You are absolutely right & recommended approaches will differ, not only by the task at hand but also by the context - and that includes the capabilities of the “Airtable Admins” and the budget / ability to look for outside help for build and more importantly maintenance and continuing development…
Much of the advice I give is what I think would be valuable to the “citizen developer”, the “enthusiastic amateur” or maybe more accurately for those who want to avoid bespoke coding / scripting in their database so they can become self sufficient …
I run a lot on Airtable and don’t bump into automation limit issues (on pro plan with 12 users so roughly 2000 per day) yet - but you are right to highlight the pros and cons of each approach