Airtable vs Notion 2024: Which is Best for You?

Features

Now that I’ve covered what each platform is, the ease of use, and integration capabilities, it’s time to explore and compare some key features of both.

Workspaces:

Your workspace is where you can organize and manage projects, tasks, and data, but they approach this concept differently.

Both platforms have quite different structures.

I mentioned earlier that Notion follows a systematic visual approach similar to other platforms.

Here’s how it works:

• Workspace (the foundation for your organization).
• Pages (Wikis, notes, documents, etc). You can add headers, icons, and descriptions for these pages.
• Teamspaces (collaboration pages)
• Blocks (information within your teamspace). For example, your to-do lists, videos, meeting agendas, and more.

This visual approach means you can add and customize your workspace and pages as you like!

Airtable’s spreadsheet workspace format and terminology are as follows:

• Bases: (Your databases).
• Tables: (Specific project or data tabs, similar to a spreadsheet. You can add multiple tables to your base).
• Records: (Rows that store your items within your Base)
• Column fields: (Details about your records. These could include user names, notes, dates, links to another record, status, etc).

All information is easily shareable amongst multiple bases and tables.

In addition to your bases, you can add different extensions to your workspace and tables. Extensions are essentially visual dashboards to help you analyze and action your data.

These include pivot tables, charts, and more.

Winner = Draw (depending on what you need it for!)

Customization:

At first glance, Airtable’s spreadsheet-like interface resembles Google Sheets or Excel.

However, when you dive in a little deeper, you’ll notice the level of customization is higher than those tools.

You can:

• Change the base color name and icon.
• Edit your table names.
• Handpick the color of statuses.
• Add subtasks.
• Add due dates.
• Create formulas.
• Tweak or modify your column field types and statuses and more.

A standout feature I particularly like is the ability to customize the record name based on the type of project you’re currently working on.

For example, you could rename your records as Projects, Tasks, Approvals, Events, Campaigns, Requests, and more.

Within these blocks, you can add and customize task names, project names, statuses, and assign team members.

However, when compared with Notion, the level of customization is unparalleled.

If you start a page from scratch, you can drag and drop different blocks anywhere you like, meaning there are no limits on your page structures.

You can add cover photos, backlinks, comments, change your text size or font, and more.

And if you choose one of their easy-to-use templates, the range of customization and filter options continues!

Winner = Notion

Templates

Airtable offers a range of pre-made templates covering anything from event planning, sales pipelines, business development CRMs, content calendars and product launches.

These templates are handy but can be overwhelming for beginners because of the amount of dummy data and pre-made fields.

I suggest starting from scratch if you’re a newbie, then delve into the templates once you’ve figured out how the software works.

Notion also provides pre-made templates that are much easier to use than Airtable.

All you have to do is pick one from the left-hand side. You’ll find anything from project tracking, CRM, travel planning, mood boards, presentations, onboarding, etc.

As I mentioned earlier, you can fully customize your templates, including the layout, view type, elements, and more.

Winner = Notion

Automation

Airtables free plan offers a generous 100 workflow automation templates for triggers based on a specific action.

Or, you can manually set up an automation.

For instance, if you want someone in your team to know when something has been updated within a record, you could set it up so that that person automatically receives an email.

You can even run the same action on every item on your list!

Plus, you can set up a bunch of automations through some of the third-party integration tools I mentioned earlier.

Notion doesn’t currently offer any built-in automations. However, you can use Notions API and third-party tools to create powerful triggered automations.

Winner = Airtable.

Collaboration

The collaboration capabilities of both platforms are impressive, with similar features across the board.

On both platforms, you can:

• Add and view comments.
• Share and edit pages, tables, and lists.

Notion’s flexibility ranges from entire Teamspaces, databases, and documents to granular options for sharing individual pages with specific members.

And with full control over who has access to your information, Notion ensures secure collaboration.

Notion also offers an innovative backlink feature, allowing users to create automatic backlinks by ‘@ mentioning’ specific pages.

On the other hand, Airtable offers real-time collaboration, enabling team members to work together on the same database simultaneously.

And with real-time updates, you can be sure your communication is streamlined for optimal team productivity.

Plus, both platforms externally integrate with Slack, my top choice for business productivity and internal communication.

Winner = Draw