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Updated Feb 3, 2026

3 Best Databases in 2026

Updated Feb 3, 2026

See how our top 3 picks compare across the 3 databases we evaluated.

Explore what each does best, where it falls short, and why it earned a spot on our 2026 list.

Alex Bass

Andra Vomir

Best Databases at a Glance

3 apps and 2 deals

Airtable
Best
Best for powerful spreadsheet-like databases
Best for powerful spreadsheet-like databases
folk
Recommended
Best for solopreneurs and small teams
Best for solopreneurs and small teams
Coda
Recommended
Best for lightweight no-code tools
Best for lightweight no-code tools

How We Evaluate Databases

We score each database across multiple criteria, and hands-on expert evaluation

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Expert Evaluation
Curated by
Alex
and
Andra
, our rankings reflect in-depth testing, industry insights, and hands-on experience.

Airtable

Best for powerful spreadsheet-like databases

Airtable gives you a flexible, user-friendly database that easily replaces Google Sheets and form tools for almost any business use, especially if you need structure, automation, or to connect data between apps.

Avoid the urge to use it as a CRM or project management software.

Go to Airtable site

What is Airtable?

Airtable is an incredibly flexible tool that can be used from something as simple as a Google Sheets replacement, all the way up to a no-code builder.

At a core, it's really just a user-friendly database, similar to that of Coda and even Notion (although those 2 apps both started as more of knowledge base tools first, whereas Airtable has always been first-and-foremost a user-friendly database).

If your team is still using Google Sheets (for things outside of company finance reporting like balance sheets, etc.), then we fully encourage you to check out Airtable and to give it a try. In most cases, it will completely replace the need for Google Sheets, Google Forms, Typeform, Jotform, and other Form software.

Believe it or not, over the past 8+ years, we've actually entirely replaced every single internal Google Sheet with Airtable alternative. Sometimes the structure needs to change slightly, but doing so unlocks so much additional functionality.

Key Features

API

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We love working with the Airtable API. It just does most everything you could want it to do, and it incredibly flexible and easy to work with.

You can simply create a new view within an Airtable Base, add filtered logic to it, and set it up so when a new record enters that view, an automation can be triggered. This allows it to be incredibly flexible.

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folk

Best for solopreneurs and small teams

folk is one of the best CRMs on the market you are an individual or small team who is heavily focused on relationships and contact management. If you have never used a CRM before or you've used Notion, Airtable, or Google Sheets in the past, folk is a perfect introduction into using a specialized CRM too.

It will feel familiar to how you might use a spreadsheet to manage your contacts and information. For example, you can edit data in-line and even bulk update fields like you would in a spreadsheet. ‍

Go to folk site

What is folk?

folk is a lightweight CRM that helps you manage relationships without the complexity of a traditional CRM. If you're a founder that is currently managing relationships across LinkedIn DMs, your inbox, maybe a Notion doc that is half abandoned, and you're desperately craving one place where you can see everyone you've reached out to and who you need to follow-up with, then folk is likely the right CRM for you. You can use it for something as basic as contact management or set up a deal pipeline like with any CRM.

Unlike most CRMs on this list, like Copper, or Pipedrive, or HubSpot, folk is the CRM you want to start with, especially if you have little CRM experience. If you're someone who is coming from using HubSpot or Salesforce at a previous company and are looking for your CRM that you'll use for the next 10 years, folk is probably not it. It's a beginner CRM.

It feels a lot like Notion in terms of how easy it is to get started, but with actual CRM features baked in rather than having to build everything yourself. You're not staring at a blank canvas figuring out how to structure your pipeline. The scaffolding is already there.

The Chrome extension is probably the most immediately useful part. You can pull a LinkedIn contact into folk in one click, and it auto-fills their details. If you've ever spent time manually copying someone's job title and email from LinkedIn into a spreadsheet, you'll feel that friction disappear pretty fast.

Because of that simplicity, folk is especially helpful for solopreneurs, freelancers, founders, recruiters, or small sales teams that just need a better way to stay on top of conversations and follow-ups. It gives you flexibility but adds CRM-specific features and reminders so your relationships don’t fall through the cracks.

