Bika.ai Reviews

Bika is the middle ground between a fast/loose spreadsheet and a traditional database.

This is great if you want to make strict rock solid sheets/databases that aren't always one copy/paste or cat paw away from a disaster, accidental deletion of functions etc. You can trust that functions and data types used are consistent for each column.

It is nicely organised and the views management is intuitive and clean, making it easy to hide certain columns in views where they are not needed to be referenced or edited.

I can understand how this product didn't immediately jive with some users, as the onboarding was a bit strange - at least for me.

I would recommend going straight to creating a new database/sheet first and checking out the features there, before exploring the other features. This is a great product for the databases alone in my opinion.

The fact that the founder issued license tiers based on previous license tiers purchase for AITable (while those buyers kept access to AITable too) is a great sign that the team has a lot of integrity. I was not a buyer of AITable, but it's a great indicator.

They didn't do the ol 'oh it's a new product we spent the LTD funds on developing - but dw you can keep access to the old version that we won't update ever again'.

I like that they made the difficult choice in order to be great, rebuilding from scratch based on superior architecture (in terms of what they are trying to achieve), rather than the easy choice of continuing with the inferior architecture and having the greatness they are envisioning forever out of reach.

Though as a result, it's quite an early product and there are some bugs. That said, they are refining and adding features fast. I see a lot of new 'coming soon' features being added in the UI. The foundation of this project seems very solid. So a few minor bugs here and there is not a big deal imo, seeing that those will be ironed out. I mostly care that the foundation itself is solid and it is actively being updated/refined by a talented team with a great direction.

You can get general support via their community forum, as well as see update activity: https://community.bika.ai

Their support is quick at least via the forum, you can check for yourself.

So I think this tool is going to shape up to a real solid workhorse based on their development speed, replacing Google sheets and similar for practically all of my cases. While being strict with the data enough to be dependable to use with critical data. Allowing huge datasets also, covering more use cases, while having inbuilt automation capabilities. It's clean, well structured and nicely organised with easy role management.

I do hope that they add single variables for databases, that live outside of the rows/columns of the database (or external databases) itself though, for use/reference in functions.

Overall, I am very optimistic about Bika.

ive emailed and posted about me purchasing tier 2 and when i log in it says IM have the free plan that i was trying out before the purchase. There is no help and ill have ton refund this software due to problems with it and zero support

I really have tried to like this app. I have pushed through so many challenges that should not exist in an app at this stage. But, the final straw, the trigger that prompted me to take the time to write this review. I cant bring myself to login now. This is the most frustrating and badly configured login of any app I have used. It is about on par with creating a new account (in some ways worse). It takes too long, there are too many steps for something that should be seamless. This is on the same machine, same browser. I am lost for words beyond this now.

I am an AITable user and have appreciated the generous usage, customizability, functionality, and database structure.

I am also excited about Bika.ai. It is still underdevelopment, but the vision is absolutely game-changing. The BIG difference between Bika.ai and everything else (including AITable and AirTable) is that you can have up to 1 billion records of data in each table! That is a big deal. Additionally, the built-in automations are practical and easy to follow; and you can even autogenerate regular reports from the system.

Opportunities
I think Bika.ai can be improve if they:
✅ accelerate implementation of foundational functionality, especially ones AITable users expect (e.g. field types such as one-way sync, cascader, button, etc.)
✅ allowed grouping within a table based on connected data from another sheet
✅ had a way to import from AITable while maintaining all the previous relationships between tables and field types OR provide a direct integration with AITable
✅ allow the AI chat to provide answers based on table data and not just recommendations on where to look for the data.

I think they may have done themselves a disservice with the AppSumo community by releasing this too soon - without enough functionality to fully implement. Additionally, the communication with AITable users was not clear that you can transition to Bika.ai for free based on the tier you previously purchased. I am giving this 5-stars based on the potential and will add an update if there seems to be a disconnect with implementation.

It is still early stage and it’s understandable, I hope they will release pably connect soon because I don’t have zapier( too expensive) overall I know it’s gonna get better in time so I got tier 3. Overall I like the idea behind it!