A Comprehensive guide to Airtable pricing and plans

Airtable pricing in practice: A specific example 

John is the head of operations at Company X, a growing web agency helping clients build projects in many different fields. His team of 22 people covers a wide area of topics ranging from digital advertising to growth marketing, content, social media, and more.

Because of the rising costs of hiring developers, the need for rapid iteration within his team, and the lack of in-house technical resources at his disposal, John decides to explore a no-code solution, turning to Airtable for a spreadsheet/database hybrid platform to use as a backend, along with Softr for the frontend interface. 

In charge of the project, John starts by signing up for Airtable’s free plan and is able to build and deliver his first project to his immediate team, a marketing campaign ROI calculator for internal use. 

Interest quickly picks up and other members of the team are interested to use Airtable for other purposes: Creating landing pages, building Gantt charts and visualizations, keeping track of ad campaigns… John decides to bypass the 5 users limit, and upgrades to Airtable’s Plus plan. He also decides to purchase seats for 10 team members that will be involved in creating more projects. 

The agency is now spending $120/month ($12 monthly*10 seats) on Airtable.

Fast forward to a few weeks later, the team runs into more limitations:

• First, some projects require setting field and table editing permissions, along with some password-restricted shares.
• Second, the team is getting dangerously close to the 5000 records per base limit from the starter plan.
• Finally, John is interested in the ability to introduce new views for reporting purposes, as he’s looking to share insights with the executive team.

To address these, John considers upgrading to Airtable’s Pro plan for himself and the entire 21-person team. The monthly fee would add up to $420/month, for an upfront cost of $5040. 

That’s when Softr comes in.

John and the team have already decided to use Softr to create frontend interfaces, including client portals for their customers and internal tools for the rest of the organization. But Softr can also help with their budget, as it allows customers to have 10.000 users (!) access and work on their data for $79/month ($65 if paid yearly).

This will save the team a considerable amount of money not only on development costs to turn Airtable data into a live project but on their Airtable plan by sharing and providing access to data across all collaborators at a fraction of the price. Softr will help John and the marketing team to save thousands of dollars, literally.

To sum it up, it’s quite easy to find yourself upgrading to a higher plan with Airtable and pay a large amount every month. Without Softr, John’s move to Airtable could have gone from $0 to a $5040 price tag in a couple of weeks, something that you should be aware of when building your next project.

Want to run your own simulation? Check out this nifty Airtable pricing calculator built by Gareth Pronovost at GAP Consulting, it’s a practical way to answer a few questions to get a suggestion and quote for your Airtable pricing. 

Now, let’s talk more about how Softr can help.