Disable the creation of new workspaces for Enterprise plans

[Cynthia_Sanchez]

What is the proposed idea/solution?

From the Admin panel, to have an option that disabled everyone that is not an admin from creating new Workspaces.

How does is solve the user problems?

The issue is that users in our organization create new workspaces, and this turns them into Owners automatically. Then, they are enabled to share access and provision higher licenses to other users, changing our billing.

We have documented this issue internally, but our company has hundreds of users on Airtable. Employees join and leave the organization every month, meaning that it becomes unviable to rely merely on internal training. The tool needs to enable admins to protect the billing cycle.

How was this validated?

We see the issue every other month.

Who is the target audience?

Enterprise accounts

[Stephen_Orr1]

+1 for this. Product managers need to be able to restrict workspace additions to enterprise plans to manage costs. These are the folks who will take Airtable with them to other companies and the current model potentially puts them in a tough spot.

[Terri_Edney]

Definitely. I am fine with my users creating bases, but they should not be able to create workspaces. Data governance and cost control are key when you are dealing in an enterprise situation. 

[tomremaklus]

Agree, this creates a problem for data governance and egress.  

[bobonline]

+1 for this. I've discovered a new workspace (on a paid plan) which a user created. I'm new to Airtable. This is a huge showstopper!

[Belmakor]

Yes this is absolutely wild!  I just found 36 workspaces people had created outside of my enterprise plan.  

[Reagan_Daughtry]

Please, please consider this. We have so many workspaces.

[Lu]

I just discovered this was likely the reason why we suddenly received "true-up" invoices for extra builders, whose seats cannot be removed, and cost thousands! Two of the users never added any bases added to their workspaces, but apparently that's still "building".  The third, quite bizarrely, was promoted to a builder because a third party invited the user to join some bases, evidently with too much access. The user had no need to do any building for this third party, and we're not sure if the invitation was manually accepted or if this process was automatic, but this was sufficient to upgrade the account.

The kicker, adding a workspace can be done accidentally, because the + button that does so, without any confirmation, or warning about a potential billing change, is about 2 pixels away from an expando button.

Unbelievable.

[Kalinda]

This would be really helpful to have.

[Cynthia_Sanchez]

@Lu this happens to us very frequently too. It becomes a maintenance burden as users often create workspaces for personal projects too without realising that their using company resources.

Really hopping that Airtable looks at this issue and allow us to do better role management.

[Belmakor]

This is absolutely wild that this is still a problem in 2024.

Just discovered several new billable workspaces on my plan, one with 10 users who are already on the main workspace (so double billed)