Integrations	Solid integration ecosystem; works well with Zapier/Integromat/Make	Extensive integrations plus native bi-directional sync with calendars, Slack, GitHub, etc.

ClickUp’s Table View

ClickUp’s Table View is where Airtable users usually feel most at home.

It gives you a familiar spreadsheet-style layout where each task is a row, and each Custom Field is a column.

These rows aren’t just records. They are fully functional tasks connected to assignees, dependencies, comments, docs, goals, and automations.

In Table View, you can:

Show or hide Custom Fields like priority, status, tags, or budget
Edit task data inline, just like a spreadsheet
Hover to preview task descriptions without opening new pages
Display subtasks independently or nested under parent tasks

Most importantly, Custom Fields are native to tasks, not separate database objects. You don’t need to manage record IDs, strict field-type constraints, or backend logic just to keep your data usable.

⭐ Bonus: Use AI Fields to standardize task information, eliminate repetitive data entry, and increase overall productivity. They provide a concise summary of your tasks.

Use ClickUp AI Fields to summarize or translate tasks, receive progress updates, create action items, and more

ClickUp BrainGPT

ClickUp BrainGPT is a contextual AI assistant that bridges the gap between AI output and real-world context.

BrainGPT operates directly inside your ClickUp workspace, with access to tasks, docs, comments, timelines, goals, and permissions. As a result, it can help summarize tasks and docs, generate action items, and explain project status.

It can give you context-aware answers to questions such as: “What’s blocked?”, “What’s overdue?”, or “What changed this week?”—all grounded in live workspace data.

Get context-aware answers from your Workspace with BrainGPT

Try the world’s first Converged AI Workspace

Enterprise search across your work (and beyond)

One of the strongest capabilities of BrainGPT is Enterprise Search.

Search ClickUp, the web, or files from your connected apps like GitHub, Google Drive, SharePoint, and many more using BrainGPT

Search across tasks, docs, comments, attachments, and connected tools using natural language. Instead of hunting through folders or views, users can ask questions and get answers that reflect how work is actually structured.

This becomes especially valuable at scale, where information is scattered across projects, teams, and tools.

Access to multiple AI models

ClickUp BrainGPT also provides access to multiple external AI models within the same interface. You don’t need to switch tools or manage separate subscriptions to experiment with different model outputs.

📌 Example: ChatGPT for daily-to-day execution work. Claude for long-form analysis and synthesis. Gemini for information-heavy and cross-referenced tasks.

Talk to Text to capture ideas without breaking flow

ClickUp’s Talk to Text capability extends BrainGPT beyond typed prompts. Speak ideas, meeting notes, or task updates and instantly convert them into structured text, tasks, or Docs. BrainGPT can then refine, summarize, or turn that input into actionable next steps.

Turn your voice into action using Talk to Text — Turn your voice into action using Talk-to-Text in ClickUp

Super Agents: your AI teammates

ClickUp’s Super Agents are autonomous, ambient AI assistants that observe changes across your workspace and act on behalf of users based on rules, data patterns, and context.

While BrainGPT excels at answering questions and generating insights, Super Agents take action when conditions are met.

For example, a Super Agent can:

Detect overdue tasks and proactively reassign or notify owners
Monitor project progress and generate status reports
Trigger follow-up tasks when dependencies are completed
Synthesize sprint retrospectives and surface risk insights

ClickUp Super Agents — Speed up your workflows with Super Agents

⭐ Bonus: Watch this video to know more about Super Agents.

🚀 ClickUp Advantage: ClickUp Dashboards bring everything together in one real-time command center. Dashboards let teams visualize project health across tasks, timelines, workloads, goals, and risks—without pulling data into external BI tools or spreadsheets.

AI Cards within Dashboards analyze live workspace data and surface insights automatically. They can summarize progress, highlight blockers, flag risks, and outline next steps.

Here’s how to use this combination 👇

📚 Also Read: Workflow Optimization Strategies for Your Teams

ClickUp Automations

The no-code ClickUp Automations are designed for teams transitioning from manual handoffs to repeatable operational systems.

Some of the automation capabilities include:

Multi-action sequences (a single trigger can run several outcomes)
Conditional logic (if/else paths)
Time delays and scheduled automations
Integration actions with external tools via native integrations

This makes it easier to automate repetitive tasks such as updating task statuses, assigning owners, escalating blocked work, or triggering follow-up actions when deadlines approach.

ClickUp Automations also supports more advanced workflow automation examples that go beyond simple task updates.

