Airtable vs monday.com: What’s Best?
Laura has over 20 years of experience in human resources and has served as the HR director in Fortune 100 companies. Her expertise is featured across Fit Small Business in project management, recruiting, HR operations, and other HR content.
Don’t use spreadsheets to get organized in 2020. Project management software like Airtable and monday.com combine project management and database technology with spreadsheet simplicity—plus adds Kanban boards, chats, document control, and more. Airtable offers more creation features, while monday.com rocks automating tasks. They’re similar in pricing and run $0–$80 per user, per month.
When to Use Airtable
Airtable is best for firms like advertising or video production companies that manage creative deliverables. It offers planning tools and integrations especially suited for marketing and social media project planning and execution, which can save you time and money. Its Blocks feature has powerful collaboration tools for designing web pages, documents, organization charts, and more.
When to Use monday.com
monday.com is an all-around internal project management tool that’s suitable for just about any industry due to its customizability. With a bright, intuitive interface and excellent automation features, it’s a terrific choice for companies that communicate heavily outside the office, such as in service or retail industries, or for IT and small manufacturing companies.
Zoho Projects: A Better Alternative for Regulated Industries
If your company is in a highly regulated industry, such as pharmaceuticals or defense contracting, consider Zoho Projects. While not as easy to use as monday.com or Airtable, Zoho Projects offers features like a bugs-and-issues tracker, the ability to post common documents outside a task, and e-signature functions to help you stay on top of authorizations and notifications. Zoho’s pricing runs from free to $32 per user, per month and offers a stronger suite of business and document editing tools. Its free plan has fewer features and allows up to five users.
Airtable vs monday.com at a Glance
Airtable Pro Plan | monday.com Standard Plan | |
|---|---|---|
Pricing | $20/month per user | $9.80-$49/month per user (1-5 users) |
Guest Users | Free to view only | 4 guests billed as 1 user |
Kanban, List, Timeline Views | ✔ | ✔ |
Collaboration on Tasks & Files | ✔ | ✔ |
Forms | ✔ | ✔ |
Social Media Scheduling | ✔ | N/A |
Time Tracking | N/A | Pro & Enterprise Plans only |
Automations | N/A | ✔ |
File Storage | 5GB | 50GB |
Ease of Use | Easy | Very easy |
More Information |
How We Evaluated monday.com vs Airtable
Companies needing flexible project management software that won’t add to their workload will enjoy either Airtable or monday.com. Both offer customizable project management templates and strong collaboration tools to facilitate communication with remote employees, customers, and freelancers. Either tool will grow with your business, making them a good choice for small businesses starting out or established companies moving forward.
Based on what small businesses need to manage their projects, we compared:
- Price: We evaluated monday.com vs Airtable (price per user) for plans with similar features and to give the best apples-to-apples comparison.
- Ease of setup and use: We compared monday.com vs Airtable in terms of how easy each is for setting up projects, making changes, and collaborating.
- Project methodologies supported: We considered how each project management tool supports different methodologies (for example, Agile) and planning (for example, Gantt charts).
- Collaboration: We compared monday.com vs Airtable on their available collaboration tools, including those that simplify communication, document sharing, team feedback, and commenting.
- Reports: We compared Airtable vs monday.com on how well they provide visual data for project status, standard reports, customization options, and data exports.
- Integrations: Airtable and monday.com integrate with different kinds of software; they also have apps and API or sync with Google and Microsoft.
- Resources and support: We compared monday.com vs Airtable on support tool offerings, templates, user communities, and customer service options.
- Other: Both Airtable and monday.com have unique features that may save your organization time or improve efficiency in ways far beyond project management.
Based on ease of use, we find monday.com is the best all-around software for project management because it offers robust task workflow, numerous industry-and function-specific templates, and the ability to add up to 20 custom data fields to support unique project needs.
Airtable vs monday.com: Pricing & Features
monday.com and Airtable compare well when it comes to the value you get for the price. However, because monday.com prices in groups of five users, it becomes significantly cheaper the closer you get to maxing out each pricing tier. Unlike monday.com, Airtable offers a free plan with limited features and 2GB of storage. Both give you excellent planning and collaboration tools that work for Agile methodologies as well as good old-fashioned lists. Commenting tools make it easy to communicate and keep notes within the projects to save confusion and searching for information later.
Airtable Pricing & Features
Airtable costs between $0 and $20 per user, per month. The Free plan, while not as powerful as the paid plans, nonetheless has enough features for any team needing basic project management tools. However, you will need a paid plan for its most powerful features, such as Blocks, custom-branded forms, and restricted shares.
View-only access is free for your casual users and is a nice feature when working with customers or a senior manager who simply needs to keep abreast of a project’s status. There is an Enterprise plan with unlimited users and more extensive features and support.
