Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Airtable VS Dokku

Compare Airtable VS Dokku and see what are their differences

Note: These products don't have any matching categories. If you think this is a mistake, please edit the details of one of the products and suggest appropriate categories.

Airtable logo Airtable

Airtable works like a spreadsheet but gives you the power of a database to organize anything. Sign up for free.

Dokku logo Dokku

Docker powered mini-Heroku in around 100 lines of Bash
  • Airtable Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-19
  • Dokku Homepage
    Homepage //
    2024-08-26
  • Dokku Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-24

Airtable

$ Details
-
Release Date
2013 January
Startup details
Country
United States
State
California
Founder(s)
Andrew Ofstad
Employees
250 - 499

Dokku

Website
dokku.com
Pricing URL
-
$ Details
Release Date
-

Airtable features and specs

  • User-Friendly Interface
    Airtable provides an intuitive, visually appealing interface that makes it easy for users to create, manage, and navigate complex data sets without extensive technical knowledge.
  • Customizability
    Airtable offers robust customization options, allowing users to tailor databases and views to their specific needs, including various field types, multiple views, and linked records.
  • Collaboration Features
    Airtable supports real-time collaboration, enabling multiple users to work on the same database simultaneously while tracking changes and maintaining version history.
  • Integrations
    Airtable integrates with various third-party applications and services such as Slack, Google Drive, and Zapier, allowing for seamless workflow automation and enhanced productivity.
  • Templates
    Airtable offers a wide range of pre-built templates for different use cases, which helps users get started quickly without having to build everything from scratch.
  • Mobile App
    Airtable's mobile application allows users to access and manage their databases on the go, ensuring flexibility and continuous productivity.

Possible disadvantages of Airtable

  • Cost
    While Airtable offers a free tier, many of the more advanced features and higher usage limits are locked behind a subscription model, which can become costly for larger teams or extensive use.
  • Performance Issues
    Some users have reported performance issues with Airtable when working with very large databases, including slow load times and laggy interface responsiveness.
  • Limited Offline Access
    Airtable relies heavily on an internet connection, and its offline capabilities are limited, which may be a drawback for users who need consistent access without reliable internet.
  • Data Export Options
    Data export options are somewhat limited compared to other database management tools, making it more difficult to extract data in certain formats for use outside of Airtable.
  • Learning Curve
    Despite its user-friendly interface, the extensive features and customizability of Airtable can present a learning curve for new users, requiring time to explore and understand its full capabilities.
  • Lack of Advanced Features
    Airtable may lack some advanced features found in more specialized or traditional database management systems, making it less suitable for particularly complex or highly specific data management needs.

Dokku features and specs

  • Ease of Use
    Dokku provides simple commands and clear documentation, making it straightforward to deploy, manage, and scale applications using a process similar to Heroku.
  • Heroku Compatibility
    Dokku uses a Heroku-like buildpack system, which allows users to deploy applications with ease if they are already familiar with Heroku.
  • Cost-Effective
    Being an open-source project, Dokku itself is free to use, which can significantly reduce the cost of deploying applications compared to using premium services.
  • Customizability
    As an open-source tool, Dokku allows for extensive customization according to user needs, offering flexibility in deployment settings and configurations.
  • Plugin System
    Dokku supports a wide range of plugins, enabling users to extend its functionality easily, such as adding database support, monitoring capabilities, and more.

Possible disadvantages of Dokku

  • Initial Setup Complexity
    Setting up Dokku for the first time might be challenging, especially for users with limited experience in server management and Linux administration.
  • Limited Built-In Features
    Compared to fully-managed PaaS solutions, Dokku has fewer built-in features, potentially requiring more effort to implement certain functionalities such as load balancing and extensive monitoring.
  • Scalability Challenges
    While Dokku supports basic scaling, it might not handle extensive scaling needs as efficiently as more robust enterprise-level solutions.
  • Resource Management
    Dokku's resource management capabilities are limited compared to dedicated orchestration tools like Kubernetes, making it less suitable for complex and large-scale application deployments.
  • Community Support
    Even though Dokku has a growing community, it is not as large or as active as some of the more popular platforms, which can limit the availability of community-driven support and resources.

Analysis of Airtable

Overall verdict

  • Airtable is a highly effective tool for individuals and teams looking for an easy-to-use, versatile platform to manage data and collaborate. It is especially suitable for users who need more functionality than a traditional spreadsheet but don’t require a full-scale database management system.

