What is Airtable and what is it for in business? Real cases and when to use it

80% of the Fortune 100 use Airtable. [1]

This is a surprising figure, especially since the usual perception in medium-sized Spanish companies ranges from “a nicer spreadsheet” to “a database for non-technicians”. Neither is completely wrong. But it doesn't explain why companies like Nike, Salesforce, Amazon or Netflix use it in real operating processes.

From a technical point of view, Airtable is a no-code relational database with a spreadsheet interface, automations, multiple views and an interface builder.

From a practical point of view, the definition is clearer: it is the tool that solves those operational processes that neither ERP nor Excel manage well, without the need for custom development or specialized technical maintenance.

This article does not seek to explain what Airtable is. Try to understand where it makes sense to use it. Specifically, it analyzes the three types of operational problems in which Airtable is the right solution for a medium-sized company, their real limits and the scenarios in which it is not.

Can Airtable be used as a database?

Yes. Airtable can be used as a database even if at first glance it resembles a spreadsheet. The key difference is that it is not limited to storing information in rows and columns: it allows you to connect data between different tables, functioning as a relational database.

Is Airtable Excel or a database?

Although its initial interface is similar to Excel, Airtable is designed as a relational database. This means that, in addition to organizing information, it allows establishing relationships between different sets of data — linking clients to projects, or projects to tasks — something that a traditional spreadsheet does not manage in a structured way.

Its main capabilities in this regard are:

— Relationships between data: connect tables to each other creating more complex structures than a spreadsheet— Multiple ways to view the same information: table, calendar, Kanban, gallery or form— Custom fields: supports different types of data such as files, selectors, checkboxes or formulas— Automations: automatic flows such as notifications or status changes— Integrations with external tools through platforms such as n8n, Make or Zapier

What type of cases is it best for: centralizing information and working on it in a visual and collaborative way. Especially useful in project management, content organization, CRM and customer monitoring, inventory control and creation of internal tools without development.

The difference between Excel, a conventional database, and Airtable isn't just technical. It's operational.

Excel is, first and foremost, a calculation and analysis tool. It can store data, but it's not designed to manage it in a structured way. It has no referential integrity — the relationships between tables are not maintained automatically — no granular access control, no robust change history, and no automations that react to what's happening in the data.

When used as a database - with multiple users editing the same file, with tables that should be related and with logic built on the basis of formulas - the result is usually fragile and difficult to sustain over time.

At the other extreme, a conventional relational database — such as PostgreSQL, MySQL or SQL Server — does offer integrity, access control, scalability and performance. But it introduces another barrier: it requires technical knowledge. Designing the data model, writing queries, or building a user interface involves relying on developers.

For many operating processes in a midsize company, that complexity is unnecessary.

Airtable is located at the halfway point. It combines the accessibility of a spreadsheet—any user can add, edit or filter information—with the structure of a relational database: linked tables, defined data types, customized views, and permissions per field or per view.

This is why Gartner does not classify it as a traditional database or as a BI tool, but rather as part of the collaborative work management databases segment. [10]

The three use cases where Airtable is the right answer in a midsize business

Case 1. Editorial management and content production

The content production flow — articles, videos, campaigns or marketing materials — has a structure that neither the ERP nor the CRM manage well.

Each piece goes through different states (idea, in production, under review, published), has specific fields (author, dates, channel, keywords), relates to other elements (campaigns, customers, resources) and requires coordination between several people.

Excel, in this context, doesn't scale. As the team grows, states change constantly and multiple people work on the same file, the system becomes difficult to maintain and loses operational utility.

Airtable solves this problem natively. The same base allows working from different perspectives depending on the role: table view for management, Kanban for status monitoring, calendar for planning and gallery for visual review. In addition, automations allow you to coordinate the flow without friction: notify revisions, activate publications or move tasks between phases. [5]

This is why this is one of the most adopted use cases in enterprise environments, especially in sectors such as technology, media and entertainment. [9] In the medium-sized company, marketing teams of between 5 and 20 people with significant production volumes find in Airtable a way to connect planning and execution without relying on additional tools.

