Quick Base: Empower Your Business with Custom Applications

Tallyfy provides workflow management without the complexity of custom app building. Here is how we approach workflow management.

There is a common theme among many businesses today. Those who understand a business most intimately are rarely the most technically savvy. The desire to create business applications is often quelled through the help of a software development team. Communicating what an app should have often gets lost in translation between these business executives and software developers.

In recent years, a number of platforms have been developed to empower technically inexperienced business people. These platforms let users create custom business applications that cater to their specific needs - no programming experience required. The end result is the creation of business applications that cater to a business needs as efficiently as possible. Quick Base was one of the first to provide such a platform, and they are one of the most trusted to do so today.

When teams compare workflow and business application platforms in our conversations at Tallyfy, Quick Base comes up for specific database and tracking use cases. From what I’ve seen evaluating business application platforms, an important distinction worth understanding: Quick Base excels at custom database applications - tracking inventory, managing contacts, building project dashboards. This is different from workflow automation, which focuses on routing tasks through people in a specific sequence. If you need to build a custom app to track something, Quick Base fits. If you need to ensure tasks flow from person A to person B to person C with reminders and escalations, that’s workflow territory. In discussions we have had with operations teams, the pattern often emerges at family-owned businesses where Quick Base becomes the system of record for customer lists, HR data, payroll tracking, and logistics - but the per-user pricing starts feeling expensive as teams grow beyond 50 people.

What is Quick Base?

Quick Base is a cloud database software platform that creates custom applications that solve business challenges. The platform lets users create applications that cater to their specific needs. The platform also has an application exchange that offers hundreds of pre-built applications for common business challenges.

While it can be used any number of ways, Quick Base is commonly used for projects, CRM, task management, and document management. It is similar to platforms like Podio and Airtable, as they all aim to make tables and databases smarter and more business friendly. Quick Base specifically cuts out the need for traditional application development teams in order to solve business challenges.

Applications are at the heart of Quick Base, so understanding applications is key to understanding the platform. Let us take a look at what exactly applications are.

Applications

Applications are Quick Base solution to your business challenges. They provide both high-level and high-detailed views of how things are going in a certain area of your business.

Similar to traditional spreadsheets, they have a number of tabs that each display data about a specific area. These tabs can navigate to tables, but they can also navigate to what Quick Base calls pages. Pages and tables come together to make an application.

Tables

Tables are where you will actually input some data about your company. They can be thought of as traditional spreadsheets, but more powerful. Not only are the field types (iCalendars, URLs, file attachments, addresses, checkboxes) more useful than traditional table fields, but Quick Base can gather table data and give it some more meaning.

Quick Base allows for data importing from notable applications. Supported integrations include:

• SalesForce
• Intuit QuickBooks
• NetSuite
• Box
• DropBox
• Google Drive
• as well as simple CSV import

This importing makes it easy to translate existing tables into application components.

Tables are great, but Quick Base sets itself apart by what it can do with table data. Quick Base can easily add more context to table data through the creation of reports. Reports can be presented as tables, kanban, grids, summaries, charts, maps, calendars, or timelines. This gives meaning to our tables and creates information that we can use to make business decisions.

Take a look at all the different types of visual reports Quick Base lets us create - including tables, kanban boards, grids, summaries, charts, maps, calendars, and timelines.

Pages

Another important component of Quick Base applications are pages. Pages consolidate tables and reports in a way that give you a high-level overview of one area of your business.

In our example, our office supply company app has individual tables for both sales orders and sales leads. Important data from both tables can come together to make one page that gives us a complete overview of our company sales team as a whole. From here, we can compare past successes to current leads and devise a plan to complete more potential sales.

Pages are built from tables and reports via a drag and drop interface. They also integrate text boxes, buttons, links, search bars, and whole web pages.

Pages let us juxtapose application components in a way that give us a clearer picture of what is going on in our business. Combining revenue and leads data helps sales teams make informed plans going forward.

Quick Base mobile app

One unfortunate truth about the SaaS industry is that services often give noticeable priority to desktop apps over mobile apps. I don’t need to explain the importance of a great mobile app; we all do business from our phones to some degree. I can think of a number of services similar to Quick Base that have notoriously poor mobile apps, and it takes a toll on their ability to win new customers.

Luckily, Quick Base is not one of these companies. If you don’t believe me, let the app reviews speak for themselves.

The Quick Base iOS application maintains strong ratings on the App Store, with the Android app performing similarly on Google Play. These scores are higher than many other SaaS mobile apps in the category.

Quick Base understands that listening to clients is a great way to maintain loyalty. The mobile app dev team regularly pushes updates. This commitment to maintaining a quality mobile experience is what sets Quick Base apart for me.