Why this product is good

  • Ease of use
    Airtable offers a user-friendly interface that combines the simplicity of spreadsheets with the power of a database, making it accessible for users without technical expertise.
  • Flexibility
    It provides flexibility in terms of creating customizable databases, allowing users to adapt it for various use cases such as project management, inventory tracking, and more.
  • Integrations
    It integrates with a wide range of third-party applications and services, enhancing its utility and reach.
  • Collaboration
    Airtable supports real-time collaboration, enabling teams to work together seamlessly and share updates instantly.

Recommended for

  • Small to medium-sized businesses
  • Project managers
  • Creative teams
  • Freelancers
  • Non-profits
  • Product development teams

Analysis of Dokku

Overall verdict

  • Dokku is a solid option for teams or developers looking for a cost-effective way to deploy and manage applications with the flexibility of a self-hosted solution. While it might not be as polished or feature-rich as commercial PaaS providers like Heroku or AWS Elastic Beanstalk, its open-source nature and community support make it a reliable choice for those who are comfortable with a bit more hands-on management.

Why this product is good

  • Dokku is often hailed as a self-hosted Platform as a Service (PaaS) solution, which is based on Docker. It simplifies the deployment process by allowing developers to manage applications similar to how they would on Heroku, but with more control and flexibility. Dokku is lightweight, can be scaled easily, and integrates well with various databases and programming languages. It is also open-source and can be installed on any server that supports Docker, making it a cost-effective solution for many projects.

Recommended for

  • Small to medium-sized projects
  • Developers who prefer open-source solutions
  • Teams looking for a Heroku-like experience on their own infrastructure
  • Cost-conscious developers or startups
  • Technical users who are comfortable managing their server environment

Airtable videos

Airtable Review | Features, Pricing & Team Use

More videos:

  • Tutorial - Airtable API Tutorial With cURL and JavaScript
  • Review - Airtable Blocks for Project Management
  • Review - Airtable vs. Google Sheets
  • Review - airtable review

Dokku videos

00028 Creating Your Own PaaS with Dokku

More videos:

  • Review - Dokku - An open source PAAS alternative to Heroku. You could save $$$ money!
  • Review - Rise Up and Deploy Your Own Heroku-like Service with Dokku in Minutes! #webdevelopment #tutorial

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Airtable and Dokku)
Project Management
100 100%
0% 0
Cloud Computing
0 0%
100% 100
No Code
100 100%
0% 0
Cloud Hosting
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Airtable and Dokku

Airtable Reviews

  1. Sanjana Shah
    · Data Scientist at Boston Institute of Analytics ·
    Airtable: Spreadsheets + Databases = Efficiency

    Airtable is a powerful cloud-based software that combines spreadsheets and databases, offering real-time collaboration and customizable features for efficient task management1.

    🏁 Competitors: monday.com, ClickUp, Smartsheet
    👍 Pros:    Free forever plan and affordable paid options starting at $10 per month.|Visually appealing and user-friendly interface.|Pre-made templates for easy setup and use.|Real-time collaboration and communication.|Customizable features for task management.
    👎 Cons:    Limited project customization without a paid plan.|Top-tier accounts required for gantt tools.|May take time to learn and grasp advanced features.

The Top 7 ClickUp Alternatives You Need to Know in 2025
Benefits:Airtable's ability to integrate various data sources into one platform allows teams to maintain a centralized source of truth while leveraging powerful visualization tools6.
Top 10 Notion Alternatives for 2025 and Why Teams Are Choosing Ledger
Airtable blends spreadsheets with database features, offering teams a powerful way to organize structured information. While its flexibility is impressive, it's not purpose-built for communication or team collaboration at scale.
25 Best Asana Alternatives & Competitors for Project Management in 2024
Airtable is one of the most popular Asana alternatives. It’s project management tool that helps teams create detailed databases for their work. Users can group and sort data in custom fields with views like Grid to include only the relevant project information.
Source: clickup.com
Top 10 Microsoft Power Apps Alternatives and Competitors 2024
Airtable Pricing: Airtable offers a freemium plan with limited features for individual users. Paid plans start at $10 per user per month for additional features and functionalities. Enterprise plans with custom pricing cater to large-scale deployments.
Source: medium.com
The 10 best Asana alternatives in 2024
If you're looking for a project management app that leans more toward data management, try Airtable. Out of the box, Airtable's default view looks like a spreadsheet. It offers a few project templates based on your team type (such as marketing or sales), or you can build a "base" from scratch. From there, you can add highly customizable fields (or columns) to each row, so...
Source: zapier.com