Airtable Plans by Price & Features
Features | Free | Plus | Pro |
|---|---|---|---|
Pricing | $0/user per month | $10/user per month | $20/user per month |
Storage Space | 2GB | 5GB | 20GB |
Kanban, Calendar, Gantt & Other Views | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Web, Desktop, iOS & Android App | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Email Support | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Custom-branded Forms | N/A | N/A | ✔ |
Here are some of Airtable’s most notable features and how they compare to monday.com:
Where Airtable Beats monday.com: Social Connectivity
While both monday.com and Airtable offer social media templates, Airtable takes social planning to the next level with social connectivity. You can plan out your campaigns fully on Airtable, then use the integration features to post on Facebook or LinkedIn. It also works with Twitter to archive posts from people you follow, a great tool for tracking trends or planning retweets.
Airtable’s Standout: Blocks
Designers and number crunchers will love Airtable’s Blocks function. You can use it to add maps that also link to interactive visuals of the area, an excellent tool for real estate companies. The page designer is great for creating web pages, invoices, or other documents. The 3D modeler can let you design a room or a model. There are countdown clocks, video chat, and analytical tools. It’s truly a powerful feature, and one monday.com does not offer.
Airtable’s Blocks feature offers multiple interactive tools, like this 3D image.
Airtable Project Management Tools
Like monday.com, Airtable offers a wide variety of pre-made templates, and its Airtable University has user-made examples, with templates you can download and make your own. (monday.com has similar downloadable user-created templates.) Airtable supports calendar and Kanban views, as well as list views. It also has a gallery view that you can modify and publish to your website to let everyone know about your project initiatives.
When you click on a task, you can see the information, status, and comments. Airtable shows images in a thumbnail view and uses them in gallery view to provide a more attractive layout. It lets you link projects so that you can share common information, such as a graphic or maps of a particular location. It’s an excellent way of tracking elements, contacts, or other resources that span more than one project, and it also saves time by not having to recreate the same information in a separate task.
Airtable Charts & Reports
The Blocks function is Airtable’s version of interactive charts for tracking progress and analyzing data. It even offers pivot tables for drilling down on the information you need. Airtable gives you a calendar view and records search. You can create Gantt charts as well as bar, line, and scatter charts. If you need an organization chart, Airtable offers that too.
Airtable Mobile App
The mobile app lets you organize projects, store files, collaborate, and do the basic project management functions from a smartphone. Airtable’s mobile app works for Android and iOS, although it seems to work better on iOS. Primary complaints on the Android app include it freezing and crashing. Also, the view options are limited.
Airtable Integrations
Airtable integrates with over 30 popular third-party apps, exceeding monday.com’s total integrations. These include integrations with other marketing project management tools like Asana and Basecamp, file management tools like Box, Evernote, and Google Drive, event tools, and forms. In addition to the already mentioned social media, it integrates with Tumblr and YouTube. If you need an integration Airtable does not provide, you can use its API to create one.
Airtable’s Plans for 2020 & Beyond
We did not find a posted roadmap of future upgrades or tool additions for Airtable. A look at the Announcements thread in the community forum shows they do update features a few times each year and take user suggestions for new tools and functionalities.
monday.com Pricing & Features
The plan prices for monday.com are set in groups of five users, with four guests counting as a single user. This results in a wide cost difference per user. For example, a basic plan costs $39 per month, meaning it costs $39 per month for a single user, but only $9.80 per user, per month if you have five users. The closer you are to the top of a tier, the more cost-effective it is. Nonprofits and educational institutions can request discounts on their plans.
Here’s what you get at each plan level:
monday.com Pricing Tiers for 1 to 5 Users
Features | Basic | Standard | Pro | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Pricing for up to 5 Users | $39/month | $49/month | $79/month | Varies |
Shareable Boards | N/A | 4 guests billed as 1 user | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Templates & Data Fields | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Automations | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Forms & Customization | N/A | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Chart Views | N/A | N/A | ✔ | ✔ |
Activity Log | 1 week | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Integrations | N/A | 250 actions/month | 25,000 actions/month | 100,000 actions/month |
Below are the most notable task management features of monday.com and how they compare to Airtable:
Where monday.com Beats Airtable: Automations
Project management software should save you time, and monday.com does this by offering an extensive list of templates and task automations. You can program automatic notifications, task status changes, and more. This feature can save hours of busywork and prevent you from forgetting small but important administrative tasks.
monday.com intends to capitalize on this strength with more customizable automations in 2020. In contrast, Airtable has some automations, but nothing close to the customizability and range offered by monday.com.
monday.com’s vast library of automations relieves you of repetitive tasks.
monday.com’s Standout: In-app Walk-throughs
If you’ve ever watched a video on how to do a task and still not been able to do it within the program, you understand the importance of software support. While monday.com offers the standard help features, it also has walk-throughs for many on-screen tasks. When you click on the help button in the application, monday.com leads you step-by-step, highlighting the buttons and tabs and offering simple instructions on what to input. It’s like having an online coach.
monday.com Project Management Tools
monday.com offers standard project management tools in a simple and flexible format. You can start with a customizable template or build your own. monday.com has 20 data fields you can modify for specific projects and task information you need to track. The chat functions within a task work like any common chat, allowing you to attach documents and images. You can set up boards (e.g., Kanban view), timelines with dependencies (e.g., Gantt chart), create calendars, and more.
