It is shiny from outside but has many issues that are embarrassing and can only be discovered once you have used it. (I guess looking at the open list of issues will also give you a hint).

Their UI and interface isn't that bad but their APIs are VERY BASIC. For example, there is no way to retrieve metadata about an Airtable base (sheetnames, columns etc). Or, there is no way to tell whether a link between sheets is a singular link or list of links. No way to connect different bases together.

Many of feature requests that were opened 3-4 years back still have no closure despite popular demand.

In my opinion Airtable is alright for basic usage (like yours). But nothing advance.

I know all this because I created an open-source library to dynamically create postgres database from multiple Airtable bases. (In case anyone is interested)

The API documentation is amazing though; at least the aspect I tried. You select your table (base) and the documentation shows examples ready to be pasted in your app - don't need to change anything but the data your want to insert.

Thanks, it did sound too good to be true!

Airtable has a learning curve, but it's life-changing once you're comfortable with it. To me, it felt like discovering spreadsheets when I had only worked with documents before.

Really? I found it significantly more limiting than what I can accomplish in Google Sheets / Excel (although admittedly I'm a power user). The UI and mobile app is way better though.

I would characterize myself as an Excel power user, and I love Airtable. The use case is different. Airtable is great for setting up a web-based relational DB app for multiple users very quickly. For example, I have used airtable to implement a CRM system for a small but distributed team of non-technical users. I haven’t found anything else that allows me to set up such an application so easily and quickly.

We run a fairly large business on it, and it's great from a UI standpoint, but for anything complex (such as reporting) we do dumps to Google Sheets where we run formulas to extract what we need. If I was starting all over, most likely I'd go directly for Google Sheets next time.

What is life changing about it?

I'm trying to replace Google Sheets with Airtable for spending, and also tracking time spent on project to calculate my hourly rate.

Some things about it are awesome, and with Zapier integrations you could do a lot of fun stuff (1). Like attaching files to a row is something obviously very useful.

But OTOH simple analysis using pivot tables, like I do in Google Sheets, is a pro feture (blocks) which a free user can't even evaluate.

(1) Something like: everytime I generate a new sw build, add file to Airtable and start a draft email to client linking about the new version.

You mentioned pivot tables, so reporting tools may be more appropriate in your case. Say, you can keep using Google Sheets, and sync the worksheet with BI tool that for various reports. A lot of totally free options here (including SeekTable, why not?..).

Every time I’ve tried Airtable For personal tracking I’ve come back to seeing Excel it OneNote as the easier way to track. I now have a reason to want to try the Microsoft version given which I guess makes me the target non-business audience of this announcement.

I would love to keep using it, but as another commenter pointed out, the hard limits on rows/records is a deal-breaker for me. Other than that, it's a great tool though!