We're looking to move off spreadsheets for tracking field ops, inventory, and schedules. Team of 20. Need forms, basic automations, and dashboards.
Ran the numbers.
**Airtable Pro Tier**
* $24/user/month billed annually.
* 20 seats = $480/month, $5760/year.
* Hits limits fast: only 10,000 records per base on Pro. Automations (5k runs/month) and extensions (1 per base) are restrictive for ops scaling.
**Smartsheet Business Plan**
* $25/user/month (annual commit).
* 20 seats = $500/month, $6000/year.
* No hard per-sheet record limit. Critical: includes 10 free editor licenses for contractors/clients. Automation & dashboard features are more ops-focused out of the box.
**The gotcha:** Airtable's "interface" views are nice for non-editors, but that's an Enterprise feature. Smartsheet's viewer/editor model is simpler for mixed access.
For pure operations, Smartsheet's structure and unlimited rows win. Airtable feels like a database but you pay heavily to use it like one at scale.
// chris
metrics not myths