Guide
Airtable is a better database than most CRMs and it is not a CRM. Teams build one anyway, because the modelling is genuinely good, and then hit the same three walls: capture, records per base, and per-editor pricing. Here is where each one is, and what to move to.
Airtable models relationships properly. Linked records, lookups, and rollups will express a company with several contacts, a deal with several stakeholders, and a project with a client attached, without any of the compromises a spreadsheet forces.
Interfaces made it worse, in the sense that they made it better: you can build a usable pipeline view for a team that never touches the underlying tables. For an operations person, this is a satisfying thing to build and it works.
The problem is not the model. It is everything around the model that a CRM does and a database does not.
There is no capture. Airtable does not sync your mailbox or your calendar, so every interaction is typed in or pushed through an automation someone built and now maintains. The relationship history is therefore whatever people remembered, which is the exact problem a CRM exists to solve.
Records per base is a real ceiling. Base record limits scale with the plan, and a busy CRM base with activity rows attached to every company reaches them faster than anyone plans for. The usual fix, splitting activity into another base, breaks the linked records that made Airtable attractive.
Per-editor pricing punishes the shape of a services firm. Anyone who needs to change a record is a paid seat, and in an agency that includes delivery leads and account managers who barely touch it. Read-only sharing exists and is not the same thing.
Automations are counted and they are yours to maintain. Every run consumes quota, and every integration you built to fake capture is a small piece of software with an owner. When that person leaves, the CRM starts silently not updating.
It stays a database in the ways that matter. There is no built-in view of which relationships are decaying, no relationship strength, no forecast that means anything unless someone builds it, and no opinion about what should happen next.
Every row on the same billing basis, at the same seat count, from each vendor own professional-band plan. Switch the basis to see how annual commitment changes the total, or use the CRM cost calculator at your own seat count.
| Best for | Free | Pro / seat | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Complete $49.17 base, 2 seats included | Relationship-led B2B service firms | $24.17 | $24.17 | $194 | |
Nutshell Growth | Sequences in the plan | $13 | $25 | $200 | |
Capsule Growth | Simple and cheap to leave | $14 | $28 | $224 | |
Attio Plus | Keep building, on a CRM | $29 | $29 | $232 | |
folk Premium | Contacts and network first | $24 | $48 | $384 | |
Pipedrive Professional | A pipeline everyone will use | $14 | $49 | $392 | |
HubSpot Professional | The free tier that is actually free | $7 | $90 | $720 |
8 users, USD, list price, cheapest professional-band plan, pricing checked 31 August 2026. A vendor with no published price for that plan on this basis shows “Not published” rather than a price borrowed from a cheaper plan. Verify on the vendor own pricing page.
What each one is, the kind of team it fits, what it costs to start, and the one thing that will annoy you. Cheapest first.
Our product. A full-funnel CRM that captures email, meetings, and LinkedIn on its own, ranks who needs attention, and carries a won deal into delivery and invoicing on the same client record.
Fits: teams whose template broke because nobody kept it current, since the history arrives without anyone logging it.
The drawback: you cannot reshape the data model the way a blank tool lets you. That is the trade you are making.
A small-team B2B CRM with outbound sequences, forms, and reporting included.
Fits: teams that were about to bolt an email tool onto the template.
The drawback: nothing after the sale, and lighter reporting than the platform tools.
A calm CRM with contacts, a pipeline, and projects, in clear tiers with a free plan for two users.
Fits: a small team that wants the smallest possible step up from a table.
The drawback: light automation and reporting as the team grows.
A data-model CRM: you define objects, attributes, and automations, and the interface follows what you built.
Fits: the person who enjoyed building the template and does not want to give that up, but wants CRM behaviour underneath it.
The drawback: it ships blank, so you own the design and its upkeep, which is the part that went wrong last time.
A contact-first CRM with a LinkedIn extension and shared lists, light on process.
Fits: small teams whose database is really a network they want to keep warm.
The drawback: thin on deals and reporting once several people are selling.
A focused deal pipeline that takes an afternoon to set up, with a large app marketplace.
Fits: teams whose template was really a deal tracker with extra steps.
The drawback: a won deal leaves the board, so anything after the sale needs somewhere else to live.
A platform with a genuinely usable free CRM tier and the largest app marketplace in the category.
Fits: teams leaving a template on cost grounds who want to pay nothing for a while.
The drawback: the step from free to Sales Hub Professional is large, and it carries a five-seat minimum.
Airtable exports per table as CSV, and linked-record fields export as the primary field value of the linked rows rather than as ids, so joins become text matches. Two things to plan: deduplicate primary field values before exporting, and download attachments separately, because the CSV holds expiring URLs rather than the files. If your activity history lives in a second base, export and stitch it before importing rather than after.
Moving to Lumenbase runs through Portage, which scans the source, maps fields and owners, shows you a preview with record counts, then imports in the background with rollback. It comes with the plan rather than as a paid service.
Prices come from each vendor's own pricing page, on whichever basis the table is set to: annual-billed or month-to-month. A basis is never calculated from the other, so a vendor publishing only one shows a dash on the other rather than an estimate. The 8-seat column always uses the cheapest plan in a vendor's professional band, and a vendor with no published price for that plan is left blank instead of being quoted from a cheaper tier. This page lists 7 CRMs, 7 of them priced on the default basis. Pricing was refreshed 31 August 2026. See the CRM feature comparison for the full method, capability data, and treatment of flat and quote-only plans.
Airtable is a trademark of Formagrid, Inc. Lumenbase is independent of Airtable and competes with the CRM use of it described here.
Lumenbase, Nutshell, Capsule, Attio, folk, Pipedrive, HubSpot, and other names are trademarks of their respective owners. Lumenbase is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by them. Prices describe the vendors as of 31 August 2026; products, pricing, and features change and vary by plan, so verify on each vendor's pricing page before deciding.
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