Comparison
Greenlit vs Airtable for entertainment teams
Airtable is a good database. Greenlit is a system of record built for entertainment teams, development, sales, distribution, and talent representation alike. Here is where each one holds up.
What Airtable is good at
- Flexible schema, add a field or a view without asking anyone.
- Formulas, linked records, and automations cover a lot of general business tracking.
- Cheap to start, and most teams already know how to use it.
What Greenlit is good at
- Submission intake, business affairs forms, coverage routing, and rights are one connected record, not five tabs.
- Package sharing with real engagement data, who opened it, when, for how long.
- Nothing to configure. The schema is already built for how entertainment teams manage deals, people, and projects.
- A live feed of deal news and mandates matched against your slate, an Airtable base can hold data, it can't read Deadline.
Greenlit vs Airtable, feature by feature
← Scroll to compare →
 | Airtable | |
|---|---|---|
| Submission intake | Automatic routing and record creation | Manual entry per submissionA form-to-base automation can capture the basics, but routing, dedup, and coverage assignment are still on you. |
| Business affairs forms | Workflow-automated and built into your submission pipeline | Not includedYou can link out to DocuSign, but the release form and the record live in two different tools. |
| Rights tracking | Attached to the project record | A separate table you maintain |
| Sharing link analytics | Know who opened it and when | Not built inPair it with DocSend or a similar tool and you get the analytics, minus the connection back to the record. |
| Attachments | Stored permanently, tied to the record | Stored, but export links expire in hoursAirtable's CSV export gives you a filename and a link, not the file, the link stops working after a few hours. |
| Deal intelligence | Live feed of deals, mandates, and first-look news from 60+ trades, matched against your slate automatically | Not tracked. A base has no idea what Deadline said this morning |
| Mandate & target matching | Buyer and talent mandates matched against your submissions and slate, with AI-suggested targets and drafted outreach | Not tracked. Matching a project to the right buyer is done from memory |
| Relationship mapping | See the path to any exec through people and projects you already know | Not tracked. Relationships live in someone's head |
| Views, grid, kanban, and timeline | Kanban, timeline, and grid are all native and included on every plan. | Kanban and timeline views are available, but require a paid plan upgrade. |
| CRM & task management | Every person and company tracked with a full contact record, tasks tied to submissions and deals, and a live feed of who submitted what and when | A base can hold a contacts table, but there's no task system, no activity feed, and nothing automatically links a person record to what they've actually submitted |
| Contact & credit enrichment | Add a person or company and Greenlit automatically pulls their credits and past projects | Not tracked. You retype credits and past projects by hand every time |
| Getting your data in | Upload your exported CSVs and files directly, or send over the base and the team maps it for you | N/A |
| Built for entertainment | Yes | No, it is a general-purpose database |
Where each one fits
Choose Airtable if
- You'd rather log every submission by hand than have it show up in a structured record on its own.
- You want to match a project to a buyer from memory instead of having mandates matched against your slate automatically.
- You don't mind rebuilding a view or an automation every time the workflow changes, or finding out about a deal after everyone else already has.
Choose Greenlit if
- You want to forward a submission and have it logged and matched against a mandate, yours, someone you know, or a buyer's, automatically.
- You want warm introductions surfaced to the people you're already trying to reach.
- You want dynamic lists, writers to watch, directors to watch, your slate, that build and stay current on their own, not a doc someone maintains by hand.
- You want a more modern way to manage your entertainment business, submissions, IP, companies, contacts and more.
Where it tends to break down
The gap shows up at the edges of the base, not inside it. Airtable will hold a record of a submission just fine. What it won't do on its own is generate the release form when the submission lands, route coverage to the right reader, or keep a rights position attached to that same record when the project moves to packaging. Each of those becomes a separate tool, a separate login, and a separate place for the record to drift out of sync with reality. It also becomes a retrieval problem. A base is easy to search the week you build it and a lot harder six months later, once the naming conventions have drifted and finding a specific submission means scrolling through a base someone else set up.
Getting your data in
Getting your data in is as simple as exporting your Airtable base and uploading it into Greenlit. No manual mapping required. For a step-by-step walkthrough, including the attachment link expiry issue, see the full migration guide.
Read the full Airtable export walkthroughCommon questions
Can I import my existing Airtable base into Greenlit?
Yes. Export your views to CSV and pull your attachments before the export links expire, then upload both into Greenlit, or send the base over and the team handles the mapping for you. See the step-by-step guide for the export process.
Does Greenlit replace Airtable entirely?
Yes. Greenlit simplifies and centralizes everything you're likely using Airtable for, and then some.
Why does my Airtable base feel out of date all the time?
Because updating it is a task someone has to remember to do, separate from the work itself. Greenlit's record updates as submissions move through intake, coverage, and packaging, so the status is a byproduct of the work rather than a chore layered on top of it.
Does Greenlit tell me about deal news and buyer mandates, or just track my own data?
Both. Greenlit reads a live feed from 60+ industry trades, matches it against the mandates you set and the projects on your slate, and surfaces the fits automatically. Airtable only knows what you type into it.
Is my data secure while I move it over?
Everything you upload is encrypted in transit (TLS 1.3) and at rest (AES-256). Your workspace is scoped to your organization and every request is filtered by workspace before it returns anything, other accounts never see your submissions, scripts, or contracts. Greenlit never uses your content to train AI models, and you can request a full export or deletion of your data at any time.
See how easy it is to run your entertainment business on Greenlit
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