After Excel: Airtable, Notion or custom after all?

You know the sheet has to go. Then the next problem starts: go where. There are roughly three ways out and all three are sold as the answer. None of them is wrong, they simply break in different places.

1. A no-code tool

Airtable, Notion, Smartsheet, Monday. You put something working in there in an afternoon, it looks tidy, and you get collaboration and version history for free. For a team that mostly keeps lists, this is often exactly enough, and I will say so. I am not going to build a system for something Airtable holds up for two hours of setup.

Where it breaks is predictable. Per-user permissions that go beyond read or write. Your own calculation logic that is more than one formula per field. An integration with your accounting package that has no ready-made connector. And the price: you pay per user per month, so the moment it works and you roll it out to more people, it gets more expensive. At fifteen users you are spending a year what part of your own system costs, and you still own nothing.

2. An off-the-shelf package

Exact, AFAS, Teamleader and the rest. For common processes such as accounting, time tracking or a standard sales funnel, those packages beat anything I can build for you, and cost less too. They have been around twenty years and hold more than you need.

The breaking point sits in the word standard. You adapt your way of working to the software, not the other way around. For the ninety per cent that is the same everywhere, that is fine. For the ten per cent your company actually earns its money with, it is exactly wrong. If you recognise running a package with a spreadsheet next to it for the exceptions, you are in that situation. The sheet is not your old system then, it is the proof that the package does not cover your process.

3. Custom

A system built around your process. More expensive to start, no licence per user, and you own the code. It is the right call when your exceptions are the core of your work rather than the edge of it.

The breaking point here is not technical but organisational: custom asks that you know how your process works. If you do not, you rebuild the chaos in a more expensive form. That is why a project like this starts with writing down what the sheet does, not with drawing screens.

How to choose

• Mostly keeping lists and everyone works the same way? No-code. Fast, cheap, done.
• Is your process the same as at a hundred other companies in your trade? Off-the-shelf package.
• Does your edge sit in how you calculate, plan or deliver? Custom, because that part is not available off the shelf anywhere.
• Running a package you like, with a sheet next to it for the rest? Integrate, and build only that part.

That last one is what I see most often in practice, and it is also the cheapest. You keep what works, you replace what does not, and the two talk to each other instead of someone keeping them aligned by hand. What such an integration looks like is on custom integrations.

The most expensive choice is not custom. It is staying two years in a tool that almost fits, with a sheet next to it for the rest.

And the money

A no-code tool costs you a few tens per user per month and almost nothing up front. Custom starts with me at € 3,000 for one contained process, and most projects land at € 6,000 to € 12,000. What it becomes for you depends on the number of exceptions, not the number of rows. How that adds up is in what custom software really costs.

Not sure yet whether you are ready to move at all? Start at when your company outgrows Excel. And if you are sure, the approach is on from spreadsheets to software.