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Airtable

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Airtable vs Slack: What are the differences?

Introduction

This Markdown code provides a comparison between Airtable and Slack, highlighting their key differences.

  1. Integration and Collaboration: Airtable is primarily a database tool that allows users to organize and analyze data, while Slack is a communication platform that focuses on team collaboration. While Airtable does offer some collaboration features, Slack's main purpose is to facilitate real-time communication and collaboration among teams.

  2. Data Structure and Functionality: Airtable is designed to create databases with structured fields and data types, allowing for complex data organization and analysis. On the other hand, Slack primarily focuses on messaging and file sharing, providing a more flexible and dynamic platform for communication.

  3. Workflow Automation: Airtable offers built-in automation features, such as triggering actions based on certain criteria or events. These features allow users to automate repetitive tasks and streamline workflows. Slack, on the other hand, relies on integrations with third-party apps, such as Zapier or automations built using its API, to achieve workflow automation.

  4. File Sharing and Storage: While both Airtable and Slack allow users to share files, their storage capacities differ. Airtable offers a limited amount of storage space, usually associated with each user or workspace. In contrast, Slack offers more generous storage capabilities, allowing users to store and access a larger number and size of files directly within the platform.

  5. Search and Data Discovery: Airtable provides advanced search capabilities and allows users to filter and sort data based on multiple criteria. It also offers features for visualizing data and creating custom views. Slack, on the other hand, focuses on search within conversations and channels, making it easier to retrieve specific messages or files within the platform.

  6. Pricing and Scalability: Airtable offers a range of pricing plans based on the features and storage capacity required. It provides options for both small teams and larger organizations. In contrast, Slack offers a tiered pricing model primarily based on the number of users, with additional features available at higher price points. Slack's pricing can scale up quickly with the addition of more users, while Airtable's pricing is more flexible and adaptable for different team sizes.

In Summary, Airtable and Slack differ in their main focus, with Airtable prioritizing data organization and analysis, while Slack concentrates on team communication and collaboration. They also differ in terms of workflow automation capabilities, file sharing and storage capacities, search functionalities, and pricing models.

Advice on Airtable and Slack
Needs advice
on
AirtableAirtable
and
SheetsuSheetsu

I'm trying to set up an ideally "no- code" way to have a backend of 3 different tables and be able to find a value in table #3 (contains businesses & cities) by first finding a record in table #1 (7,000+ zip codes) that corresponds to a city (table #2 has the unique cities), and then finding which businesses are located in these cities ( in this specific, original zipcode lookup). And return the business and a description via an API to a front-end results page, which happens to be a WordPress page - but doesn't need to be. I've tried Airtable's API, AirPress (a finicky WordPress plugin for Airtable's API), and I've looked at Sheetsu and a similar spreadsheet as backend and a simple API. I run into the issue where they work fine when you just need to query 1 table, but when you need to use the result from that query in another query to a different table. I'm back in SQL land - where sure it could be done with SQLite - needing to probably create an intersection table or a JOIN and build an API off of that. Is there a way to accomplish what I want without going back to SQL queries and some API?

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Replies (2)
Max Musing
Founder & CEO at BaseDash · | 5 upvotes · 55.1K views
Recommends
on
BaseDashBaseDash

You're right that there isn't a great way to join tables with Airtable's API. The closest you can get is to use a linked record field, which acts as a pointer to another record. You still end up with the problem you mentioned of having to run another query on the second table separately.

Your best bet is to stick with an actual SQL database. Using an ORM should make your life significantly easier so you don't actually have to write raw SQL. If you still want a graphical interface to your data, BaseDash lets you view and edit SQL databases just like Airtable. A full API with join support is coming soon, so that could be your perfect solution to this problem.

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vikas vimal
Recommends
on
IntegromatIntegromat

Let me introduce you to integromat. It connects these services without you having to work any code. And it even has a decent database built inside it.

It makes is an easy process to develop multistep workflows with multiple services and it’s free tier is surprisingly functional.

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Needs advice
on
SlackSlackDiscordDiscord
and
GitterGitter

From a StackShare Community member: “We’re about to start a chat group for our open source project (over 5K stars on GitHub) so we can let our community collaborate more closely. The obvious choice would be Slack (k8s and a ton of major projects use it), but we’ve seen Gitter (webpack uses it) for a lot of open source projects, Discord (Vue.js moved to them), and as of late I’m seeing Spectrum more and more often. Does anyone have experience with these or other alternatives? Is it even worth assessing all these options, or should we just go with Slack? Some things that are important to us: free, all the regular integrations (GitHub, Heroku, etc), mobile & desktop apps, and open source is of course a plus."

