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.
I see above you mention moving a lot of your business processes to it from Excel and Access. What would you do if Airtable was acquired and sunset? I'm in risk management, so a lot of my day to day is planning for the unexpected, hence my concern and interest in alternatives (perhaps an open source front end paired with OpenFaaS on the backend for integrations).
Ideally, airtable should download a copy of all my database files into dropbox at least once/day, but that feature doesn't exist.
It should also have a automatic file downloader backup (e.g. when you upload an image, it goes to their amazonS3 server → that should ideally be backed up locally as well). Doesn't exist either. Just have to use the plugin I wrote for the time being
Another thing from a risk management standpoint. Airtable has only 1 API key, and that key has access to EVERYTHING. If someone knows both your API key + your airtable's base ID, they can do anything with it. Issue GET requests for data, PATCH and update values in your database, etc.
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.
I would suggest taking look at Quick Base [1]. We've been using it for years and I've found it hits the sweet spot for us in the complex spreadsheet/light database space.
I've been following Airtable for a while and I have high hopes they continue their upward trajectory. I like where they are going, and they seem like the most likely alternative if we were to move, but Quick Base still seems to have a leg up in a lot of areas. Cross Application/Database Connections, Webhooks Support, and automated table sync from Dropbox/Box/SFTP just to name a few.
I agree. I think Airtable's interface (ease of use, responsiveness) is leagues ahead of Quickbase, but Quickbase still offers a more complete feature set, and in many cases one missing feature can cripple a use case (e.g., QB offers predecessor/successor dependencies for project tracking by linking to other records in the same table, Airtable does not).
We've tried out Airtable but ended up using Podio and eventually, Fusioo - http://www.fusioo.com. More of a database (not spreadsheet) for bigger companies though and they don't run a freemium model.
[alternatives link removed]