Should I go with Enterprise, or hire someone to build me something on Pro?

[testtest49]

Hi all,

I run a small publishing business that is considering using Airtable to manage our advertising database. We have a small handful of users — like around 5 or so — that really NEED Airtable access.

I have security permissions concerns, and I know we will hit the record and attachment size limits quickly. Enterprise has a handful of other features we could possibly use.

My question — is Enterprise worth it to get around those things? It's a lot of money, but is it worth it?

Or should I hire someone to build something for me using Airtable APIs with SOFTR on Pro plans? And then pair it with Google Drive or Box? No matter what, I expect to bump up against record limits. Looking for feedback!

[kuovonne]

I really like the features with an enterprise license. On the other hand, getting an enterprise license for only five users might be difficult.

Another issue to consider is the rate at which you adapt your Airtable bases. If you have frequent adjustments to you base schemas to adapt to changing business needs, having to make parallel changes to a third party portal system can be a big pain.

What are your security concerns? Most (but not all) security concerns can be addressed on a Pro plan, especially if you have users as interface only users.

What volume of attachments are you looking at and what type of access do you need? With a Pro plan you can storing attachments in a different cloud service and have only small thumbnails in Airtable attachment fields. Whether this approach will work for you depends on your workflows and how you use the attachments. For example, if you use attachments in Page Designer, this will not work for you. If you make changes to attachments and have concerns about keeping thumbnails in sync, this may not work for you.

For record limits, you need to look at how soon you want to have to deal with archiving records. Eventually you will hit record limits in either Pro or Enterprise. It just takes longer with Enterprise.

[testtest49]

Thanks. This was helpful. Mostly I don't like how easy it is to share our bases. I have some staff that need at least partial access to the spreadsheet views of Airtable and don't want them to get the whole thing.

What do you recommend for an archiving process?

[Darragh_Mc_Kay]

Hey @testtest49  if you're still looking for a solution to this. You can use Noloco.io with Airtable to apply different permissions for different users, even if you only have a handful of users. 

Here's how our permissions work