How to handle data once you hit the 50,000 limit max? Start a new base?

[Karen_Siugzda]

Hello,

We are currently at 38,500 records. I'm curious how others are handling their data once they hit 50,000.

Do you duplicate the base, delete all records and continue on (thus leaving all your fields, automations intact)?

Looking for suggestions.

Thanks!

[Andy_Lin1]

That's the plan for our team. Others have mentioned in the past that they use Airtable only for users to interact with data and they actually store their data on other sites with more generous database limits, pulling in data on demand.

[Karen_Siugzda]

Hm. Not sure I understand the pull in data on demand scenario.

As for creating another base, I fear the confusion that will cause as the team would then need to straddle 2 bases depending if they are working on a current project vs looking up an older project etc.  More importantly, having my administrative dashboards pull in data from multiple bases and remain under the 50k limit.

[Andy_Lin1]

You could do a rolling archive of sorts (well, just taking more permanent snapshots, essentially). Since the record limit is per base and there's no base limit per workspace, there's really nothing stopping you from duplicating your base once per year/quarter/month, using the duplicate as your backup, and then deleting older records from the "live" base as needed.

The only issue would be ensuring that if anyone has to look up an older record not in the live base, that they go to the most recent base that includes that record so they get the most up-to-date version.

As for the on-demand scenario, it's essentially just "checking out" (as in a library) a subset of records at once from a separate database into Airtable, and then checking it back in once you're doing working with it. Examples include POS systems where you're not really interacting with records once they're created. In that case, they can be archived on a different site and only be called up if you're processing a refund, for example.

[ScottWorld]

If you’re looking for an automated solution, my clients typically use Make to create an automatic archiving system that archives their old data in other Airtable bases — or even in Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets spreadsheets — so they can keep using their current Airtable base for their current data only.

There is a small learning curve with Make, which is why I created this basic navigation video to help. I also provide the links to a few other Make training resources there as well. For example, to instantly trigger your Make scenarios from Airtable, check out this thread.

p.s. If you have a budget for your project and you’d like to hire an expert Airtable consultant to help you with any of this, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consulting — ScottWorld  

[Abraham_Bochner]

This is what I am doing with success: 

I'm synchronizing multiple Bases, with the intention of merging only the summary data into one central Base.

This way, the bulk of the data will reside across multiple bases, while the summary will be located within my main base.

Look here for more