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Replies (4)
Rebecca Driscoll
Recommends
on
SlackSlack
at

We use Slack to increase productivity by simplifying communication and putting Slack in the middle of our communication workflow #Communications #Collaboration

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Arnaud Lemercier
Expert En Dveloppement Web Et Systmes Dinformations, Designer UX, UI, Co-grant at Wixiweb · | 4 upvotes · 191.2K views
Recommends
on
DiscordDiscord
at

We use Discord to tracking some action and errors (logs / alerting / assertion). it's free and simple to use with mobile application et notifications

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Michael Ionita
Recommends
on
SlackSlack
at

We use Slack because we can let "tools talk to us" and automate processes in our dev team using bots.

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Julien Tanay
Lead DevOps. Every day product hacker. at Dior · | 2 upvotes · 186.7K views
Recommends
on
DiscordDiscord
at

Our Discord Server is our n°1 community stop; we gather feedback from our users from here, discuss about new features, announce new releases, and so on.

We even use it for internal meetings and calls !

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Decisions about Airtable and Slack
Remotor Consulting
at Remotor Consulting Group · | 13 upvotes · 114.8K views

Keybase is a powerful and secure team-organizing software. And because Keybase is so transparently good at what it does, Keybase is a foundational software that facilitates the future of work: effective, inclusive, secure Remote Teams.

Keybase is a free, end-to-end encrypted, open-source program with almost limitless flexibility. Each Keybase user or team is a unique cryptographic identity. Each message or interaction that a user has with a team or other user, is verifiable and digitally-signed. Custom combinations of users/teams/bots, can be designed to catalyze Remote Teams of all kinds, this process can also be automated. Keybase includes Git integration for versioning, bots from multiple platforms to facilitate audio/video-conferencing, a Cryptocurrency wallet, and many advanced privacy features to make you more or less traceable.

Services like Slack and Discord are centralized platforms that perform analytics on your behavior and can sell or leak this data to 3rd parties. Any audio/video features available within Slack or Discord, are bound to be less secure and less flexible than excellent alternatives such as Jitsi. Slack and Discord do have a fun, causal feel to them, which can potentially facilitate social engagement in certain conditions (also many users are already on these platforms).

Centralized and Proprietary team platforms such as Discord and Slack have a large market presence (at least in the USA) based on their first-mover advantage, name recognition, and network effects from size. However these products do not have the flexibility or power of Keybase. Keybase excels on its own excellence, and also has an open and active developer community.

Find us on Keybase: @remotorteam (Keybase username) @remotor.public (Public Keybase Team)

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Stefan Schuchlenz

We chose RocketChat over other communications suites like Cliq or Slack mainly because we can self-host it on our own infrastructure. Since we have quite some projects going on which demand that we stay in touch with a lot of different stakeholders, pricing was an issue, too. With RocketChat, we have a huge set of features basically for free, RC offers apps for all major devices and systems and overall, we're very happy with it. The only downside is the limited amount of apps and integrations, but we can make due with what we have available.

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Mohammad Hossein Amri
Chief Technology Officer at Planally · | 3 upvotes · 236.7K views

we were using slack and at the same time we had a subscription with office 365. after a while we hit the slack free limitation quota. and it got annoying. the search ability was useless in free tier. and more annoying whenever you search, it opens a webpage and doesn't do it in the app.

on mobile there were many cases that I didn't get notification of important discussions. rooms was the way to separate a talk. but it become tedious. each time for a new subject that you wanted to discuss, you needed to add all the team members into a new room. and after a while the room goes silent. you will end up with a tons of not-in-use rooms that you don't want to clean up them for history purposes. also the slack UI for sub discussion is very stupid. if someone forget to check the checkbox to post the subdiscussion in the main discussion thread, other team members even won't notice such discussion is in progress.

we was paying for office 365 and thought why not give the teams a shot. we won't be in worth situation than we are. we moved to teams and we loved it instantly, we had a separate tab aggregated all the files upload. we could reply on other talk. no need of creating a new room. this way room belongs to a team and not a certain topic. our sub discussion was visible to the whole team. enjoyed integration with azure and unlimited history. the best part was integration with outlook. it was a full suit solution. our stats become busy on outlook meeting events. we get weekly analyse. we didn't need to host our wiki seperated. we've created wiki per team. the communication was much more fun.

