Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Microsoft Office Excel VS Airtable

Compare Microsoft Office Excel VS Airtable and see what are their differences

Microsoft Office Excel logo Microsoft Office Excel

Microsoft Office Excel is a commercial spreadsheet application.

Airtable logo Airtable

Airtable works like a spreadsheet but gives you the power of a database to organize anything. Sign up for free.
  • Microsoft Office Excel Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-21
  • Airtable Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-19

Airtable

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

Microsoft Office Excel features and specs

  • Comprehensive Features
    Excel offers extensive functionalities such as pivot tables, advanced charting, macros, and formulas, making it a powerful tool for data analysis and visualization.
  • User-Friendly Interface
    Excel has an intuitive interface with easy-to-navigate menus and commands, which makes it accessible for both beginners and advanced users.
  • High Compatibility
    Excel files can be easily shared and accessed across different devices and platforms, ensuring compatibility with other Microsoft Office products and third-party software.
  • Strong Community and Support
    A large online community, extensive documentation, and professional support from Microsoft ensure users can find help and resources quickly.
  • Regular Updates
    Microsoft frequently releases updates that add new features, improve performance, and enhance security, ensuring the tool remains up-to-date with user needs.

Possible disadvantages of Microsoft Office Excel

  • Cost
    Excel requires a subscription to Microsoft Office 365 or a one-time purchase of Office Suite, which can be expensive for individual users or small businesses.
  • Resource Intensive
    Large datasets and complex calculations can cause Excel to become slow and consume significant system resources, impacting overall computer performance.
  • Learning Curve
    While basic functionalities are accessible, mastering Excel's more advanced features requires substantial time and effort, posing a challenge for new users.
  • Limited Collaboration Features
    Despite improvements, Excel's real-time collaboration features can lag behind those of dedicated collaborative tools like Google Sheets, especially when multiple users are editing a document simultaneously.
  • Error-Prone
    User errors, such as incorrect formulas or misentered data, can lead to significant issues in data accuracy and analysis, necessitating diligent review and oversight.

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.

Microsoft Office Excel videos

Michael Net Worth

More videos:

  • Tutorial - How to use review tab(Microsoft Excel part-6)
  • Tutorial - How To Pass Microsoft Excel Test - Get ready for the Interview
  • Review - Microsoft Excel Review Tab All Option,Ms Excel के review Tab को जानिए हिंदी में,Ms excel Review Tab!

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

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Microsoft Office Excel and Airtable)
Spreadsheets
100 100%
0% 0
Project Management
16 16%
84% 84
No Code
0 0%
100% 100
Office Suites
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

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

Microsoft Office Excel Reviews

  1. amna123
    · content writter at content arcade ·
    Unleashing the Potential with Microsoft Office Excel

    A software program created by Microsoft that uses spreadsheets to organize numbers and data with formulas and functions. It is one of the best software for daily use Microsoft Office Excel has been an absolute game-changer for me in the realm of spreadsheet applications. Whether it's managing data, creating intricate formulas, or visualizing trends, Excel stands out as a powerhouse of functionality and efficiency.

    👍 Pros:    Database management
    👎 Cons:    Learning curve
  2. Everyone loves to hate it, but it's the best!

    What would we do without Excel!? Sure, the online version isn't as simple as Google Sheets, they could have chosen not to localise the function names, and it's always chaos trying to consolidate multiple budget or forecast files & templates, but aside from that it's everyone's favourite spreadsheet. What you can't do in Excel isn't worth doing. Even if there's often a better way...

  3. Rosstaylor9855
    Reliable Software

    It is one of the best software for daily purpose.


11 Alternatives to QuickBooks in 2024
Tiller takes all of your information—your bank accounts, credit cards and investment accounts—and feeds them directly into a Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets file. From there, you can design your own spreadsheets to your own liking, or use one of Tiller’s pre-made templates. Tiller offers a 30-day trial here, and the full version costs $79/year.
Source: www.bench.co
Top 10 Data Analysis Tools in 2022
Microsoft Excel Microsoft Excel allows the direct addition of analog data from a picture to a fully editable format in Excel. Microsoft 365 Business Basic subscription costs $6/user/month. Microsoft Excel is a very efficient tool for small businesses in processing and conducting calculations on data. However, Excel is relatively old, which means limited features in terms of...

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

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Airtable seems to be more popular. 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.

Microsoft Office Excel mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Microsoft Office Excel yet. Tracking of Microsoft Office Excel recommendations started around Mar 2021.

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 / 5 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 / about 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: over 1 year 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: over 1 year ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Microsoft Office Excel and Airtable, you can also consider the following products

Google Sheets - Synchronizing, online-based word processor, part of Google Drive.

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.

LibreOffice - Calc - LibreOffice Calc is the spreadsheet program you've always needed. A fork of OpenOffice.

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.

Tableau - Tableau can help anyone see and understand their data. Connect to almost any database, drag and drop to create visualizations, and share with a click.

Basecamp - A simple and elegant project management system.