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Storage is hamstrung

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Kurt_Germaine
6 - Interface Innovator
6 - Interface Innovator

 

Why change the plans to then hamstring what is already in existence? 

With the plan changes, the 'pro' plan that we were paying for has now been downgraded significantly. It's really annoying to be using the 'top' plan and for that plan to be degraded, and we lose functionality on our bases. 

They are forcing us to immediately upgrade or we can't do our work. Can't add new records. Why HALF the storage from those plans? That seems wild to me. Keep them the same at the very least. We can now get more storage, for three times the price. Or, you can keep the former 'pro' plan and only get 10gb. In what world does that make sense? There are no tiers to this setup, it's either all or nothing. 

And what grinds my gears more is there isn't a transition period for those who have been on the pro plan to figure this out. It's just, 'changes made, so deal with it and pay us more to use AT.' 

Is there a way to soften the blow for those of us who have been using pro? Or offer a 4th tier between 'teams' and 'business?' You were gracious and listened that there needed to be a plan with more storage, but the plans we had had storage taken away. There needs to be a middle ground. 

Thank you. 

10 Replies 10
Antoine_Vaxelai
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

If you are like me and have a lot of pictures on your base, a quick automation with a script will help to compress all pictures. When ready an attachment fields with pictures, AirTable as a small, large and full size object. That’s the only fix I have found so far to go under the 10 Gb…

But overall, I totally agree with you, it’s not normal to take away features, especially that fast…

also nothing is clear in the transition. I have switched my workspace to the teams plan and still have all the capabilities of the pro plans.. 

Hey Antoine,

Thank you for your response. Can you point me in a direction with the automation + script to compress all pictures? I haven't worked with scripts a ton, so that would be super helpful. 

Yeah I thought that was really odd, that fast with no stated transition period. I'm days away from having a baby boy, which is amazing. Not so amazing is I don't know if our databases will regress while I'm away from work and those are essential for us. Paying three times the amount to have enough storage and getting that approved right beforehand is also a process. 

I am glad to know that you still have all the features. Maybe there was a typo since 1 is next to 2 😂

Hey Kurt,

for sure I can. In terms of steps, what I did was:

- create a field “picture already resized?” with a checker box

- create an automation than run on schedule. To start with, run it every 15 minutes. I was able to compress about 5000 records with images in one night.

- find all record with images and for which “pictures already resized?” is false

- create a loop for the records found (at first, you will have 100 records everytime, and your automation will fail due to the time it takes), but don’t worry, it’s only because AirTable limits the overall automation run to 5 minutes I believe.

- for each record, create a script that:

- retrieve the record field(s) where you have your pictures. For each field, create an empty future attachment object.
For each attachment in your field, check if it’s a picture, and if yes, take the attachment.large file and add it to your created object. Otherwise, just re add the normal attachment if it’s a pdf etc (note that you could use some external API otherwise to compress this kind of files potentially). 

once the object is ready, update your attachment field with it.

if successful, update the picture resized? field to true.

 

With this, I was able to go from 12Gb to 3.5Gb on my base. And now, I let this script run once every 3 days so it does not cost much in terms of automation per month. 

I’m pretty sure this will be enough details to get your script done with chat gpt 😉 but if ever, feel free to reach out again, happy to help. And congratulations for your future boy! 😃

 

Kurt_Germaine
6 - Interface Innovator
6 - Interface Innovator

Hey Antoine, 

Thank you for the info on how to go about shrinking the data! Hopefully it doesn't come to that, but I'll know how to do it now! 

And thank you very much, it's going to be an amazing and wild ride. 

And hopefully someone working at AT will see this and respond to our concerns. 

sricha27
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

I'm furious about this too, the 20GB limit was already incredibly low in this world of high res smartphone photos and to have it reduced, seems unbelievable.  To offer no solutions, makes my blood boil, except to pay for a business plan, when I'm just one guy, isn't really a solution.  I've seen that I can write a script, but I subscribe to airtable because it's a no code platform.  If they'd provided a standard feature to compress images, I could understand their logic perhaps.  Anyway hopefully someone who knows how to code will offer up a nice script that's easy to implement.

I've logged two support requests, one asking for help and the other complaining about the change.  No response yet 

Good, 

The more attention this gets, the better. AT is driven by its community, hopefully they will listen to us. 

I would just like a response from them or from someone who works there. We are paying customers, if you would like to put it that way. 

Also, those who have been paying for pro for years like us should be grandfathered in to stay on that plan (to keep our 20gb storage) or upgraded for free to stay on the business plan. I got our org to use AT and advocated for us to go with this program. I've done that at a few businesses I've worked at, and have used AT in some capacity since 2016. I'm sure I'm not the only one. 

Lennart_Wittsto
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

I was at the 20GB storage limit several times and compress the images in my Base to get below 20GB again. 

Here is a Tutorial I created: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_RJhZ8JvJk

Create a Make account: https://www.make.com/en/register?pc=circlehandcom (Affiliate link) Create a Mallabe account: https://mallabe.com This tutorial shows you how you can compress images from Airtable in an automated manner to reduce their file size. I am using Mallabe and Make for that purpose ...