At a corporate level, you are not paying for the feature - you are paying for the service contract. Yes, you could throw developers at every little piece of te

At a corporate level, you are not paying for the feature - you are paying for the service contract. Yes, you could throw developers at every little piece of technology you need in a stack. But $800 a month for Airtable is cheap compared to even the cheapest developer. Even if you are confident you could build something in a weekend and have it work maintenance free for years, that's not a risk most managers would be willing to take. This is a large reason why corporations largely steer clear of most open source projects. The cost is not the issue - if something breaks and there is no one to take your call, it might cost you millions more dollars than you saved.