Airtable Vs Trello: 5 Crucial Differences You Should Know

Project management tools have become a necessity of every business today irrespective of its size or sector. Companies need them to collaborate, stay organized, and meet their client’s requirements without compromising on quality.

Airtable and Trello are two popular project management tools for smooth team collaboration and high productivity. Read the following comparison between Airtable vs Trello to learn more about their differences and choose the best tool according to your needs. 

Airtable Vs Trello: Differences in Interface

Both Airtable and Trello have a drag-and-drop and easy-to-learn user interface. Let’s explore their interfaces and identify their differences.

Airtable is spreadsheet-based project management software. So you know how to use it as long as you ever used a sheet.

And Airtable offers seven different interface views that enable users to change how they want to monitor project activities as per their business data changes. These views include Kanban, timeline, Gantt, calendar, form, gallery, and grid.

The most important feature that makes Airtable stand out is the interface designer, which allows users to create interactive interfaces without any coding. Custom visual interfaces make key information more accessible and shareable.

On the other hand, Trello’s strength lies in its Kanban-style collaboration boards that are available to both free and premium users. These visual-forward boards empower project management teams by enabling them to make data-driven decisions through real-time monitoring.

In addition to the Kanban Board, Trello offers six more interface views including dashboard, workspace, calendar, table, map, and timeline. Views give you a clear picture of your team’s current engagements and help you visualize your project from different angles. Moreover, Trello also offers cards to consolidate important tasks and key information in one place and enables users to move cards across the lists.

Airtable Vs Trello: Differences in Features

1. Create and Assign Tasks

As Airtable and Trello are two different types of project management software, one is spreadsheet based and the other is Kanban board based, it is completely different to create and assign tasks.

To create and assign tasks with Airtable, you can create a blank sheet, upload a CSV, Excel, or Google Sheets, sync from third-party tools or select your favorite template, then, add team members to the People column, input tasks, assign priority levels and deadlines, and add relevant notes in the comments section.

On the other hand, Trello can only support creating a board from templates or creating one blank board, then, simply add a checklist to the cards, add tasks and subtasks, set due dates, drag and drop attachments to these cards, and assign tasks to different team members.

2. Views

Although both Airtable and Trello offer various views, they are a bit different from each other. Airtable views include table, Kanban, timeline, calendar, gallery, Gantt, form, and grid.

While Trello views are Kanban board, table, timeline, workspace, map, calendar, and dashboard.

3. Automation

Both automation features work very well to reduce repetitive work. Although they both use the trigger-condition-actions method to perform,  they work a little bit differently.

Airtable puts all settings in one place. You can follow its pop-up steps to set based on your requirement. All your automation settings can evaluate on your project table.

While Trello divides the automation (Bulter) settings into rules, buttons, due dates, and calendars according to where and how they will be implemented.

Rules are for the actions that will be triggered by the specific condition.

Buttons are for actions on the card and across the board.

Due Date is for the actions related to the due date.

The calendar is for recurring tasks on a regular period.

4. Templates

Airtable has a template library where you can find dozens of colorful and creative templates categorized for different sectors and roles like content production, event planning, everyday life, HR, and more.

On the other hand, Trello’s templates are mostly tailored to specific industries only such as engineering, marketing, sales, HR, education, etc.

5. Integrations

The integrations offered by Airtable and Trello differ in the way they are implemented. Airtable requires API integration for successful third-party app integration while Trello offers ready-to-use Power-ups with limited functionality.

What Features Only Airtable Has?

1. Interface Designer

Airtable has an Interface Designer that lets users design visually attractive and eye-catching interfaces by using drag-and-drop elements to provide project stakeholders with the right information at the right time. You can build custom interfaces without any coding skills and make your data more accessible across your teams.

2. Sync

Get rid of data silos by integrating Airtable with different tools to sync real-time data from external sources, collaborate on a shared view, and analyze data for informed decision-making and better results.

3. Reporting

Airtable offers integration and APIs that help users create engaging dashboards, sort out data, and build custom reporting systems to achieve their desired objectives.

What Features Does Only Trello Have?

1. Power-ups

Trello offers third-party apps called power-ups that make project management as easy as you like and add value to your boards. You can add a variety of power-ups for analytics & reporting, automation, file management, product & design, IT project management, board utilities, and much more.

2. Task Cards

With Trello, you can build colorful cards to centralize important information about your tasks and team members and organize deadlines, attachments, and checklists. Other functionalities offered by task cards include labeling, external tool integrations, and voting in comments to prioritize the most important tasks.

3. Butler Automations

Butler automation is an exclusive feature of Trello and allows users to create rules, custom buttons, and calendar & due date commands on your Kanban board to automate repetitive tasks. The best thing about butler automation is that they are created using understandable language and don’t need advanced coding skills.

Trello Vs Airtable: Differences in Platforms Supported

Clearly evident, Trello supports more platforms than Airtable

Airtable Vs Trello: Differences in Pricing

Note: All prices are mentioned per user per month.

We can figure out that Trello is more economical than Airtable in terms of pricing.

Airtable Vs Trello: Differences in Customer Rating

Airtable has a better customer rating than Trello.

Airtable Vs Trello: Conclusion

We are sure you know all differences between Airtable and Trello. But it is still very hard to make a final decision out of the above Airtable vs Trello comparison without knowing your requirement because both are excellent project management platforms.

Airtable stands out in terms of its interface, task creating, multiple views, and reporting that help project managers organize their tasks more effectively. That’s why it has a better customer rating than Trello in the project management field.

On the other hand, Trello wins the race in terms of ease of use, platforms supported, price, and exclusive features like butler automation and power-ups.

Hence, when choosing a project management software for big companies with complex projects, Airtable is much more suitable with powerful project management features while if you only use the tool for small businesses and want to have one much easier-to-use tool with a more affordable price, Trello may be your better option.

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