Hello community,
In our company we use Airtable in the Business version. This includes about 100 technicians who also have access.
Since I now also use Airtable privately for our club, I’ve been thinking a bit about accounts and costs. This led me to the following thought:
If I, as the workspace owner, have a Business plan, do all others who only fill out forms and enter data only need a Teams plan?
Am I understanding this correctly? Or do all accounts need to be on the same plan level in order to work within the same workspace?
Question
Airtable Account Levels and Workspace Access
+5
+31Plans are on a Workspace level, and so all accounts in that Workspace will be on the same plan I’m afraid
To save on costs, you could create a new Workspace and buy Teams on it so you pay the Teams price per seat instead
Alternatively, you could also try setting up read-only Interfaces as well and get your users to submit forms to create / modify the data in your base instead, which would make it free. You could do this pretty easily with Fillout (https://www.fillout.com/), but if you want to keep it fully within Airtable you can check out Airtable’s guide on how to do that here: https://support.airtable.com/docs/updating-records-using-a-form-in-airtable
+35
With Airtable, the individual users are not billed.
Only the workspace owner is billed for their workspace, and the workspace owner is responsible for paying for all of their users who are editing or commenting on any data within that workspace. (Note that read-only users are free.)
So if your workspace is on the business plan, then you will be charged for all of your users at the business plan rate. Only the workspace owner gets charged; individual users never get charged.
If your users are only adding new data into the system via forms, then you can keep those users free by making them read-only users, then publishing the forms publicly, and having them add new records to Airtable.
If you want to keep those users free but have them BOTH add new Airtable records AND edit existing Airtable records via forms, then you can do this with Fillout’s advanced forms for Airtable because it communicates directly with Airtable and lets you add + edit Airtable records via a form.
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
- create custom PDF files from a form submission
- accept payments on forms
- pre-fetch dynamic data from an Airtable record
- customize the style and branding of your form
- customize a theme for your form
- display Airtable lookup fields on forms
- create multi-page forms with conditional paths
- create new linked records on a form
- add a login page to your form
- perform math or other live calculations on your forms
- collect signatures on a form
- connect a single form to dozens of external apps simultaneously
- add CAPTCHAs to your form
- and much more.
I show how to use a few of the advanced features of Fillout on these 2 Airtable podcast episodes:
- Using Fillout to update an existing Airtable record & create an eSignature approval process with PDF file creation.
- Using Fillout to create an order entry form with line items.
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
+5Thank you for your feedback. However, I still don’t fully understand it.
In our club, I have a workspace with a base (using my account, which pays the $240 per year). In this base, I have shared an interface with another account that is on a free plan. This user is able to enter data via a form or fill in fields in the interface, which is what confuses me.
Shouldn’t a free account only have read-only access? Could it be that a new account can do everything for a certain period of time and is only charged later?
+35
If that user is logging into your base’s interface and editing your base’s records, then you will be charged for that user.
You may have already been charged for that user, but I’m not sure how often Airtable adds in the new prorated charges for new users.
Even if you’re on the annual plan, Airtable won’t wait until the end of the year to charge you extra money for that new user.
At some point soon, that user will be added into your existing annual billing.
Hope this helps!
If you have a budget and you’d like to hire the best Airtable consultant to help you with this or anything else that is Airtable-related, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld
+28Hey
As mentioned by
Airtable recently made an update to when and how this users get charged when added mid-way thorugh the plan. I’m struggling to find that, but I’ll share soon. -in case this helps.
Mike, Consultant @ Automatic Nation
YouTube Channel
+5Thank you for the information. It’s simply intriguing, as I’ve checked it again. So far, I’ve only paid $240. The other account hasn’t paid anything (I manage both accounts, so I can say this with 100% certainty). Maybe something will still come up “after a trial period”… thank you all.
+28Also FYI, “the other account” that has been added as an editor/creator on your workspace will not pay anything. The owner of the paid workspace is the one who will pay for all seats under such workspace!
+35Yeah, you will definitely be charged at some point for the other user, but you seem to be in some sort of a grace period window right now. Airtable’s billing is extremely mysterious/confusing and there are no real insights from them on when they decide to charge people for their extra users. It’s one of the least transparent things about Airtable.
- ScottWorld, Best Airtable Consultant
+5Thanks, community! I’ll keep you updated.
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