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Airtable gets $52M in funding

businessinsider.com

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Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding

#161

Post by wastedhours »

fiatjaf wrote: post #136
mjw1007 wrote: post #20

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 repla…

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.

SMBs work that way, but it's an interesting way into the enterprise through "dark procurement" (essentially teams going rogue, buying a service without IT's knowledge, IT finds out, a business case is made... and boom... 2000 paying users instead of 1, having managed to subvert the usual pitching processes).

I agree, it's not right for a lot of products (some of which are better charged at a flat fee, or a per "thing" basis), but it's not a stupid decision for a lot of businesses.

Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding

#162

Post by chenster »

wanderer2323 wrote: post #65
simonswords82 wrote: post #34

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…

I wouldn't compare Airtable to Google Spreadsheets or Excel for that matter. It looks more like a non-buggy Web 2.0 FoxPro, an RDBMS with a user-friendly UX.

Excel still is excellent for the most tasks for most of us. It's not going away any time soon. Google certainly has tried with google sheets. They all might just co-exist in harmony fulfill each individual niche even with some overlap.

Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding

#163

Post by chenster »

fiatjaf wrote: post #6
krisroadruck wrote: post #2

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.

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…

Excel still is excellent for the most tasks for most of us. It's not going away any time soon. Google certainly has tried with google sheets. They all might just co-exist in harmony fulfill each individual niche even with some overlap.

Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding

#164

Post by swaggyBoatswain »

fiatjaf wrote: post #134
swaggyBoatswain wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

You're sounding like an irrational Airtable fanboy here. At least Fieldbook and probably also Ragic are very similar to Airtable and fill the exact same niche, with some small diferences, and they're not mediocre at all.

Probably true, I am extremely picking about UI/UX and have opinionated views on software.

Airtable does have much better documentation (case-studies, intro videos, API docs, forums), better marketing, wider adoption and growing numbers of features, these were some of the reasons I chose it over other options at similar price points / features.

Normally when I adopt a software for long term use, I benchmark as many aspects as I possibly can (e.g. setup a simple db schema, see how many metric reviews on reddit|slant|g2|alternativeto.net there are, dig through all of their documentation quickly to see how easy or difficult it is to search things, check how user friendly forums are, compare features, gauge their business-level decisions / longevity, etc)

My use of "mediocre" might be overstated here, they are fine alternatives just not to my liking.

Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding

#165

Post by digitalbase »

JepZ wrote: post #129

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?

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

Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding

#166

Post by digitalbase »

lachenmayer wrote: post #158
joss82 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zapier conveniently replaces web hooks and adds some mapping between fields. Try it out, they have a connector (Zapier calls this an Action)for airtable that works great. Edit: direct link: https://Zapier.com

When I last used this, it only supported polling (15 minutes at a time iirc).

i don't think it works well. Tried it, not all updates come in especially if you're using lookup formulas.

If they can do Zapier push then a webhook should not be that hard to pull of either. But the request has been there for a long time (https://community.airtable.com/t/webhooks-for-records/1966) and I just don't think that their architecture is ready for it (yet).

Maybe the 50mio will do some good :-)

Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding

#167

Post by 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.

Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding

#168

Post by braum »

agent86 wrote: post #139
tbrock wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 [2] https://help.quickbase.com…

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.

Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding

#170

Post by a13n »

fiatjaf wrote: post #136
mjw1007 wrote: post #20

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 repla…

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.

I agree with you that per-user pricing doesn't make for an ideal SMB experience. We specifically avoided it for our SaaS tool for the reasons you mention.

That said, the costs of SMBs getting away with one login do not outweigh the benefits of getting to charge enterprises per user. Most of these tools with free tiers and per-user pricing (Slack, Airtable) make most of their money from enterprise, not SMB.

Therefore I don't agree with you that it's "stupid" or "not smart".

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