Case 2. Project Pipeline and Customer Operations Tracking

The CRM manages the sale. But when the sale closes, another process begins: delivery.

And that process—which pertains to operations, not sales—is often left out of core systems. It ends up in emails, spreadsheets, or unstructured tools.

This gap between CRM and operational execution is one of the most common in service companies, agencies, consulting firms, and project-oriented organizations. [12]

Airtable can act as that intermediate system. Each project is managed as a record with its milestones, managers, dates, deliverables and billing status. In addition, it allows you to connect directly to the CRM: for example, through synchronization with Salesforce, a project can be created automatically when a deal is closed, without manual intervention. [8]

The system ceases to rely on copying and pasting data between tools.

The limit appears when complexity scales. Airtable works well with tens or even hundreds of simultaneous projects — the Business plan supports up to 125,000 records per base [4] — but when the operational logic becomes highly complex or the volume grows significantly, restrictions start to appear.

Case 3. Customer or employee onboarding with approval flow

Onboarding — both for customers and employees — is a structured process, but rarely well resolved in existing systems.

It involves multiple steps, dependencies between tasks, collection of documentation, different managers in each phase and the need for shared visibility over the state of the process.

Managing it via email creates chaos. Doing so in the ERP or CRM often requires costly customizations.

Airtable allows you to configure it without code in a few days. Using forms, initial information is collected. With automation, each responsible person is notified when they must intervene. And with views such as Kanban, the team can view the status of all processes in parallel.

In practice, this combination covers most onboarding needs in a medium-sized company. [5] [11] In addition, documents can be attached directly to each record, and processes such as signing can be integrated with external tools such as DocuSign or HelloSign.

The limitations you need to know before choosing it

Airtable solves certain operational problems very well, but it's not a universal solution. Your fit depends on a good understanding of where your limits are.

One of the most relevant ones appears in high-volume integrations. The Airtable API has a limit of 5 requests per second per base, which is maintained in all plans. [6] For many operating cases it is sufficient, but it falls short when you need to synchronize large volumes of data in real time — such as inventories, orders or continuous events —. There are more advanced solutions such as HyperDB that extend this capability, but they are intended for enterprise environments and not for regular operational use. [3]

Another key factor is the management of sensitive data. Airtable operates on cloud infrastructure in the United States and does not offer, as a standard, self-hosting or data residency options in the European Union. [6] This limits its use in regulated sectors such as healthcare, banking or insurance, where data location and processing requirements are stricter. In these cases it may be valid for certain uses, but it always requires a prior legal evaluation.

The pricing model also introduces a point of friction as the team grows. The Business plan, required for security features such as SSO/SAML, costs $45 per user per month. [4] [7] On large teams, this cost scales up quickly. Although read-only users are free — which helps in scenarios with many consumers of information — the cost of publishing users becomes a relevant factor.

Finally, it's important to understand what Airtable isn't. Although it allows you to build basic interfaces and dashboards, it is not a Business Intelligence tool. It is not designed for multidimensional analysis or for crossing large volumes of data from multiple sources. In that context, its role is different: it acts as a structured source of operational data, not as an advanced analysis layer.

In the end, the decision can be simplified into one question: does the process you want to manage have related records, multiple people interacting with them, and a flow of states that evolves over time?

If the answer is yes, Airtable is often a much stronger alternative to Excel. If what you need is intensive calculation, financial reporting or massive management of transactional data, it probably isn't.

The most common mistake: Airtable without design

80% of the Fortune 100 use Airtable. [1] It is also present in the Spanish mid-market, but not always in the way that allows it to truly exploit its potential.

In many companies, Airtable appears as a quick solution to a specific problem: someone builds a base in a short time to organize a process that doesn't fit the ERP or Excel. It works. And that's precisely why it starts to grow. Fields are added, new users are added, the scope of the process is expanded. But that growth is rarely accompanied by conscious design.

The result is predictable: unclear data structures, ill-defined permissions, non-existent or incomplete automations, and an increasing dependence on the person who created the database. What started out as an agile solution becomes, over time, a system that is difficult to maintain.

