Notion Is So Close to Replacing Airtable

Four Database Features That Would Finally Make the Switch Possible in 2026

2025 was the year that Notion got interesting again. By rolling out Agents, AI connectors, and MCP support, Notion is clearly all in on becoming the AI epicenter for companies of all sizes. And I’m here for it.

And yet, my small company still can’t go all in with Notion. We have some ongoing experiments with Notion, but we’re still stubbornly dependent on Airtable.

While I’m thrilled that Notion is investing so much energy in building out their AI product, which, don’t get me wrong, is essential, we need to see them go back and polish some of the unfinished basics of their core database features.

I suspect there are others like us who would gladly switch from Airtable to Notion if Notion’s database competed a little bit better in areas where Airtable excels.

What features would I like to see Notion bring to databases in 2026? There are four.

Securely Hide Columns and Rows when Sharing Database Views Externally

Notion needs to improve how external sharing of database views works. Right now, there is no way to securely share a curated view of a Notion database that hides columns and filters rows. This is something Airtable has done for years, and it’s the biggest reason we stay on Airtable.

For example, let’s assume we have an employee database, and one column stores employee salaries.

In both Airtable and Notion, I can create a view that hides the salary column, then further filter it to include only employees in my legal department.

But, critically, Airtable securely preserves these hidden rows and columns when sharing this view externally. Notion does not. Anyone with access to the shared view in Notion can unhide those columns and rows to see the salary field and employees in other departments.

This feels like a huge oversight to me. In fact, a quick search on Reddit shows hundreds of people raising the same concern.

Additionally, there are dozens of YouTube videos that offer workarounds for this. All of those workarounds are incredibly convoluted, hacky, and normally require third-party software. Notion is clearly sleeping on a big user demand, and one that, if they implemented correctly, would bring them a lot more users from people like us who are currently locked into Airtable.

Board and Gallery Views Need Property Labels

Currently, there’s no way to see a property field’s name when viewing it in board or gallery views.

Let’s say you’re looking at a board view of a pros/cons database. While it’s possible to see the text in the pros and cons fields, there’s no way of knowing which text is for “Pros” and which for “Cons” as Notion doesn’t display the property label, or header, in these views.

This feels like an easy fix but a significant quality-of-life upgrade.

Let’s Have a Real Rating Field in Databases

Notion should add a proper rating field for databases. Yes, you can hack it together with the single-select property, but it’s not the same as a true rating field, where you can simply drag from left to right to change a value.

Just as a proper email field is better than a text field for email addresses, a true rating field is better than a single-select field for ratings.

Grouping and Ordering Databases and Kanban Views is Too Damn Complicated

Finally, I can’t begin to tell you how often I attempt to group a database or order a board view the way I intend and get stuck. Notion has far too many fiddly settings for sorting, grouping, and ordering. That makes it unintuitive even for someone who writes a productivity blog about software to figure out what they’re doing. This morning alone I got stuck on sorting a database view from high priority to low priority. This should be drop-dead simple. And yet I, along with some help from ChatGPT, just couldn’t figure it out. I don’t know what the problem is, but this needs to be simplified.

Are you still relying on Airtable? What missing features are preventing you from switching to Notion? Let me know in the comments below.