Bubble + Airtable: Powerful Data for No-Code Web Apps
We recently launched our long-awaited Airtable plugin that lets you read from and write to Airtable from a Bubble app, and it’s a pretty big deal. At Bubble we always strive to put our users’ needs first and foremost. Like Bubble, Airtable is a prominent player in the no-code space with its own loyal fans. We've heard of many cool use cases that a Bubble Airtable integration would open up. So, we built it!
Here are three (out of many) great ideas to get the most out of the Airtable plugin:
1. Build a powerful CRM in Bubble with workflows to contribute to an Airtable Base
Get all the power of Bubble’s logic workflows to work with your contacts data saved in Airtable. Whether your Airtable contacts base is collaborative or private, this could be a great way to automate outreach, provide a UI for bulk operations, and really take advantage of the complexity offered by no-code platforms today!
2. Extend your Airtable data with a Bubble-built content management system
You may already be using Airtable to manage your company’s content. But now, you can build a Bubble app on top of the data to build a customized UI for interacting with that data. Perhaps you want to build specific content workflows that automatically show authors and reviewers the right next step. Or perhaps you want to pull in different sources of data about your channels to enrich your Airtable data. This integration will help keep your Bubble app and Airtable data in sync.
3. Create an inventory management system with barcode scanning functionality
The Airtable mobile app allows you to scan barcodes with your phone and load them directly into your Barcode fields. You can then use this information in your Bubble application to take inventory, match products to barcodes, place orders, and more!
Since we launched this feature in Beta, we’ve seen some powerful, creative uses for the integration. A startup investment syndicate, San Diego Venture Partners, built their entire investor platform on Bubble with Airtable as their database. They use Airtable to store data like deal terms, information, and write-ups and then dynamically display that data in an app built on Bubble. They are also using Airtable data to validate and supplement data about their Bubble users.
“It’s a full-fledged platform for our investors,” explained Al Bsharah, who built the app on Bubble initially to help investors review deals, using an existing Airtable database. “A couple months of after-hours-work later, I had more than just a simple site to review deals... This wasn’t something I had the time or money to rally a developer around, and turns out I didn’t need to.”
Another example comes from Ideable, a no-code design and development agency. Ideable is using the Bubble Airtable integration to store analytics about their product, openBuild, an extension that helps users create beautiful Bubble apps through a large components library. They described how they set up this integration in a blog post.
This is also an exciting step for the no-code movement as a whole. The more players there are in the no-code/low-code field, the more everyday users benefit from the potential integration, collaboration, and power of no-code tools. We’re starting to see a rich, interwoven ecosystem rather than a variety of separate products. Empowering entrepreneurs, thinkers, and engineers to create their dreams is a massive undertaking, so we are proud to be part of a more collaborative community and ecosystem.
Moreover, this was a great collaboration between the Bubble and Airtable teams. We’d like to thank the Airtable team for their close partnership to make the set-up experience as smooth as we could. After providing your Airtable API key, Bubble will guide you through the process of picking the specific base, table and columns you want to connect with Bubble.
To get started with the Airtable plugin, install it in the Plugins tab of your Bubble application, check out our Manual documentation, and connect your Airtable tables to Bubble with ease.