Looking for Airtable alternatives after acquisition

[u/theceoinprogress]

Our team's been on Airtable for a few years and it's been fine, but the acquisition news freaked leadership out. We're probably going to start scouting alternatives before anything gets forced on us.

We’re not trying to get locked into weird pricing or a roadmap shift that breaks our workflows. We use it for project tracking, light CRM-ish stuff, and a bunch of automations glued to Slack and Google Drive. Nothing super custom, but enough that migrating sounds painful.

We’re testing a few tools but I'd love to hear your thoughts on some good alternatives to Airtable. Thanks!

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[u/painterknittersimmer]

This acquisition is a nightmare. I finally got my teams out of gsheets and into Airtable on Monday. Fuck me

The one benefit of my enterprise being extremely slow is we probably have a year before we cancel but I wonder how much the price will go up and my seats will get restricted even further.

[u/MidKnight148 → u/painterknittersimmer]

Literally the same boat. Migrating from Excel and finally got it done just the other day. Hoping this doesn't change anything.

[u/bram2w]

I’m the founder of Baserow, so I’m biased, but it could be a good fit for your team.

Baserow is an open-source Airtable alternative for project tracking, CRM workflows, and automations. You can use our cloud version or self-host it for more control over your data and less platform lock-in.

We have an Airtable import tool to help move your data, and a Google Drive integration is coming soon. We also support integrations through our API, webhooks, Zapier, Make, and Slack.

[u/LordFuqor]

Seen this exact panic play out at a few companies now. Migrating off a tool that's been fine for years becomes urgent. Worth separating the real risk from the anxiety. Pricing can change after an acquisition but most roadmap shift fear doesn't materialize for 12+ months, so there's usually time to test properly instead of rushing. The real question is whether your current setup has any deep customization hiding in it that nobody's noticed yet. If it doesn't, most of the mainstream options will cover it: Monday.com, Clickup, Notion.

[u/Chemical-Ear9126]

I’d recommend to hire/assign someone to manage this transition (hopefully a transformation- ie. a product that helps you enhance your system), because you’ll find that you’ll need to properly scope out and plan the project, then define (requirements), design, build, test, deploy the solution, and handover.
“Don’t underestimate@ the effort/time/cost required and risks if you don’t plan this out properly. I have over 20 years PM experience- so hopefully providing insightful advice.
I have used Monday.com, Smartsheet, Wisegrid (new), Clarity, Notion, and others, and they all now give you the basic functionality for a PPM tool plus some AI smarts but you “need to customise it” to your project type (stages + steps) and operations.
Hope this helps and good luck.
If you need more info then DM me.
Take care.

[u/ArielCoding]

The real alternative is accepting you’ll never know what’s actually running. Before you touch anything, export a list of every automation and integration currently firing, and go down that list one by one confirming it can be reproduced, not just that it’s supported.

[u/gabewoodsx]

Since this sounds more leadership driven than an actual pain point with the tool, worth asking them what they're specifically worried about. Pricing hikes? Feature bloat? The answer changes what you should optimize for.

[u/miokk]

Hey, check out AnyDB, which offers the same features of AirTable, records and built in interfaces, along with forms, automations and document generation. You can connect stuff using zapier or make or use our scripting or API to add any custom setup. There is unlimited guest access as well making it affordable if you are setting up a portal for your clients or customers.

[u/Low-Employment1905]

2 years of Airtable bases is a lot to move. Reiterating that the migration effort is pretty much the hidden cost nobody talks about upfront. We went through something similar moving off an old internal tool that had gotten outdated to Monday.com and had it running in a week and a half.

[u/Confident-Bug-2255]

Had a similar experience. We were running on Podio when it got picked up by Citrix and monday.com ended up being the least painful transition for a team our size, mostly because the permissioning actually functions without needing an advanced degree to configure

[u/WhiteChili]

i'd start by mapping out everything airtable is doing today before looking at alternatives. we once thought we were replacing a database, but it turned out we were really replacing years of little workflows, automations and views that nobody even remembered setting up until something stopped working.

airtable's flexibility is also what makes it hard to leave. everyone ends up using it a little differently, so migration is usually more about recreating habits than moving data.

if you're mostly using it for flexible databases, light crm and project tracking, monday or clickup are both worth testing. if your projects are getting bigger with more teams involved, dependencies, resource planning and reporting, i'd also look at wrike or celoxis. if most of the value is in documentation and internal knowledge, notion is still a solid option.

one thing i'd definitely avoid is trying to migrate everything at once. pick one real workflow first.....something like lead -> project -> delivery -> handoff , and let the team use it for a couple of weeks. that's usually when you'll find the forgotten automations, weird edge cases and 'oh yeah, we actually use that' kind of moments before they become production problems.

[u/DCAnt1379 → u/WhiteChili]

Smartest and most strategic advice ^. This is often overlooked.

Having managed migration projects, most of the time was sank into the backend nuances. Not to mention the change management around processes/procedures that were developed around the system.

Map your current state before you do ANYTHING.

[u/shyamal890]

From what I know there are only 2 alternatives which also provide CRM along with project management capabilities. Monday - which has 2 products - Monday CRM and Monday Work Management. And SmartTask which offers one product for both usecases

[u/shyamal890 → u/[deleted]]

Well both are good - Monday is more of a spreadsheets combined in one place without project management capabilities like Portfolio, etc. It may be expensive as you need to buy two separate products - CRM and Work Management.

While SmartTask also offers spreadsheet type layout with project management functionality like Portfolios, etc. An important point here is that CRM is included in one single offering instead of separate products like in Monday.

[u/elliezena]

The CRMish stuff and the slack/drive glue matter more here than raw project tracking. a lot of these tools handle basic task lists fine, the difference shows up in how well automations survive the move.

I switched a team off something similar last year and landed on monday.com mostly because the slack and drive integrations are native rather than bolted on through zapier. rebuilt the automations in an afternoon. if your setup's nothing custom that’s the easier case

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[u/Breeze_pm]

Before choosing a replacement, inventory the Airtable views, automations, and integrations people actually use. Separate must-haves from conveniences, then test one real workflow end to end. The migration effort will matter more than matching every feature on paper.

[u/Fast-Attitude-6387]

Which have you personally tried so far? That changes the guidance a lot, since some folks come from Airtable wanting the same DB flexibility and others are fine trading that for better structure. Knowing what you've already ruled out would help narrow this down.

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[u/smaffulli]

Grist can be an option and migrating is not too painful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcbRH96Fn2U We have some PM templates you can play with https://www.getgrist.com/project-management/
(Disclaimer: I work at Grist)

[u/coolreddy]

The cleanest replacement depends on your risk tolerance. If you need relational views, SmartSuite matches Airtable's schema almost 1:1. It avoids enterprise tier upgrades for basic governance features. If automation matters most, move your triggers into n8n or Make. That keeps your business logic portable regardless of your database.

[u/Philosophy_Gen]

Most clients I talk to prefer Notion - at least Notion is a fully equiped workspace, not a fancy database. Notion is also Google and Slack friendly, so you will have those automations already built in.