The tradeoff with it being intentionally lightweight is that when teams are ready for deeper automation or complex integrations it's not a great tool to scale with (it has a limited API compared to other CRMs). So choose folk if you're happy with a standalone CRM and aren't trying to integrate it into every part of your process just yet.

Pros and Cons

Pros

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Extremely easy to learn and set up
Familiar spreadsheet-style interface
Chrome extension makes adding contacts very easy
Great for relationship tracking and contact organization
Simple tools for sending emails and managing follow-ups

Cons

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API and integrations are still fairly basic
Limited automation and advanced CRM features
Not ideal for larger sales teams or complex pipelines
May feel too lightweight for companies planning to scale quickly

Key Features

Magic Fields (AI)

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The idea with Magic Fields is that you create an AI column in your contact database, write a prompt using your contact's data as variables, and it generates a value for every record. The most popular example is an icebreaker, you ask folk to write a personalized one-liner for each lead based on their name, company, and role, and then you drop that into your outreach emails.

But honestly, I'd be careful here! Since AI became mainstream, I've been on the receiving end of so many cold emails that say something like "I really loved your recent video" or "great review on X" and you can immediately tell it was AI generated.

That said, where I believe magic fields are the most useful are for things like cleaning up messy data across contacts, auto-categorizing leads by industry, or flagging deals that have gone quiet. Those use cases make a lot more sense than leaning on it for outreach personalization. With that, folk is one of the more AI-forward CRMs on this list, as many are still adapting in a meaningful way.

Contact Management & Email Outreach

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folk makes it very easy to add and manage contacts. You can import contacts, add them through the Chrome extension from Gmail or LinkedIn, and enrich your records with additional information. Once contacts are inside the CRM, you can decide what next steps you want to take.

Pipeline Templates

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folk offers a lot of pre-built pipeline templates which will help guide you on how to best use it as a CRM. You can choose a template that reflects common workflows that other businesses are already using. Which makes it way easier for new CRM users to get organized without having to design their own system.

Pricing

Standard: $30/mo per member ($24/mo billed yearly). Best for small teams that want a simple CRM to manage contacts and run basic outreach.
Premium: $60/mo per member ($48/mo billed yearly). Best for growing teams that need stronger collaboration and automation tools.
Custom: From $100/mo per member ($80/mo billed yearly). Best for larger businesses that need deeper control and scalability.

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Coda

Best for lightweight no-code tools

Coda lets you build custom workflows, internal documentation, and project management setups, and it's especially good if you want to experiment with no-code tools or need a flexible solution for unique, non-standard processes. It's best for people who like to tinker, prototype, or build one-off internal tools, but if you try to replace core systems like your CRM or task manager with it, things get messy and you'll regret it long term.

Go to Coda site

What is Coda?

We used to be huge fans of Coda for internal documentation and shared customer documentation. When it first came out, it was competing with Google Docs, and it was just better on every single front. And to that end, it still is.

We mainly used it as more of a collaborative project manager mixed with knowledge base solution, to where we'd spin one up when beginning work with a new customer, and it'd be the sole place we'd communicate and document.

The friction point grew over time as documents increasingly felt separate from one another. Jumping between internal documentation and customer documentation was like moving in and out of folders in Google Drive, and quickly searching across all of this was just too much.

That and the team at Coda decided they were going to double-down more on the no-code and database functionality of Coda and less on the knowledge base/documentation side of things.

I must admit, they did an exceptional job at this—in terms of re-thinking Google Docs and turning it into something that's just better in all ways, they accomplished that and more. It's just also with that, they began strutting the line of an all-in-one tool, to which if you've read enough on the site, you'd see that this is a category we see poised with issues.

Key Features

No Code Builder

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We've seen some companies do some incredibly impressive things with Coda—heck, we were one of them. What we see with tools like this though is they start out with a clear focus and purpose—let's build an MVP for a non-standard process we have going on in our company, one that no other tool on the market fits into.

And we agree with that premise! Where it falls apart is shortly after that, when the team starts seeing the capabilities of Coda, and begin rebuilding all other systems into Coda. The exact same reason why we don't recommend using Notion as your CRM is the same reason we don't recommend using Coda as your CRM.