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Pros of Airtable
Pros of Slack
  • 19
    Powerful and easy to use
  • 8
    Robust and dynamic
  • 6
    Quick UI Layer
  • 4
    Practical built in views
  • 3
    Robust API documentation
  • 0
    Great flexibility
  • 1.2K
    Easy to integrate with
  • 876
    Excellent interface on multiple platforms
  • 849
    Free
  • 694
    Mobile friendly
  • 690
    People really enjoy using it
  • 331
    Great integrations
  • 315
    Flexible notification preferences
  • 198
    Unlimited users
  • 184
    Strong search and data archiving
  • 155
    Multi domain switching support
  • 82
    Easy to use
  • 40
    Beautiful
  • 27
    Hubot support
  • 22
    Unread/read control
  • 21
    Slackbot
  • 19
    Permalink for each messages
  • 17
    Text snippet with highlighting
  • 15
    Quote message easily
  • 14
    Per-room notification
  • 13
    Awesome integration support
  • 12
    IRC gateway
  • 12
    Star for each message / attached files
  • 11
    Good communication within a team
  • 11
    Dropbox Integration
  • 10
    Jira Integration
  • 10
    Slick, search is great
  • 9
    New Relic Integration
  • 8
    Great communication tool
  • 8
    Asana Integration
  • 8
    Combine All Services Quickly
  • 7
    Awesomeness
  • 7
    This tool understands developers
  • 7
    Google Drive Integration
  • 7
    XMPP gateway
  • 6
    Replaces email
  • 6
    Twitter Integration
  • 6
    Google Docs Integration
  • 6
    BitBucket integration
  • 5
    GREAT Customer Support / Quick Response to Feedback
  • 5
    Jenkins Integration
  • 5
    Guest and Restricted user control
  • 4
    Gathers all my communications in one place
  • 4
    Clean UI
  • 4
    GitHub integration
  • 4
    Excellent multi platform internal communication tool
  • 4
    Mention list view
  • 3
    Perfect implementation of chat + integrations
  • 3
    Android app
  • 3
    Visual Studio Integration
  • 3
    Easy to start working with
  • 3
    Easy
  • 3
    Easy to add a reaction
  • 3
    Timely while non intrusive
  • 3
    Great on-boarding
  • 3
    Threaded chat
  • 2
    Eases collaboration for geographically dispersed teams
  • 2
    Message Actions
  • 2
    Simplicity
  • 2
    So much better than email
  • 2
    It's basically an improved (although closed) IRC
  • 2
    Great Channel Customization
  • 2
    Great interface
  • 2
    Intuitive, easy to use, great integrations
  • 2
    Markdown
  • 1
    API
  • 1
    Easy remote communication
  • 1
    Get less busy
  • 1
    Targetprocess integration
  • 1
    Better User Experience
  • 1
    Multi work-space support
  • 1
    Travis CI integration
  • 1
    It's the coolest IM ever
  • 1
    Dev communication Made Easy
  • 1
    Community
  • 1
    Integrates with just about everything
  • 1
    Great API
  • 1
    Very customizable
  • 1
    Great Support Team
  • 1
    Flexible and Accessible
  • 1
    Finally with terrible "threading"—I miss Flowdock
  • 1
    Archive Importing
  • 1
    Complete with plenty of Electron BLOAT
  • 1
    Watch
  • 1
    I was 666 star :D
  • 0
    Easy to useL
  • 0
    Platforms

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Cons of Airtable
Cons of Slack
    Be the first to leave a con
    • 13
      Can be distracting depending on how you use it
    • 6
      Requires some management for large teams
    • 6
      Limit messages history
    • 5
      Too expensive
    • 5
      You don't really own your messages
    • 4
      Too many notifications by default

    Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions

    What is Airtable?

    Working with Airtable is as fast and easy as editing a spreadsheet. But only Airtable is backed by the power of a full database, giving you rich features far beyond what a spreadsheet can offer.

    What is Slack?

    Imagine all your team communication in one place, instantly searchable, available wherever you go. That’s Slack. All your messages. All your files. And everything from Twitter, Dropbox, Google Docs, Asana, Trello, GitHub and dozens of other services. All together.

    Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

    What companies use Airtable?
    What companies use Slack?
    See which teams inside your own company are using Airtable or Slack.
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    What tools integrate with Airtable?
    What tools integrate with Slack?

    Sign up to get full access to all the tool integrationsMake informed product decisions

    Blog Posts

    Sep 29 2020 at 7:36PM

    WorkOS

    PythonSlackG Suite+17
    6
    3040
    SlackOptimizely Rollouts+2
    1
    1062
    GitHubPythonReact+42
    49
    40683
    What are some alternatives to Airtable and Slack?
    Asana
    Asana is the easiest way for teams to track their work. From tasks and projects to conversations and dashboards, Asana enables teams to move work from start to finish--and get results. Available at asana.com and on iOS & Android.
    Trello
    Trello is a collaboration tool that organizes your projects into boards. In one glance, Trello tells you what's being worked on, who's working on what, and where something is in a process.
    Jira
    Jira's secret sauce is the way it simplifies the complexities of software development into manageable units of work. Jira comes out-of-the-box with everything agile teams need to ship value to customers faster.
    monday.com
    A tool that simplifies the way teams work together - Manage workload, track projects, move work forward, communicate with people - Adopt a management tool that people actually love to use, one that's fast, and easy to use.
    Smartsheet
    It is an intuitive online project management tool enabling teams to increase productivity using cloud, collaboration, & mobile technologies. It provides your organization with a powerful work platform that offers exceptional speed to business value
    See all alternatives