logo
Search for anything...
About

Airtable vs Hive - Comparison 2025

Airtable vs. Hive

Last updated on

Reviewed by Camin McCluskey

Stackfix Co-Founder & CTO

CM

Airtable and Hive serve distinct project management needs, with Airtable excelling in data organization and customization while Hive shines in automation and time tracking.

Airtable is better suited to teams handling complex data relationships and requiring extensive customization, particularly in industries like research, product development, or marketing campaign management. Hive, on the other hand, is ideal for teams prioritizing workflow automation and time tracking, especially in service-based industries or agencies needing to monitor resource allocation closely. The choice between the two largely depends on whether your priority is data management flexibility (Airtable) or process automation and time tracking (Hive).

Airtable Product Logo

Advantages of Airtable

Airtable is significantly more customizable than Hive
We found Airtable's customization capabilities to be notably superior, with an extensive range of field types and the ability to create highly detailed custom views. While Hive offers basic customization, Airtable's flexibility in creating custom fields, views, and workflows makes it particularly valuable for teams with unique project management needs.
Airtable offers superior data organization and visualization
Airtable excels at organizing and visualizing complex data structures, with powerful features for linking related data and creating custom views. Unlike Hive's more basic approach, Airtable allows teams to create sophisticated data relationships and cross-reference information across projects, making it especially valuable for data-intensive work.
Airtable provides better project portfolio management
We found Airtable's project portfolio management capabilities to be more comprehensive than Hive's, offering detailed views of project health and progress with extensive filtering options. While Hive provides basic project navigation, Airtable's ability to track and visualize multiple projects simultaneously offers better insights for strategic decision-making.
Hive Product Logo

Advantages of Hive

Hive offers superior time tracking capabilities
Hive provides robust time tracking features with the ability to record work duration and track budgeted vs. actual time spent on tasks, which is crucial for project budgeting and resource management. Airtable lacks native time tracking capabilities entirely.
Hive is significantly better at customer support
We found Hive's customer support to be exceptional, with fast response times (<1 hour) and multiple support channels including live chat and email. This is particularly valuable for teams that need quick resolution to workflow bottlenecks. In contrast, Airtable only offers email support with longer response times (up to 48 hours).
Hive has superior task creation via forms
Hive offers comprehensive form functionality that automatically converts submissions into tasks, with options for conditional logic and email notifications. Airtable only allows form data collection without direct task creation capabilities.
Hive has more sophisticated workflow automation
Hive's automation capabilities stand out for their exceptional range of trigger and action functions, plus extensive integration options across apps. We find Airtable's automation to be good, but it doesn't match the breadth of functionality that Hive offers.

Airtable is best for

  • Businesses with a moderate number of active projects (5-10 projects at a time).
  • Businesses that need extensive data organization and visualization capabilities with highly customizable forms and fields.
  • Teams who want strong workflow automation and project-goal alignment for strategic planning.

Hive is best for

  • Businesses with a moderate number of active projects (5-10 projects at a time)
  • Who need sophisticated workflow automation across multiple apps and comprehensive time tracking
  • And/or who want easy onboarding with strong customer support and extensive self-serve training materials.

Airtable is less good for

  • Businesses with a high number of active projects (10+ projects at a time) who need streamlined task management and quick project setup
  • Who need real-time team collaboration and built-in documentation capabilities
  • And/or who need integrated time tracking and approval workflows for project billing.

Hive is less good for

  • Businesses with a low number of active projects (3-5 projects at a time)
  • Who need real-time collaboration features and internal document creation capabilities
  • And/or who want advanced project management features but have limited budgets.

Gallery

Airtable logoAirtable
Airtable screenshot
Hive logoHive
Hive screenshot

Pricing, features & ratings

Airtable logo

Airtable

Starting at

$0

Billed monthly

Pricing calculatorVisit Website
Hive logo

Hive

Starting at

$0

Billed monthly

Pricing calculatorVisit Website
Stackfix Verdict
Functionality
7

Functionality

7/10

<p>Airtable offers most of the functionality that companies will need but lacks a few useful features. Users will benefit from strong workflow automations, dependencies, the ability to link tasks, projects, key metrics and company goals, forms which auto populate spreadsheets with responses and more. However, Airtable lacks in-real-time collaboration, the ability to create internal documents and some strong time-tracking features.</p>
6