📌 Example: Teams can automatically route work based on priority or Custom Field values, trigger dependent tasks when milestones are completed, or keep cross-functional teams aligned as data changes across projects.

✏️ Note: While Airtable offers trigger-and-action workflows inside bases, ClickUp’s automation engine extends across tasks, projects, timelines, goals, and team collaboration in ways that feel native rather than retrofitted.

Real-time collaboration with ClickUp Chat

55% of knowledge workers say it’s hard to track down information, and 50% have unknowingly worked on something another team was already handling.

ClickUp Chat brings team communication directly into your project workspace, so discussions stay connected to actual work.

Here’s how you can use ClickUp Chat for real-time collaboration:

Organize conversations using channels based on projects, teams, or topics
Chat privately with direct messages for quick or sensitive discussions
Keep conversations focused with threads and threaded replies
Use @mentions to notify specific people or entire teams
Create tasks directly from chat messages, turning discussions into action
Host async audio or video updates with ClickUp SyncUps, without scheduling meetings

✏️ Note: Airtable relies heavily on external tools like Slack or email for real-time communication. Comments exist, but they’re tied to individual records and don’t function as a live collaboration layer. ClickUp Chat keeps discussions and deliveries under one roof.

Pre-built ClickUp templates

Just like in Airtable, ClickUp gives you pre-built templates to plug into your data.

For instance, ClickUp Project Management Template gives you a complete workspace where you can map out the project, assign responsibilities, and follow progress all the way to delivery.

ClickUp Project Management Template: Plan track and organize projects with a flexible structure that fits any workflow — Drive large, complex, cross-functional workflows from start to finish with the ClickUp Project Management Template

Add important details like Project Phase, Success Metrics, Department, and more using ClickUp’s Custom Fields, and track tasks using Custom Statuses such as At Risk, Blocked, etc.

Pre-built automations help move tasks through stages, post comments, and tag relevant team members.

Get free template

Here are some other templates you can use right away:

ClickUp Spreadsheet Template: Ideal if your team is comfortable with spreadsheets but wants the added benefit of real tasks and clear ownership
ClickUp Task Management Template: Designed to keep everyday work under control by helping teams focus on what matters most and who’s responsible for it
Agile Project Management Template by ClickUp: Built for sprint-based teams to manage backlogs, iterations, and Agile workflows
ClickUp Project Resource Matrix Template: Helps you see who’s working on what and avoid overloading your team
ClickUp Project Deliverables Template: Makes it clear what needs to be delivered, when it’s due, and who owns each outcome

💡Pro Tip: Bring all your tools into one workflow with ClickUp Integrations

With ClickUp Integrations, you don’t have to jump between multiple apps to get work done. ClickUp connects with tools your team already uses, like Slack, Google Workspace, GitHub, Email, HubSpot, Calendly, and Office 365, so everything stays linked to your tasks and projects.

ClickUp API — Connect your tools via ClickUp’s Open API or embed any web app directly inside ClickUp with Embed View

With integrations, you can:

Trigger updates and notifications automatically using ClickUp Automations
Turn Slack messages into tasks and get task updates directly in your channels
Attach and search Google Drive files, sync Google Calendar events, and check Gmail without leaving ClickUp
Link GitHub commits, branches, and pull requests to tasks for full visibility into development work

ClickUp pricing

With ClickUp, you’ll find both free and paid plans that work for every budget:

free forever

Best for individual users

Free Free

Key Features:

60MB Storage

Unlimited Tasks

Unlimited Free Plan Members

unlimited

Best for small teams

$7 $10

per user per month

Everything in Free +

Unlimited Storage

Unlimited Folders and Spaces

Unlimited Integrations

Should You Choose Airtable or ClickUp for Project Management?

When project management involves structuring data, Airtable works fine. If you need flexible tables, custom apps, or internal tools, the database approach suffices.

However, as workflows grow more complex—with dependencies, ownership, automation, and cross-team collaboration—you will need to start exploring Airtable alternatives. Simple activities like maintaining clean bases, preventing duplicates, and scaling permissions in Airtable often require technical oversight.

Enter: ClickUp, the AI-powered contextual project management platform.

It reduces setup overhead while still providing flexibility through multiple Views, Custom Fields, Automations, and contextual AI. Instead of just managing data like Airtable, ClickUp provides you with a unified workspace that brings all your data, processes, and people together.

Ready to give it a go? Sign up on ClickUp for free. ✅

Everything you need to stay organized and get work done.

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Airtable Project Management Review 2026 (Features, Pros, Cons, Pricing)

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