Airtable vs ERP for ecommerce brands
Most brands between €1M and €10M ask this question at the same moment: the spreadsheet has broken, and the first quote for an ERP has landed. Here is what actually separates the two, including the cases where the ERP is the right answer.
Published 29 July 2026. Last updated 29 July 2026.
An ERP is a complete, standardised system you adopt and adapt to. A system built on Airtable is a smaller, tailored system you own and shape around how you already work. Below roughly €10M in revenue, most ecommerce brands need the second. The ERP becomes the right call when finance, manufacturing or regulatory depth stops being optional.
What each one actually is
An ERP, enterprise resource planning, is a single system covering finance, inventory, purchasing, production and often sales. It arrives with its own model of how a company should run. That model is the product. You configure it, you train your team on it, and where your process differs from the model, you change your process.
A system built on Airtable starts from the opposite end. It begins with how your brand already works, and builds a structure around it: product data, stock across warehouses, cost per unit, purchase orders, wholesale. It connects to Shopify and to the tools you already pay for. It lives in your workspace, so it stays yours.
Both replace the spreadsheet. They replace it with very different things.
Side by side
| Spreadsheet | System on Airtable | ERP | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fits your process | Completely, that is why it survived | Built around it | You adapt to the system |
| Time to something usable | Immediate, then it degrades | Weeks, one block at a time | Months, often longer |
| Who can change it | Anyone, which is the problem | Your team, with guardrails | A consultant, on a change request |
| Ownership | Yours | Yours, in your own workspace | Licensed, renewed annually |
| Multi-store Shopify | Manual, drifts within weeks | Synced both ways | Depends on the connector |
| Accounting depth | None | Feeds your accounting tool | Native and complete |
| Manufacturing depth | None | BOM and costing, not shop floor | Full, down to work orders |
| What breaks first | Two people editing at once | Undocumented custom logic | Adoption, people work around it |
When an ERP is the right call
This section exists because the honest answer is not always the one that suits us. An ERP is the better choice when:
- You manufacture at scale and need work orders, shop floor scheduling and production capacity planning, not just a bill of materials.
- Your finance function needs statutory consolidation across entities, multi-currency ledgers and an audit trail built into the same system as operations.
- You operate in a regulated category where traceability and validated systems are a legal requirement, not a preference.
- You have grown past the point where a small team can hold the process, and you would rather buy a proven model than define your own.
If two or more of these describe you, the ERP conversation is the right one to have. A tailored system will feel lighter and cost less, and it will still be the wrong tool.
When a system on Airtable is the right call
- Your operations are specific enough that every ERP demo requires you to explain why your case is different.
- The real problem is that product data, stock and costs live in separate places, not that you lack accounting features.
- You sell across several Shopify stores and the catalog drifts between them.
- You need something working this quarter, not a project that lands next year.
- You want to keep the ability to change how you work without raising a change request.
What people get wrong about running Airtable as an ERP
The phrase invites a false comparison. Nobody should try to rebuild SAP in Airtable, and the attempts that fail are usually the ones that tried. What works is narrower and more useful: take the operational core that the spreadsheet was already holding, product data, stock, costs, purchase orders, wholesale, and give it a real structure, real permissions and real connections.
Accounting stays in the accounting tool. Shipping stays with the 3PL. Selling stays in Shopify. What you build is the layer that ties them together, which is precisely the layer the spreadsheet was pretending to be.
The second mistake is building it as one big system. A brand that tries to launch everything at once tends to abandon it. Starting with the single block that hurts most, usually product data or stock, gets something in use within weeks and earns the right to build the next one.
How we approach it
Propicca builds these systems for ecommerce brands scaling from €1M to €10M. We start with a discovery conversation, design the block that hurts most, build it, then grow it. The system lives in your workspace and stays yours. If you want the detail on the product data side, we wrote a separate page on using Airtable as a PIM.
Questions we get asked
- Can Airtable really replace an ERP?
- For a brand between €1M and €10M, usually yes. At that size the gap is rarely accounting or manufacturing depth, it is that product data, stock and purchase orders live in separate places. A system built on Airtable closes that gap. A brand running its own factories or complex financial consolidation is a different case.
- What happens when we outgrow it?
- You migrate, the same way you would migrate off any system. The difference is what you take with you: a clean, structured, documented dataset that you already own, instead of an export from a vendor. Brands that move to an ERP after running on Airtable arrive with their data already in order.
- Does it sync with Shopify?
- Yes, in both directions, and across several stores. Product data, inventory and orders stay aligned between Airtable and each store, so the catalog does not drift. Multi-store brands are the most common case, because that is where a spreadsheet fails first.
- Who owns the system once it is built?
- You do. It lives in your own Airtable workspace, under your billing, with your team as collaborators. There is no licence to renew with us and no vendor lock. You can change it yourself, hand it to another builder, or ask us to keep evolving it.
- Is this just a spreadsheet with a nicer interface?
- No. A spreadsheet has no relationships, no permissions, no automation and no integrations. A system built on Airtable has linked records, a real data model, roles, automated flows and live connections to Shopify and your other tools. The visible surface is simple, what runs underneath is not.