Functionality

6/10

<p>Generally, Hive's functionality is strong where it is available, but many of its best features are only available on its most expensive plans. Hive's automation both in-app and across app stand out as incredibly strong. Time-tracking functionality is also very impressive - with quick ways to filter for availability, but, again, this is only available on their more expensive plans. For creative work and real-time collaboration - Hive isn't great. It lacks any real time collaboration tools and the ability to make internal documents.</p>
Ease of Use
6

Ease of Use

6/10

<p>Airtable is generally easy to use. We estimate that an average start-up employee would require around half a day and some guidance to proficiently use all key functionalities of the platform. The notable exceptions to this are the extensions required to make custom reports and creating subtask in table view.</p><p><br></p><p>Airtables key processes are easy to find and do not require many clicks to reach. Some more complex processes like customizing the UI itself can be more hidden.</p>
7

Ease of Use

7/10

<p>Hive is easy to use - functions are well-labelled and the reasonable amount of customisation means that you never feel overwhelmed. The only exception to this is workflow automations across apps. As such, we expect a<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">n average start-up employee would require around half a day and minimal guidance to proficiently use all key functionalities of the product. </span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Processes are always easy to locate key info and processes are generally intuitive. </span></p>
Look and feel
8

Look and feel

8/10

<p>Airtable has a more customizable UI than most. You can alter colour and some layout features vai their interface designer. However, inevitably, UIs will not differ so much from one user to the next. They could all still have more sleep designs and more colour.</p><p><br></p><p>Loading times are fast (1 second per page).</p>
6

Look and feel

6/10

<p>Hive is more colourful than some of its competitors with similar UIs and the general architecture of its UI is nicely layout. That being said hive is not visually anything special - it just does the job.</p>
Customisability
8

Customisability

8/10

<p>Airtable has strong customizability. Automations integrate with third parties and offer a decent selection of action/ trigger functions, as well as, conditional logic. Highly customizable forms also allow for conditional logic, many answer types and cosmetic customizations like banners, logos and colours. Out-of-the-box reporting extensions also allow for customizable reports.</p>
6

Customisability

6/10

<p>Hive has some strong customisation features - unfortunately many of these are only available of its more expensive tiers. Customisations for automated workflows are strongest with conditional logic and plenty of action and trigger functions across many apps. Forums are also highly customisable with conditional logic again available, along with many answer types and the ability to turn responses of forms into tasks.</p>
Ease of Setup
8

Ease of Setup

8/10

<p>Offers a self-serve free trial and allows purchase without needing to talk to sales. Getting started and setting up a few tasks and subtasks should take 20-30 minutes, because it has a very rich library of templates. Full setup should take less than a day.</p>
9

Ease of Setup

9/10

<p>Offers a self-serve free trial and allows purchase without needing to talk to sales. Getting started and setting up a few tasks and subtasks should take 20-30 minutes, because it has a very rich library of templates. Full setup should take less than a day.</p>
Customer Support
7

Customer Support

7/10

<p>An in-app chatbot is useful for filtering through self-serve material, but if you want to talk to a real human you need to do this via email (not that forms can be submitted via email) and agents will reply within 48 hours - but usually in less than 12 hours.</p><p><br></p><p>Airtable's self-serve materials are excellent. Articles, videos and seminars all have excellent depth and quality. These can all be access in app.</p>
9

Customer Support

9/10

<p>Hive has great customer support personalised help is available both via email and on a live chat in app and responses are fast (&lt;1 hour).</p><p><br></p><p>Self-serve materials also have great depth and quality. In particular, succinct video tutorials make discovering the platform a breeze.</p>
Integratability
8

Integratability

8/10

<p>Airtable only offers 36 native integrations which pails in comparison to other project management software - like Clickup or Asana. However, most of the big names are covered - like Jira, Github, Slack etc. Some integrations also include automations - e,g. sending messages in slack or creating a weekly digest in google documents.</p><p><br></p><p>Airtable also offer an API allowing users to build integrations where necessary.</p>
8

Integratability

8/10

<p>Hive has integrations with most third parties of interest. Most notably, the across-app automations are available with such a large varied of third parties that Hive seamlessly integrates within your project management ecosystem.</p><p><br></p><p>Hive also has an API which allows teams to build custom integrations if needed.</p>
Ease of Migration
8

Ease of Migration

8/10

<p>Exports of key and custom data and reports are available self-serve via a CSV file.</p>
6

Ease of Migration

6/10

<p>All reports can be exported to a pdf file. There is a large selection of self-serve analytics with great depth and quality (much of this is behind their most expensive tiers) but there are no custom reports.</p>
Loading...

Compare other Project Management Tools

Want to find out how Hive or Airtable stacks up with their competitors?