Billing confusion

[Josh_Doyle]

I have a couple of questions about billing which are making my head hurt when I try look up the answers in the support documentation. Maybe you can help?

I have 2 business. One of which I run with a business partner who has his own “Pro Level” Airtable workspace that he shares with me. He gets charged for me being a Pro level collaborator and then I reimburse him that cost.

My 2nd business I run on my own but I also want Pro level features on those bases. However, I don’t necessarily want to have to keep them in the shared workspace with my partner from the other business but I would get charged an additional fee for having Pro on 2 workspaces, correct?

It seems weird that I would get charged for a 2nd Pro workspace when really all I’m trying to do is keep certain bases private and keep them visually organized.

I’m not understanding the logic behind the billing of Airtable at all and I really have tried. I’ve never encountered any other company that has such a convoluted billing system. I feel like I’m missing some piece of this puzzle and frustrated that it’s a puzzle that needs to be solved at all.

I appreciate feedback to help me figure this out.

[ScottWorld]

I just replied to this post, but it was automatically flagged by the system for some unknown reason. Here’s a screenshot of what I wrote:

[Josh_Doyle]

@ScottWorld Thank you for this. The problem is that the Pro workspace isn’t mine, it’s shared with me but I reimburse him for what he gets charged for me being a collaborator. So I’m already paying once for a Pro workspace (it just happens to not be owned by me, so I can’t control which bases he sees).

Luckily he’s cool with me keeping my other bases in his workspace (since I share the cost of it) but I can’t think of a solution which allows me to collaborate with him but also have my own private bases. Unless I pay for 2 Pro workspaces, which just seems silly considering the only benefit would be being able to have private bases and a visually separate workspace.

[ScottWorld]

Hi @Josh_Doyle,

Airtable bills per workspace. Each workspace must have a minimum of 1 collaborator (which would be the owner of that workspace).

If the workspace is on a free plan, then ALL collaborators are free for that workspace.

Once the workspace has been upgraded to a paid plan, then all collaborators that have access to any of the bases in that workspace are added up towards the cost of that workspace. (Unless you have “read-only” collaborators, which are always free).

But when sharing your bases with other collaborators, you have 2 choices:

1. You can share an individual base.
   or
2. You can share the entire workspace.

So, if you want to keep some bases private, then don’t share your entire workspace with people. Instead, just pick & choose the individual bases that you want to share with other people. That way, you can keep all of your bases in one workspace, but only some of those bases would be accessible to other people.

If you want to keep your bases visually organized by moving them around into different workspaces, then you run the risk of paying for additional workspaces (if you decide that you want to upgrade those workspaces to gain paid features). However, if you only need access to free features, then you can create a bunch of free workspaces and move your bases into them.

[kuovonne]

In your particular situation, you don’t have much choice.

• Pay for your own private workspace to have pro features in private bases
• Create the bases in the workspace that your partner owns, giving him complete power over them (not just see them). It will be possible to turn off his field and table privileges, but it’s a pain and he could just turn them back on.

Yes, paying for multiple workspaces is a bit of a pain. You have to decide if the feature and privacy are worth it or not.

[Josh_Doyle]

@kuovonne Thank you.

I really hope Airtable is considering revising their billing structure. There are so many things about the billing that make the overall user experience difficult (even outside of my specific situation). For example, remembering to check the status of collaborators at the end of every billing cycle so that you aren’t being charged for collaborators that aren’t actively working on a base. I could imagine if you had a lot of bases running with different collaborators, it would be a headache to go through each one every month to turn on/off share settings.