This blog post by Airtable recommends using Airtable as a DAM (digital asset management) tool.
My company uses Airtable as a DAM, and when I was a consultant, I worked on projects involving using Airtable as a DAM. Airtable's blog article leaves out a few concepts that you should consider if you want to use Airtable as a DAM.
- Most DAMs also provide CDN (content delivery network) services. Airtable has stated that it is not designed to be a CDN. The loss of permanent attachment URLs matches the idea of Airtable not being a CDN. If you want to use Airtable as a DAM, make sure that you don't also need it to be a CDN.
- Most of the systems that I have built for using Airtable as a DAM involved at least one third-party service, and some use multiple third-party services. Due to their nature, digital assets tend to be consumed outside of Airtable. Think through how you will integrate your Airtable content with where the content will be consumed. Make sure that wherever is receiving the files can handle expiring URLs without filenames.
- Renaming attachments in bulk in Airtable is a pain. You can manually rename attachments individually. But if you want to name/rename attachments in Airtable automatically or in bulk, you have to essentially re-upload the attachment with the new name. I once had the bad luck of trying to bulk rename a view full of attachments right when Airtable was experiencing an issue with serving up attachment files and lost all of the attachments. I had to go back and find the original source files for the attachments and reupload them.
- Airtable does not have built-in support for version history of attachments. You can build a system with version history by using multiple attachment fields and/or linked records. Other commercial purpose-built DAMs have built-in support for version history. If you only care about the most up-to-date version of your assets, Airtable may work for you. If you might want version history of assets though, you will need to carefully plan your system.
- The blog article advertises "Scale without limits". As desirable as that idea is, there are always limits. All bases have record count limits and attachment space limits, even Enterprise bases.
