Pricing and usage limits for automations

[Jason]

Different usage limits for Automations depend on your Airtable plan. See the screenshot below for a quick highlight, or visit airtable.com/pricing for more details.

[Bill_French]

Jason:

Different usage limits for Automations depend on your Airtable plan.

I think this is a mistake. Here’s why…

• Automations based on events are vastly less server-intensive than polling architectures - the likes of which most integrations have been built on thus far.
• Polling processes designed to mimic event processing is vastly employed by the no-code glu-factories like Zapier and Integromat and they drive massive request traffic to your API servers. Ideall, you want users to stop doing this.
• Capping automation executions is a disincentive to leave the polling processes and move to the new model.
• Native Airtable automations generally require script; charging customers more money to utilise script-based integrations and automations is yet another disincentive to adopt the highly performant event-based automation features.

In my view, all scripting mechanisms should be free from disincentives/restrictions and event-based automations should be openly embraced without any constraints because it actually costs less for Airtable to support this fundamental shift.

If Airtable truly wants a slice of the pie based on micro-transactions, then build that revenue model; don’t force users to jump payment tiers just to be able to run 5001 event transactions.

[Kurt_Germaine]

Just ran into this today. VERY VERY frustrating. Like everyone said…it’s so arbitrary and is hidden EVERYWHERE. This breakdown that is screenshotted doesn’t tell us about the 25 automations per base. I wouldn’t have purchased this product had I saw that in your billing breakdown above.

Now instead of choosing another product because of this weakness, I’ve invested more than 2 months of time that I don’t have.

SImply increasing the amount of automations from 25 and increase them based on the plans. Give pro at least 100 and enterprise more.

I can’t believe there are other companies that offer way more for less… and no one from this company has responded.

I love the product but I’m beginning to wonder if this has all been a waste of time. That would be heart breaking for me.

[sistemas_urbita]

The current limit is 50/base, but we only realized it when reaching it and weren't able to add a new one. After months implementing an application on Airtable, the cost of migrating to another platform is now huge. There should definitively be more clarity about this limit. It is not listed in the plans pricing comparison page or anywhere else for that matter.

In the short run, we have about 5 inactive automations to delete and maybe can consolidate a few to make room, but this is not a working solution for us in the long run. A 100 automations limit per base would be more appropriate on the Pro level, IMHO, but if not that, than Airtable should at least sell additional Automation bundles for existing, paying customers.