Using Airtable to create a client portal

[NormaGPanetta]

Hello. I'm trying to find information as to whether I can use Airtable only to create a customer/client portal. I've seen some videos but I need clearer instructions, meaning where do I go to create this portal, how do I add information, linking clients, creating login page etc. 

Is there any information that is useful on here or is a walkthrough video that you can point me in? Your help is greatly appreciated. Thanks

[ScottWorld]

HI @Normunds,

My name is Scott, and I'm one of the experts in the community who has a ton of experience in building customer portals using Airtable.

The first step would be to choose a customer portal for yourself.

A few of the leading customer portals are Noloco, JetAdmin, Softr, Pory, and Glide.

JetAdmin is probably the quickest one to setup (although their customer support is slow), while Noloco is probably the most powerful & customizable portal with great customer support.

The CEO of Noloco gave a demonstration of his product on this Airtable podcast episode.

And I gave a brief tutorial of Noloco on this Airtable podcast episode.

I also presented a full one-hour webinar on Noloco called Building a Client Portal on Noloco powered by Airtable.

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

[NormaGPanetta]

Thanks Scott for the information. However let me clarify. I'm looking to see if Airtable can create a client portal on it's own without the use of other software such as the ones you mentioned. Do you know if this is possible?

[TheTimeSavingCo]

Hmm, you could do this but the main limitation you need to consider before you proceed is price

Specifically, if each customer / client needs to be able to edit the data in your base, you'll probably need to pay for an account for them, and so at the cheapest plan, if you've got 10 customers that need edit access, that's something like 264 a month

There are various workarounds for this, the most simple being giving the customers forms to submit if they wish to update / edit data in your table.  However, the UX of this is definitely worse than if they were just using Airtable directly

Assuming the price isn't an issue, then yeah, you could totally do this

[ScottWorld]

@NormaGPanetta 

Yes, that is possible using Airtable's interfaces, with these 2 limitations:

1. Everybody will need to signup for their own Airtable account. If they are read-only users, you won't have to pay for them. If they are editable users, you will need to pay for each editable user.

2. There is no privacy in Airtable's interfaces. All of your customers and clients will be able to see the names & email addresses of all your other customers and clients by clicking on the "Share" button and choosing "Manage Access". If you need to shield your customers' names & contact information from each other, then you wouldn't be able to use Airtable's interfaces to do this.

[ScottWorld]

@TheTimeSavingCo Price is only one of the two major issues.

[NormaGPanetta]

Hi Scott. Regarding point #2, is there a possibility to create a login page or link certain pages/tasks to particular clients to restrict viewing? 

[NormaGPanetta]

Thanks everyone for the quick replies. I'll bring this conversation to my manager who was asking about this and determine next steps.

[ScottWorld]

Right, your clients will only see their own records, which is the key reason to use a portal. So your clients will only see their own pages/tasks.

If you need help setting any of this up, please feel free to contact me through my website.