Hi Walker, it depend on ho many records would each business contain. If you are going to map, lets say 1000 linked records per business, you would quickly get to the 600.000 Record which would require you to use Enterprise plan in Airtable. 

If you want to have several synced tables it will be challengin. For the level of scalability you are aiming for, maybe Airtable would not be the right tool for this. 

Hey ​@MilhoanDesign,

In terms of scalability re: record count:
Free plan - 1,000 records
Team plan -  50,000 records
Business plan - 125,000
Enterprise plan - 500,000

You’ll want to take that into consideration!
Also, you might want to submit this Product Idea/Feature Request form requesting a bigger record count limit!!!! This is really needed for Airtable to become a scalable platform.

Mike, Consultant @ Automatic Nation 
YouTube Channel

Oh, and you can find more on each of these different plans here:
https://airtable.com/pricing#featureGrid

Thank you ​@Mike_AutomaticN I am aware of the data limits and am prepared to go Enterprise. I just really want this to work in Airtable so I don’t have to re-invent the wheel and create yet another platform that functions like Airtable. 

Thanks for the reply ​@felipe-saucedo - I’m really rooting for Airtable to be able to handle this and realize it might not be able to - but I’m going to keep digging. The reason being is because I want Airtable to also be the go-to for the ranchers for other management workflows. 

Can Airtable handle this scale of data collection and access control?

Hm, how many records do you think you’re going to generate per business per year?  The max number of records per table on Business is 125k according to the docs, and so if you’re generating about that much per year you’d have to think about:

1. Clearing stuff out
2. A system to summarize that historical data so you can refer to it

This is a general Airtable limitation you’re going to face eventually regardless though, and so it’s really a question of handling it now or later, you know what I mean?

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If so, what architecture would you recommend?

    1. One base where businesses submit via forms, with Interfaces restricting visibility to only their data?

    2. Or multiple bases that sync into a central analytics base?

I’d opt for option one here, even if that makes you hit the limits earlier.  Having multiple bases is would kind of a pain in this context; needing to keep all your workflows, automations, fields etc synced up across multiple bases is pretty tedious, and you’d also need to duplicate any third party integrations you want across those bases too

​@TheTimeSavingCo Thanks for the thoughtful reply, I really appreciate it! I am thinking about using something like Softr or Zite to handle the front end and if needed, pushing data to Supabase with a linked Client_ID or something like that if it grows beyond the AT limits. 

I am thinking about using something like Softr or Zite to handle the front end

Hmm, what kind of data edits will your users need to do?  Wondering whether you can get away with just using Airtable Forms or Fillout combined with an Interface where you’d invite everyone as read-only users.  Would keep costs lower + be less work to manage since it’d all be in Airtable

pushing data to Supabase with a linked Client_ID or something like that if it grows beyond the AT limits. 

Ha yeah fair enough.  I’ve been toying with the idea of doing some sort of weird setup where:

1. Main base where all the current data exists
2. Old base that contains the previous set of data, maybe for the last 6 months or whatever cutoff I’m using
   1. In this base, create a table that’s a consolidation of all of the data I want in the format I need, e.g. by month per user, etc
   2. Sync this table to the main base
3. In the main base, set up a system to handle these syncs and display reporting together

Feels like if one manages to figure this out it’d be easier than having the data in two different apps and then attempting to combine them again you know what I mean?

​@TheTimeSavingCo At first, there will only be 16 alpha users that will need to upload, possibly edit, and view their data on a dashboard. I will most likely get this MVP developed in AT then move to a more custom development platform. 

Hm, with 16 users editing I think there might be an argument to just use Portals for this, really.  Assuming you’re on the Business plan, you’d be paying 150 (15 portal seats) and one more seat Airtable seat at 54, so 204 per month

A frontend app would cost maybe 50 bucks on its own, so you’re looking at a 150 a month difference to save you a bunch of headache with building it out on a whole other app and stuff

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Without editing it becomes even cheaper, you’d just have a Business plan and invite them all as read-only collaborators to an Interface and so it’d cost you nothing.  Simple data edits you could hand off to Fillout