Airtable and Zoho are both automation-oriented cloud-based platforms.
What is Airtable?
Airtable is a low/no-code cloud collaboration platform. Airtable was launched in 2012, founded in the United States of America by Howie Liu, Andrew Ofstad, and Emmett Nicholas. Airtable has a spreadsheet-like interface which is actually a relational database.
One database sheet in Airtable is called a ‘base’.
What is Zoho Creator?
Zoho Creator, as its name suggests, is an ‘app’ builder plus a cloud-based collaborative platform. Zoho was launched in 2005, founded in India by the Zoho Corporation. Zoho Creator mainly works with a ‘live builder’ interface, which allows creating customized apps.
A relational database in Zoho and its frontend (dashboard) combined are called an ‘app’.
Airtable and Zoho platforms
Both Airtable and Zoho are available on a browser (web-based), on iPhone and Android as an app.
Features of Airtable
Airtable provides many features on top of its spreadsheet-like interface and relational database. Airtable has many types of fields like numeric, text, but the most useful field is the ‘formula’ field. For example, if you wanted to combine the first and last names in your record, you could create a new field and use a formula like CONCATENATE().
Airtable also allows you to integrate with other popular apps. You can integrate with Slack, Gmail, Hootsuite, Facebook, JiraCloud, Salesforce, Google sheets, and many other apps.
Airable also has automation. These automations make your life easy. Want to send an email when somebody fills a form? You can set up trigger-action automation for that! Want to create a social media post when your project hits ‘complete’? You can set up an automation for that.
Airtable also has its own apps, and apps created by the community. You can use these apps directly on your base without any coding.
Features of Zoho
Zoho Creator, unlike Airtable, doesn’t have a spread-sheet-like interface. Zoho has a back-end-like interface when you’re building an app. Building an app in Zoho Creator is not complex, but it’s not as easy as it is in Airtable. Zoho is essentially a live application builder and designer. This is suitable for you if you don’t mind spending a significant amount of time building the app. Zoho Creator also provides pre-built templates, which enable a faster build time.
Zoho dashboards are a unique feature allowing non-technical users to quickly browse through important data.
Zoho Creator also has ‘functions’. These functions are coded in a language called Deluge. Deluge is Zoho’s proprietary scripting language which they use across their products. These functions help you do certain tasks that would not be possible in a spreadsheet.
Zoho also allows automation in the form of workflows. You can set trigger-based automations. For example, if one of your sales reps completes sales worth USD 2000, you can send an automatic congratulatory email by setting up a workflow.
You could use Zoho connect if you want to integrate with popular apps such as Google Calendar, Google Drive, G-Suite, etc.
Some differences between Airtable and Zoho creator key features
Airtable Pricing
Airtable offers a free plan, a plus, a pro, and enterprise plans.
Airtable has a per user per month subscription system.
Zoho Pricing
Zoho offers a free, professional, and ultimate plan.
Zoho also follows a per user per month subscription system.
Support
Airtable and Zoho both have Email/Help desk, Chat, FAQ Forums, and Knowledge base as support.
Zoho in addition has Phone Support and 24/7 live representative support, which are missing from Airtable.
Use cases of Airtable and Zoho
Airtable and Zoho Creator have similar use cases.
For example, if you want to manage your real-estate business through automation, you can use either Airtable or Zoho.
Airtable with its easy interface and faster turnaround time would allow you to get online quickly. Zoho, on the other hand, with its slightly complex ‘app building’ system won’t have a fast turnaround time as compared to Airtable. But the resulting app and dashboard would allow your team to have easier and faster access to the data.
Conclusion
Airtable and Zoho are both amazing automation tools. The main difference between Airtable and Zoho is in the ease of use. Airtable is easier to use as compared to Zoho Creator. However, Zoho creator offers superior features when it comes to creating solutions for mid-sized or enterprise companies.
In a nutshell, if the interface is to look like ‘Spreadsheet’ and easier to use, Airtable is the choice. If extensive form builder, workflow management, Disaster recovery, web app development are the requirements for the app to be built, undoubtedly Zoho creator is the choice.
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