Dokku Reviews

35+ Of The Best CI/CD Tools: Organized By Category
Dokku is a great alternative if you’re working with a stringent budget. It’s a miniaturized self-hosted platform as a service. You can deploy applications to it using Git. Because it’s a Heroku derivative, it’s compatible with Heroku apps.
Heroku vs self-hosted PaaS
CapRover is in many ways similar to Dokku. It uses Docker for deployment just like Dokku but CapRover does not support buildpack deployments as it uses Dockerfiles only. This is not necessarily a bad thing since Dockerfile deployments are great in Dokku as well. You don’t have to write your own dockerfiles however for simple deployments as there are multiple defaults for...
Source: www.mskog.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Airtable should be more popular than Dokku. It has been mentiond 130 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Airtable mentions (130)

  • How to Build Internal Tools 100x Faster
    It is possible to speed up the development and delivery process for many internal applications by using no-code or low code tools. These vary in offerings from open source to SaaS, including popular ones like AirTable, BudiBase, Retool, NocoDB and others. These can all greatly help speed up delivery times. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • Growing a side-project to 100k Unique Visitors in one week
    For the backend, I opted for Airtable as a database. It's a simple, no-code solution that I've used before. It's not the most powerful database, but it's perfect for a project like this. I could easily add, edit, and delete records, and it has an embeddable form functionality that I used for user submissions. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • A list of SaaS, PaaS and IaaS offerings that have free tiers of interest to devops and infradev
    Airtable.com — Looks like a spreadsheet, but it's a relational database unlimited bases, 1,200 rows/base, and 1,000 API requests/month. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • How to generate links to a record to view it in an Interface?
    The ?XXXXX part of the URL identifies the type of interface page it is. Just copy that and then your formula is just "https://airtable.com.../...?XXXXXX=" & RECORD_ID() I'm not sure it works in every type of interface page (where you've started from a blank page for example). There has to be something to identify the record viewed from the page, if you see what I mean. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Working on a personal app for data tracking. looking for suggestions
    So I started building something on airtable.com that would allow me to easily track updates for each batch. What in your experience would make sense to track that I may be missing? Source: almost 2 years ago
View more

Dokku mentions (21)

  • Show HN: Wiederhol – GitHub for Checklists
    Android users can install https://wiederhol.com/ as a PWA (Progressive Web Application). Tech stack: Ruby on Rails, React, PostgreSQL, https://dokku.com/ for hosting on Hetzner, https://pwabuilder.com for the iOS app. PS: Wiederhol means 'repeat' (imperative verb form) in German. - Source: Hacker News / about 2 months ago
  • Self-Hosting like it's 2025
    I am going to continue to stan for dokku for hosting web apps, docker images included https://dokku.com/. - Source: Hacker News / 2 months ago
  • Deploy a NestJS Application with Dokku
    In this article, we will deploy a NestJS application using Dokku (https://dokku.com). - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • Hosting your own PaaS: Open-Source Tools to Help You Exit the Cloud!
    # download the installation script Wget -NP . https://dokku.com/bootstrap.sh # run the installer Sudo DOKKU_TAG=v0.35.10 bash bootstrap.sh # configure your server domain Dokku domains:set-global your-domain.com # add your ssh key to the dokku user PUBLIC_KEY="your-public-key-contents-here" Echo "$PUBLIC_KEY" | dokku ssh-keys:add admin # create your first app Dokku apps:create test-app. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • Stop Paying Vercel: Self-Host Unlimited NextJS Apps for $19/month
    Use GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Dokku or any CI/CD tool you prefer. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Airtable and Dokku, you can also consider the following products

Trello - Infinitely flexible. Incredibly easy to use. Great mobile apps. It's free. Trello keeps track of everything, from the big picture to the minute details.

Google App Engine - A powerful platform to build web and mobile apps that scale automatically.

Asana - Asana project management is an effort to re-imagine how we work together, through modern productivity software. Fast and versatile, Asana helps individuals and groups get more done.

Salesforce Platform - Salesforce Platform is a comprehensive PaaS solution that paves the way for the developers to test, build, and mitigate the issues in the cloud application before the final deployment.

Basecamp - A simple and elegant project management system.

Google Cloud Functions - A serverless platform for building event-based microservices.