#28 - App builder based on Google Sheets
The $480/Month Google Sheet alternative
A small e-commerce owner has 20 packers on his team. His system for telling them what to pack? A Google Sheet. It’s chaotic. It’s messy. But it’s free.
He looked at Airtable. And of course he did. It’s beautiful, powerful, and would instantly solve his mess. But then, the pricing page.
To give his 20 packers the ability to see a list and check a box, he’d need 21 paid seats. At $20/month a pop, that’s over $400. Every single month. For a job he’s currently doing with a free, if clumsy, spreadsheet.
The Sound of a Broken Model
This isn’t one person’s problem. It’s a fundamental flaw in the per-seat pricing model. The world isn’t just full of “knowledge workers” who need full access to a powerful suite of tools. It’s full of businesses with two distinct types of people:
A small core of Creators who build the systems.
A much larger group of Collaborators who just need to poke one tiny part of that system.
Look at the comment section. One user laid out a whole Rube Goldberg machine of tools:
You can use read-only Airtable Interfaces for your teammates… you can add button fields that open forms… I recommend using Fillout forms instead… I’ve written a detailed article on how to share an interface along with a cost breakdown.
Read that again. People are writing entire articles on how to chain three different services together.
This isn’t a sign of cheap customers. It’s the sign of a hole in the market.
This is our opening. The gap between “free and broken” and “powerful but obscenely expensive for this one job.”
