Sharing a base between a paid and a free user?

[Alvaro_Martinez]

Hi all,
I am a free user and I´ve been sharing a few bases with other free users for a while.
I am thinking of upgrading my account to a paid subscription, but I am afraid this might affect collaboration with non paid users. How does this work?
If this sort of collaboration is possible what happens to the product features available only for paid subscriptors when working on a shared base?
Thanks!

[Vincent_Tang]

I would really like to know this as well.

Does the $24/plan for personal views require the other user to have a paid plan as well?

My guess is that viewing airtable files are free, but editing permissions for paid airtables require paid users

[Howie]

Read-only users are free on self-service plans.

[Vincent_Tang]

Howie I’m still confused

what’s a self-service plan? Is that a free plan?

I still don’t understand this though:

Just to clarify:

• Free users can access shared paid table bases (1000 + entries) and all of its contents, but cannot edit
• Free users can access shared free tables (<1000 entries)
• Paid $12/month users can access shared paid table bases (1000 + entries) and all of its content, and can edit
• Paid $24/month users can ALSO access limited PERSONAL VIEW paid table bases, and can be limited on selected areas only to edit data

am I understanding all of this correctly?

[Katherine_Duh]

“Self-service” means the free plan or any of the paid plans that are NOT enterprise—basically, any of the plans where you can just pay (or not) with a credit card.

It might help if instead of thinking of “paid users” and “non-paying users,” you instead think of paid teams. Features like personal views and extra select colors are a function of whether or not a base is part of a paid team.

Let’s say that there’s a company, Blankcorp, with 5 people working on product and 2 people working on marketing team. They’ve split the operations in their company onto 2 Airtable teams: Blankcorp Product and Blankcorp Marketing. The Blankcorp Product team has 7 team members: the 5 product folks, all of whom have edit or creator permissions on the Blankcorp Product team, and the 2 marketing folks, who have read-only permissions to Blankcorp Product.

Blankcorp decides to upgrade the Blankcorp Product Airtable team to the $24/user/mo Pro plan, while leaving the Blankcorp Marketing Airtable team on the free plan. They now pay $120/mo total for the 5/7 people on the Blankcorp Product team who have at least edit access. The bases on the Blankcorp Product team can have personal views and new colors, and any of the product people who have create/edit permissions can use those features. The poor marketing folks, with just read-only permissions to Blankcorp Product, can see the new colors and personal views, but cannot create their own colorful select options or personal views (because, again, they are read-only).

Does this make sense? Essentially, you don’t decide whether to upgrade yourself, but rather, whether to upgrade a team. This means that you’re never in a situation where “paid and unpaid users” are editing the same base. Instead, it’s more like… if you have access to a base with paid features, and you have at least editor- or creator-level permissions, someone is paying for you. So in Alvaro’s case, if he’s collaborating with 2 other people, and he decides to upgrade his team, he’ll be paying for 3 people total, not just himself.

[Alvaro_Martinez]

Thanks Katherine, that makes sense!

I am thinking of taking it for a spin, at least a month, to get a sense of the premium features
If I upgrade a team for a month and then decide to go back to free what would happen to the data? (I don´t think I would reach the 1000+ limit anyway…)

Thanks again! Great product by the way!

[Jeannette_Casta]

I was just wondering about this myself. Thanks for the thorough reply, @Katherine_Duh

[Matthew_Pearson]

Hi Katherine!

Just following up here on your reply/totally clear explanation of this to make a case for Airtable considering a different pricing model that would combine Pro and Free accounts. To be clear, I have zero technical or business expertise, so if there are technical or business reasons for this decision, I get that and accept it!

On the chance that this is a flexible thing, I would love to have a Team with a couple Pro-level accounts and a bunch of free ones.

As it stands now, the 90-100 staff members I help oversee at the Writing Center of large midwestern university use the free version of Airtable for a range of tasks and it is extremely awesome and easy, etc. We’d like a few minimal Pro features like branding forms and custom colors, but even with the education discount (I’ve been in touch with Pete and he’s been extremely helpful about getting this discount should we want to), we can’t afford a Pro or even plus account for all our staff members.

Beyond just the features of a Pro account, it would be great if we could give Airtable some money for your amazing product. As it stands now, to collaborate with each other in the ways we currently do, we all need to remain on a free account.

Just thought I’d make the case for this, in case it might open the door for slightly more flexible pricing. If it can’t happen, I totally understand and might even work out a way to get a Pro account for myself and silo off some of our base use to that account where we don’t need collaborative, team-wide Edit access, just so I can support your company. Thanks for reading!

[Rob_G]

Hi

I’m in a similar position to Mathew above. I have a BASE where I’m I pay for a pro account. I can’t grow it though as to collaborate with more users I’d need to add users to the Base.

No problem with that as such but the majority would be read only, if that was available in some form I’d be grow it and add more paid for users to edit and create to provide for the read onlys.

I also have distinct groups i work with, I’d manage this with Workspaces but again the current model of paying per workspace isn’t helpful and it would be easier if i had paid by user accont rather than per workspace

Hopwfuly I’d like to get some corporate buy in on this but we are a large organisation (40,000 +) so that is complex

Regards

Rob

[Philip_Barber]

Hi Katherine,

I couldn’t agree more with Mathew that I would like to pay something for using Airtable but the structure of the pricing is impossible to justify to the charity.

I currently have created 2 different bases for use by two different charity organisations. They each run a concert for children to perform once a year in, in order for the children to be judged and develop in their Musical and Drama skills.
Each base has 3 or 4 teachers who only use Airtable for about 3 months of the year, following the enrolment and organisation of the event.

They would be happy to pay a small one off fee (to gain extra utilities) however there is no way they could afford to sign up to a monthly charge, so they will remain on the free version.

Would it not be better for Airtable to offer a price for charity usage? How about a price if a database it is not used for more than x months a year. At least Airtable would have some money, (for their excellent software) rather than no money?