For me it’s like:
- You cannot really build custom workflows in Notion or Airtable like you can in Coda.
- You cannot really make a good guided UX for entering the data in Notion or Airtable like you can in Coda (it’s tedious but possible — my main specialty too).
Otherwise:
- Airtable: largest adoption among user-friendly cloud database-like platforms. Coda — usually not a first choice.
- Notion: gorgeous UI for note-taking / documentation / wikis / lightweight databases, but not so much else. Coda — not so gorgeous.
- Coda: limited devices that still allow to build bespoke workflows and provide good UX for non tech-savvy users.
P.S. While having automation is nice, it still doesn’t feel that reliable to me. Usually automation triggers are delayed, and once it was as much as half a day for me. Adding high precision automation triggers and/or triggers that fire immediately when user data changes (i.e. fire on the client side and not the server side — like pressing a button right after a value is changed) would make this a killer feature, but so far it’s too flaky IMO to totally rely upon.