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I’m hoping someone might be able to help me understand if Airtable can be used effectively for file storage and organization instead of Dropbox.


The reason for using Airtable is because I want to be able to tag, filter, link and otherwise organize files in a way that I believe can’t be done with Dropbox. My specific use is real estate data, so for example, I’d like to be able to organize PDF files (e.g., market reports), each of which would have its own record/row by different variables that can be dictated by the field/column (e.g., City or State) and also link those files to other records (e.g., a contact or a property related to the record).


It doesn’t seem like this is an intended use with Airtable, particularly given the 20GB limit for a Pro user, but Dropbox (which I currently use) and its competitors don’t seem to offer the same dynamic ability to organize files, so I’m hoping to figure this out with Airtable (or find out the best alternative).




  • Is there any reason I can’t or shouldn’t use Airtable for this file storage use?




  • Does anyone know if there are storage limits that might limit the use? (I contacted Airtable directly about this, but haven’t heard back yet.)




  • Should I expect any limitations with this intended use vs. simply using Dropbox or Box to store files?




Any other insight would be much appreciated. Thank you.


Airtable is meant to be a database system that can be adapted to a wide variety of use cases. It isn’t optimized for this out of the box, but that doesn’t mean that it won’t work for tagging documents.


One workaround for the 20GB limit is to keep your files hosted elsewhere, and have a url field that points to where the document is actually stored.


Another thing to keep in mind is that if you have a lot of “churn” in your documents, deleted documents can still be counted towards your 20GB limit if they were deleted until past your base history limit…

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