Airtable seat costs explode as soon as you add external users

Yes, while this is true that full Airtable seats are expensive, there are 4 ways to allow external collaborators to edit records in your Airtable base for 100% free or for a much lower cost:

1. (LOWER COST) Use Airtable’s portals, which lets you add editors at a reduced cost. However, this reduced cost is still very expensive, and there is a minimum of 15 users. So you might want to turn to a 3rd-party portal.
    
2. (LOWER COST)  Use a 3rd-party portal, which are even less expensive than Airtable’s portals.
   
   The most popular 3rd-party portals that are currently available for Airtable are:
   Zite, 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 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.
    
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

Hey there!

You're absolutely right that external user costs can add up quickly with Airtable. Here are a few Airtable-native approaches that can help manage this better:

For External Write Access Without Seats:

• Fillout or JotForm integrations: These allow external users to update existing records through custom forms without needing Airtable logins. You can pass record IDs via hidden fields or prefilled links, enabling true record editing flows.

• Softr/Stacker/Pory portals: These tools create authenticated client portals on top of Airtable data. External users get logins to your portal (not Airtable), and you only need one Airtable seat for the integration connection. Works well for client dashboards or vendor management.

• Automation-based workflows: Use Airtable forms to trigger automations that update related records. For example, a vendor submits a form → automation finds and updates their existing project record. Keeps everything in Airtable without external seats.

Flow Digital - Airtable Gold Services Partner — We're happy to help!