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Hi all,


I’m new to Airtable and was hoping to get some advice on how to set up the base properly especially so it is scalable for numerous clients.


I am designing an ordering system where the client submits their orders via forms and can view their order details via read-only grid views.


Currently, I have client specific forms and views which I have duplicated for each of the clients (currently 2 test clients). The forms use the ‘Limit record selection to a view’ feature so clients can only select what is specific to them.


Since my system is a work in progress, I am constantly updating the forms and views with any changes and then have to replicate that change for each client. I can kind of manage it now since it’s just two clients, but I can imagine with 5 or more clients, a small change to a view or form would take a fair bit of time to propagate across and is error prone.


I’m not in a position to pay for the Stacker plan that has the portal feature. And the miniExtensions Portal for Airtable doesn’t seem to support client specific forms (and limit record selection to only the clients’ records). And their portal grid view doesn’t look as nice as Airtable’s default grid view on mobile.


Does anyone have any suggestions on how to manage & update forms and views in a scaleable way for numerous clients?


Thanks in advance!

2025 Update:

There are 4 ways to allow external collaborators (i.e. your customers) to view & edit their own records in your Airtable base. Two of these ways cost money, and two of these ways are free:

  1. (PAID) Use Airtable’s portals, which costs $120 per month for 15 users, and $8 per month for each additional customer after that.
     
  2. (PAID)  Use a 3rd-party portal, which are typically less expensive than Airtable’s portals.

    The most popular portals that are currently available for Airtable are:
    Noloco, JetAdmin, Softr, Pory, Glide, and MiniExtensions.

    I gave an entire one-hour webinar on Noloco called Building a Client Portal on Noloco powered by Airtable.
     
  3. (FREE) External read-only users can edit your Airtable records for free by using Fillout’s advanced forms for Airtable.

    Fillout is 100% free, and it offers hundreds of features that Airtable’s native forms don’t offer, including the ability to update Airtable records using a form.

    Fillout gives you a formula that you add to your Airtable base, which automatically creates a special URL for each record.

    Read-only users in Airtable are free, and they are allowed to click on URLs. (They are also allowed to click on buttons that take them to external URLs).

    So they would click on the the URL (or button) while looking at the record, which would take them to that record in Fillout.

    I show how to use a few of the advanced features of Fillout on these 2 Airtable podcast episodes:
    - Using Fillout to create an eSignature approval process with PDF file creation.
    - Using Fillout to create an order entry form with line items.
     
  4. (FREE) External read-only users can edit your Airtable records for free by triggering a custom webhook in Make, which would then automatically run an automation that marks that task as complete.

    Same setup as #3 above. You would create a formula in your Airtable base, which would automatically create a unique webhook URL for each record.

    Then, your read-only user would click on the URL (or button) while looking at the record in Airtable, which would then trigger the automation.

    I demonstrate how to do setup these custom webhooks in this Airtable podcast episode.

    Note that my podcast episode demonstrate this in the context of putting the custom webhook URL inside of an email, but you can skip that step.

    If you’ve never used Make before, I’ve assembled a bunch of Make training resources in this thread.

Hope this helps! If you’d like to hire the best Airtable consultant to help you with anything Airtable-related, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld

Welcome to the community, @AndyC!


You can create dynamically-updating forms for your clients using the combination of JotForm + On2Air Forms.


You will only need to create ONE form, and it will dynamically pull in the values for that particular client.


You would send each client to that form by using a prefill parameter in the URL that would prefill a hidden field in the form with their unique Record ID or their name or something like that.


For a dynamic portal, you can take a look at softr.io


Thanks heaps @ScottWorld for your suggestion on the dynamically updating forms.


I’m assuming for a dynamically updating view (with client specific content) I’d need to use another tool like miniExtensions Portal for Airtable (or a portal solution). Would that be correct?


I had a quick look at Softr and it looks like I would be building out a completely new site. As I currently have a simple WordPress client portal set up which is easy to manage, but to display client specific info, I have being creating custom filtered views for each client.

Yes, you can embed any of the 3rd-party portals on your website.

The most popular portals that are currently available for Airtable are:
Noloco, JetAdmin, Softr, Pory, Glide, MiniExtensions, and Fillout.

Hope this helps!

If you’d like to hire the best Airtable consultant to help you with anything Airtable-related, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld

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