Because Airtable isn't just a visual tool. It is, in essence, a database. And like any database, its usefulness directly depends on how it is designed.

A well-structured base — with a clear data model, defined access rules, automations that accompany the workflow, and views adapted to each profile — can scale without friction and sustain real operational processes. The same tool, without that design, evolves in a chaotic way until it ceases to be reliable and forces us to rethink everything from scratch.

Airtable's business data points in that direction: with 478 million dollars in revenues in 2025 and a net dollar retention of 170%, [2] organizations that implement it correctly tend to expand their use over time.

The difference between those implementations and those that are abandoned is not in the technology. It's in the initial design.

Do you have a process that Airtable could solve but you don't know how to structure it? At Yellow Glasses, we design and implement Airtable-based systems for companies that need it to work from day one.

References

[1] Airtable. (2026). Enterprise. https://www.airtable.com/enterprise

— 80% of the Fortune 100 use Airtable. Enterprise net dollar retention rate of 170%. The average enterprise contract exceeds $180,000 annually. More than 500,000 organizations active in more than 170 countries.

[2] Sacred Research. (2025). Airtable Revenue, Valuation & Funding. https://sacra.com/c/airtable/

— Airtable revenue: $478M in 2025 (+57% YoY from $305M in 2024). Current valuation ~$4,000 million in the secondary market (after the revision from $11.000M in 2021). Enterprise net dollar retention rate of 170%.

[3] TechCrunch. (2026, January). Airtable Jumps into the AI Agent Game with Superagent.
https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/27/airtables-valuation-fell-by-7-million-its-founder-thinks-that-was-just-the-warm-up/

— Launch of Superagent (autonomous AI agents) and HyperDB (tables of up to 100 million rows connected to Snowflake and Databricks).

[4] Airtable. (2026). Pricing. https://airtable.com/pricing

— Free: 1,000 registrations/base, 100 automation runs/month.
— Team: $20/user/month (annual), 50,000 registrations/base, 25,000 automation runs/month.
— Business: $45/user/month (annual), 125,000 registrations/base, 100,000 automation runs/month.
— Enterprise Scale: custom pricing, 500,000+ registrations/base.
— Viewer users (read-only) are free on all paid plans.

[5] XRay Tech. (2025). 8 Ways to Trigger Automations in Airtable.
https://www.xray.tech/post/airtable-automation-triggers

— Eight types of automation triggers (creation, field change, condition, time, form, email, webhook and script). Up to 25 actions per automation and a limit of 50 automations per base.

[6] Blaze.tech. (2025). Airtable Review 2025: Features, Pros & Cons.
https://www.blaze.tech/post/airtable-review

— Identifies the API rate limit of 5 requests/second per base and the absence of self-hosting as main limitations.

[7] Zite/Checkthat. (2026). Airtable Pricing 2026: Plans, Alternatives & Is It Worth It?
https://www.zite.com/blog/airtable-pricing

— The Business plan ($45/user/month) includes SSO/SAML. The Enterprise plan adds audit logs, SCIM and advanced permission control.

[8] Airtable. (2026). Salesforce Integration.
https://www.airtable.com/integrations/salesforce

— Native bidirectional synchronization with Salesforce from the Business plan (Contacts, Accounts, Opportunities, Cases), configurable without code.

[9] SQ Magazine. (2026). Airtable Statistics 2026: ARR, Usage & AI Trends.
https://sqmagazine.co.uk/airtable-statistics/

— Average enterprise contract >$180,000/year. High adoption in technology, media, financial services and education. Increasing use in marketing and content production.

[10] Gartner. (2024). Predicts 2025: Low-Code and No-Code Application Platforms.
— Airtable is classified as a collaborative work management database. It is not considered an enterprise relational database or BI tool.

[11] Airtable. (2026). Automations — Script Actions.
https://support.airtable.com/docs/scripting-in-automations

— Support for JavaScript scripts within automations (external APIs, conditional logic). Maximum execution time: 30 seconds.

[12] MuleSoft (Salesforce). (2024). 2024 Connectivity Benchmark Report.
— 68% of organizations identify data silos as the main obstacle. The biggest gap is in operational processes outside the ERP.