Quickbase

I have used Quickbase for about 2 years now, and I have needed to create the application for my company from scratch.
After having dabbled with the likes of designing a SQL or Access database, to creating a seemingly easier FileMaker application, Quickbase ended up winning those, hands down.

From a UI/UX perspective, Quickbase is a very intuitive products. You will immediately notice the attention to detail in designing this product the very first time you run into an error in a formula, or any design element. All feedback from the application is so detailed to the point where it practically resolves the issue for you. No other application has ever done that for me.

Furthermore, it allows even a non-technical user create fairly complex applications that are far from achievable using a normal database product.

Even if you are looking to create certain more advanced functionality in Quickbase, for instance, interacting with other applications via the API, you have native connectors within Quickbase which is constantly growing, and you can use applications like Zapier to further than integration without requiring any programming knowledge.

I can write about the benefits of this application for pages, but, I will just say that, if you are drowning in Excel sheets to run your business, and have no way to link your data in an elegant way, do yourself a favor, and check out Quickbase for this purpose.

I have used Quick Base for a long time, and can get around easier than many of my colleagues. I view that as a mark against Quick Base, but overall it serves well as a place to store and visualize data for a distributed team.

Quickbase does not offer a phone number for customer service and sometimes take days to respond to e-mails. I often seem to know more about the program than the service representative I get - my boss says if I stay on the phone long enough with Quickbase I will figure a way around the problem while they tell me all the reasons something can't be done. I have found you can't respond to the surveys they send honestly if you want any help next time. The rep will scold you about how it negatively impacts their career and will likely not pick your email next time which means you wait that much longer before you get help next time. The reps like to call after office hours so they can show they attempted to respond quickly but you get no real help. The table-to-table relationships are so convoluted you will need a half-dozen fields and a weird relationship table to get information from one table to another, and then it won't arrive the way you want: It may be a drop-down that you have to click on four different fields to get the info from the other table. Ever need a simple number generator (x+1) for invoice numbers, job numbers, etc? Go somewhere else or hire someone to build you one (Excel users will cry). You get the response: we are working on that.
Bottom Line: when developing a management program you will have time-sensitive issues that will make you wish for something better.

My company is an energy efficiency contracting business with 20+ employees and $2.5M in annual revenue across residential and commercial business lines. Before we used Quickbase, we had used a combination of other software, and a proprietary software we built to manage our operations. Where these software fell short, Quickbase far exceeded. Simply put the ability create, extend, and change our application to meet our specific needs in a constantly changing environment is powerful. Our application has become our CRM, Project Management, and Operational tracking ad reporting software all built into one with a lot of automation and integration to boot!