Kumiko vs. Notion / Airtable / Excel
TL;DR: Notion, Airtable and Excel are the reality across the European mid-market: 80 % of internal tools run on one of these three today. They work. Until they don’t. Kumiko is the answer when you need to make the jump to a real app without setting up a 6-month project.
What Notion / Airtable / Excel are as internal tools
They are structured tables with a bit of logic around them, not real apps:
- Excel: the truth. Asset tracker, inventory, complaints, time tracking, everything in some XLSX on a network share
- Notion: prettier than Excel, with database views. Often used for tasks and knowledge management
- Airtable: Excel with web UI plus automations. Popular as “Excel, but collaborative”
All three become the internal-tools solution because devs and budget are missing, not because they’re the right choice.
Where they’re stronger
- Time to first use: 5 minutes. No setup, no hosting, no developer needed
- Anyone can use it: Excel skill is everywhere
- Free or very cheap: Notion’s free tier covers teams up to 10
- Low risk: if it doesn’t fit, throw it away, no investment lost
- Flexible: add a column quickly, adjust logic, no one asks
Where Kumiko is stronger (= when Excel/Notion/Airtable hit a wall)
| Pain with Excel/Notion/Airtable | Kumiko answer |
|---|---|
| “Who changed XYZ last week?”, no answer | Audit trail built in, every change end-to-end |
| “Who’s allowed to see what?”, Excel gets emailed around, everyone sees everything | Roles + field-access per field configurable |
| “Excel is broken since Hans pasted in the wrong formula” | Validation, type safety, no destructive formulas |
| “Multiple plants / locations should have separated data” | Multi-tenant built in |
| “Data goes to Notion’s cloud (US)”, GDPR risk | DE hosting, on-prem possible |
| “We need an approval workflow”, not in Notion without external add-ons | State machines + workflows as framework primitives |
| “API integration with SAP, DATEV, supplier portal” | Full backend API, your own endpoints |
| “Mobile inventory app” | Kumiko ships React Native + Expo |
| “1,000 rows and Excel slows down” | Postgres, scales to millions |
When Excel / Notion / Airtable are the right choice
They are often the right tool:
- Team under 10 people, everyone trusts each other
- Data uncritical, loss survivable
- Lifetime under 6 months (project, campaign, event)
- No compliance, audit or GDPR requirement
- No tenant need
- Data volume under 10,000 rows per table
That covers 80 % of internal-tool needs. The jump to Kumiko (or Retool) only makes sense once the pain exceeds the effort.
When you should make the jump to Kumiko
Symptom check:
- Excel file is over 50 columns wide, no one fully understands it anymore
- Multiple “versions” of the Excel are floating around, nobody knows which is current
- Someone accidentally overwrote data, and it’s not the first incident
- Compliance or audit question: “who changed the record on March 12?”, answer: ¯\(ツ)/¯
- You need multiple locations / plants / tenants separated, but Notion has no real tenant separation
- Someone asks for a GDPR DPA for Notion or Airtable and nobody has one
Migration from Excel/Notion/Airtable to Kumiko
Very straightforward: both have an export function. CSV or JSON in, schema gets generated, you confirm. A one-day project for a mid-size table.
Pilot program: [email protected]