We use Airtable a lot with work projects; I also use it for some personal stuff - a web-available relational database is very convenient. But yup, it’s still slow as molasses.

Are they mostly for marketing? I have never needed something like Airtable, so just curious.

I have used it as a simple CRM for a small organization, it was a big improvement on the earlier method of using Google sheets.

No, it’s very flexible. If you need to present complex relational data to clients in an easily digestible form, it has some nice tooling around that now in addition to basic views - Interfaces, they’re called. It doesn’t have the permissions granularity of rolling your own, but it’s surprisingly useful. We also built a custom CRM in it.

I also use it for personal things like aggregating transaction histories across financial institutions, personal contact management, etc. Although Notion has eaten its lunch a bit here imo.

Turns out that a web-available relational database is pretty useful.