Like Airtable, it has a map function for locations. It also has a powerful but easy-to-use forms function for creating tasks from client input. And, with automations, you can automatically send a thank-you note and redirect the customer to your website after a form is completed. You cannot create documents within the software, like you can with Airtable Blocks, but you can load files, pin them, and assign attachments, such as a form or instructions, to multiple tasks.
monday.com Charts & Reports
monday.com lets you visualize your project data in pie, bar, and line charts. You can customize charts to track progress or team member workloads. monday.com does not have standardized or shareable reports, but you can download information and charts as images, CSV, or SVG files to create your own project analytics.
monday.com Mobile App
monday.com has a mobile app for iOS and Android. While it handles the basic needs of project management, it’s not as flexible or function-rich as the desktop version. Also, users found they had problems with loading and onboarding.
monday.com Integrations
monday.com has 20 applications (fewer than Airtable). It offers apps for file management (Dropbox), email (Gmail), collaboration tools (Slack), and other project management software (Todoist, Basecamp). Unlike Airtable, it also integrates with Salesforce and Shopify, both popular programs for sales and ecommerce. If you need an integration it does not have, you can program it with its API.
monday.com Plans for 2020 & Beyond
monday.com intends to capitalize on its strength by adding more customizable automations in 2020. It intends to build even more standard software integrations for finance, marketing, design, and customer-facing industries. It also will focus on improving the mobile apps.
Airtable vs monday.com: Ease of Use
Both Airtable and monday.com are easy to use with templates, a simple but powerful user interface, and plenty of ways to learn the software. Between the two, monday.com is the easiest to set up and use, especially compared to Airtable’s more unique and complex functions.
Airtable Ease of Use
If you’re familiar with the versatility of Excel, you’ll find Airtable easy to get started with. The data entry is similar. The advanced features, like Blocks, will take more time to learn. One nice feature is Airtable University, which gives you practical examples of the software at work by companies across a variety of industries.
monday.com Ease of Use
monday.com is built with ease of use in mind. The setup is simple, data fields are easy to add and see right on the task list, and the color-coding is perfect for calling attention to important pieces of information. It’s not hard to set up automations and let them take the organizational busywork off your plate. The user interface is bright, fresh, and intuitive, and the help features are first rate.
Airtable vs monday.com: Customer Service
One should expect any project management software to have clear instructions, examples, and places to seek help and ideas. Neither Airtable nor monday.com disappoints in these areas. It’s another reason both are such popular project management platforms.
Airtable Customer Service
Airtable’s help center offers guides and a searchable database with written and video instructions. You can also sign up for free live webinars or use the online contact form for answers to specific questions and help. There’s an active and monitored community forum. In sum, all the usual help features are handled very well.
monday.com Customer Service
monday.com has excellent help options. You get 24/7 phone and email support no matter what plan you have, and the Enterprise Plan provides a dedicated customer success manager to assist you beyond simple help desk issues. In addition to the easy-to-follow, in-app tutorials, there are regular webinars and a community forum. You can also hire monday.com team members for consulting, special training, and custom integrations.
Airtable vs monday.com: Customer Reviews
Users rate both monday.com and Airtable highly and praise the user-friendly interfaces and features. monday.com users are especially loyal, many having remained with the product since its launch as dapulse. User review sites give both project management tools around 4.5 out of 5 stars. The mobile apps for both project management tools, however, are not as highly favored.
Airtable Customer Reviews
Readers who reviewed Airtable enjoyed the desktop version. They said the options and customizations available allowed them to fit the project to their needs. The forms function was great for collaborating with customers, and the spreadsheet-style interface was popular among those who like Excel. However, even those Android users who love the desktop version found the mobile app disappointing.
monday.com Customer Reviews
Monday.com software reviews all point to enthusiastic, loyal users. People raved about monday.com’s ease of use, templates, and flexibility. Companies whose number of users was on the low end of the pricing plan complained about price, however. Mobile users found it hard to use and sparse on the features that make monday.com so great.
Bottom Line
Small businesses with big project needs will find either Airtable or monday.com a great asset to their project management and organization. Both are easy to use and offer some excellent project management tools. They’re both affordable, have numerous charts you can use to get organized, and a ton of software integrations.
However, for saving time and keeping organized on just about any kind of project, we recommend monday.com because of its customizable automations, built-in tutorials and guides, and cost-effectiveness when your number of users is on the higher end of the pricing tier. It’s also visually engaging and almost “fun” to use. Go to monday.com to sign up for your two-week free trial.
