It’s 2026, you should probably stop using Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel for most things. What follows is my attempt at explaining why Airtable (and other similar products) are better.

Data Integrity Actually Exists

In Google Sheets, a cell can be anything. A string, a date, a number, whatever you accidentally paste into it. There’s no real way to enforce data types beyond formatting tricks or functions that break when someone inevitably ignores them.

In Airtable, you define what a column is. It’s a date field. It’s a number. It’s a single select. And it stays that way. No more spreadsheets slowly devolving into data hellscapes where row 47 has a phone number stored as text and row 48 has it as a number.

Relationships Without the Visual Basic Nightmare

Want to connect data across multiple sheets in Google? Get ready to write formulas. You’re essentially writing code, Visual Basic or Apps Script, just to link your tables together.

In Airtable, relationships are native. You click a few buttons, link two tables, and boom, you’ve got the equivalent of a SQL join without writing a single line of code. The data stays connected, and you can traverse those relationships naturally.

Attachments That Don’t Suck

Google Sheets handles attachments by letting you paste a link to a file somewhere else. Maybe it’s in Google Drive, maybe it’s on some random server. Either way, it’s just a URL sitting in a cell.

Airtable lets you drag files directly into a cell. They get thumbnails. They’re actually attached to the record. Sure, on the backend it’s probably still stored in a bucket somewhere, but the interface abstracts all that away. It just feels like the file belongs there. Good file, that’s a good boy, go sit in your cell.

Views That Make Sense

In Sheets, you get a grid. Maybe you can set up a filter view if you know how. That’s about it. Airtable gives you options out of the box: grid view, Kanban board, calendar, gallery, timeline.

You can look at the same data in completely different ways depending on what you’re trying to accomplish. Want to see your projects as cards on a board? Done. Want to see them as events on a calendar? Also done. No formulas, no hacks. Notion has entered the chat

Automation Without Writing Production Code in a Spreadsheet

This one really gets me. Want to automate something in Google Sheets? Time to open Apps Script and write JavaScript. I hope you’re comfortable debugging code that has no unit tests, no version control, and will silently break at 2 AM when you’re asleep.

Airtable’s automation is point-and-click. Set a trigger, define actions, connect to integrations. It’s like Zapier or n8n built right into your database. When this field changes, send that notification. When a record is created, add it to another table. No code required.

The Row Editing Experience

This might seem minor, but it’s not. When you want to focus on a single row in Google Sheets—really dig into one record and edit multiple fields—you’re clicking into cells and scrolling horizontally to find column 30 while trying not to lose your place.

Airtable has an expanded record view. Click on a row and it opens up vertically, showing you every field in a clean, organized layout. You can actually see what you’re editing. Nice.

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Look, Google Sheets isn’t going anywhere, and we should all probably be happy it still exists….. but yeah, the spreadsheet paradigm had a good run and it’s time to move on.

For anything that resembles actual data management, where you need integrity, relationships, and a UI that doesn’t fight you, Airtable (or Notion, or similar tools) should be your first choice.

What do you think? Have I missed anything?