While many SaaS companies take a read-only approach to taking their platform mobile, Quick Base allows users to create table entries as well. This lets the mobile app emulate the browser app pretty smoothly, which is great.

The Quick Base iOS application delivers a comprehensive mobile experience that mirrors the desktop functionality, letting you create and manage entries on the go.

Quick Base pricing

Quick Base uses per-user pricing with minimum user requirements for each tier. This model is common among enterprise-focused SaaS platforms.

The minimum user requirements mean Quick Base may not be cost-effective for very small teams. However, for mid-sized and larger organizations, the per-user pricing provides predictable costs that scale with your team size.

Quick Base offers three main pricing tiers: Team, Business, and Enterprise. While there is no free plan, a 30-day free trial is available to evaluate the platform.

Let us take a look at each plan so that you can figure out which, if any, Quick Base plan is best for your company.

Team Plan

Quick Base offers a 30-day free trial so you can evaluate the platform before committing. The Team plan is the entry-level paid tier and offers core features including:

• Workflow automation
• Full access to integrations, including:
  • Importing table data
  • API access
  • Connecting data between individual apps
• Mobile app access
• User roles and permissions
• App exchange access
• Custom forms and fields
• 13+ report types
• Data encryption and audit logs

There are minimum user requirements for this tier. Check their pricing page for current minimums.

Pros

• Entry-level plan with solid feature set
• Free trial offered
• Workflow automation included

Cons

• Minimum user requirements apply
• Missing advanced security features

Price

• $35/user/month (billed annually, minimums apply)

Business Plan

The Business plan includes everything in Team plus advanced features for mid-sized organizations:

• Single sign-on (SSO) and SCIM provisioning
• Custom application branding
• Developer sandbox environment
• Gantt charts
• External collaboration tools
• FDA and HIPAA compliance

The Business plan is well-suited for organizations needing enterprise security features and compliance certifications.

Pros

• SSO and compliance features included
• Sandbox environment for development
• Custom branding

Cons

• Higher minimum user requirements than Team
• More expensive per-user cost

Price

• $55/user/month (billed annually, minimums apply)

Enterprise Plan

The Enterprise plan includes everything from Business plus:

• Advanced data encryption
• AI-powered sensitive data scanning
• On-premise connectivity
• Data warehouse integrations
• Governance APIs
• Advanced security controls
• Performance optimization tools

Enterprise pricing is fully customizable based on your organization’s specific needs.

Pros

• All Quick Base features included
• Advanced encryption and governance
• Scalable to enterprise requirements

Cons

• Custom pricing requires sales conversation

Price

• Contact Quick Base for custom pricing

Add-ons

Quick Base allows users to enhance their plan with additional features and services. Available add-ons include:

• Advanced data encryption
• App restore assistance
• Quick Base training and certification
• Enhanced support services

Workflow templates for common business processes

If your needs lean more toward workflow automation than custom database apps, these templates show how structured processes work in practice:

Example Procedure

Client Onboarding

1Gather Basic Information

2Send Welcome E-Mail

3Conduct a Kick-Off Call

4Conduct a 1 month check-in Call

5Request Feedback

+1 more steps

View template

Example Procedure

Employee Onboarding

1HR - Set up payroll and send welcome email

2IT - Order equipment and set up workstation

3Office Manager - Prepare physical workspace

4IT - Create accounts and system access

5HR - Welcome meeting and company orientation

+3 more steps

View template

Example Procedure

Internal Purchase Order Request

1Submit Purchase Order Request Form

2Finance Manager: Review Standard Purchase Order (Under $10k)

3Update Procurement System Status to Rejected

4Notify Employee: Purchase Order Rejected

5Generate Official Purchase Order Number (Standard PO)

+10 more steps

View template

Recap

So, what is Quick Base? Quick Base is probably one of the most trusted and useful business platforms available.

Quick Base empowers business leaders to create tailored apps without technical knowledge or employment of a software-dev team.

Understanding the category fit

In our experience helping teams choose workflow tools, Quick Base solves a specific problem well: custom database applications for tracking and reporting. Where teams sometimes struggle is expecting Quick Base to handle workflow automation - the routing of tasks through people with deadlines, reminders, and accountability. These are related but different capabilities. We have observed that larger organizations (1000+ employees) sometimes build entire operations on Quick Base - it runs everything from purchase order approvals to internal process improvement tracking - but then discover they need complementary tools for the human workflow side of things.

If your primary need is building custom apps to track data, Quick Base deserves consideration. If your primary need is ensuring tasks flow through people in a consistent sequence, workflow-specific tools typically deliver faster results without the custom app building overhead.

I hope you enjoyed and learned a lot from this read. Feel free to reach out to us with any business application questions!