Hey everyone,
I’m making an Airtable base for me and the neighbors to connect and plan events with each other. I plan to build an interface where everyone can create new events/post etc. The thing is, I feel like people, especially people I’m not close to yet, my feel hesitant making an Airtable account just for this purpose.
Do any of you have experience with or advice on how to get the average person to sign up for your Airtable?
And bonus question…if I need to use premium features, suddenly I’ll need to pay for seats. Is there an alternative way to build a fun social app like this where costs won’t just balloon? Or at least a way to have them interact without being charged for a seat?
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Airtable can be used for many fun activities and games. I would start there. There are several templates around that are ready to be use. One area I use Airtable for personal gain is to learn new words, expressions or idioms and I made a little quiz for myself. Using a thermal printer I print small vocabulary cards which I cary with me when I walk, take transit etc
@AirBenderMarcus Hmmm… this is a tricky one, because interfaces can (currently) only be shared with people who have Airtable accounts.
If they see enough value in what you are building for them, they might be eager to sign up for an Airtable account. But yes, there seems to be resistance these days from people signing up “for one more app”. I recently tried to get all my friends on Marco Polo, which is a great app for sending videos to friends. I use it all the time with 2 of my friends, and we love it! But nobody else wanted to sign up for it. Everyone also gave me the same reasoning: “I have too many apps already.” or “I’m on app overload.”
As far as trying to keep Airtable free for yourself, everyone would need to be a read-only user, but there are definitely workarounds that you could implement to keep it free for yourself. For example, your interface could give them a link to an Airtable form, which would enable them to add new records for free.
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People only sign up for Airtable when the benefits of having an Airtable account outweigh the friction of signing up.
When I got friends and family to sign up for Airtable, I usually had to first build and demo something that they found worth using. And there were times when I built demos and the people ended up not using Airtable (usually entrenched volunteer organizations)
Paying per seat for pro features is tough. I only do it for my immediate family. I wouldn’t do it for a neighborhood.
But I also have access to a legacy free workspace where you are not limited to five editors/
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You can explore each signing up for a free account and then using free Make/Integromat or Zapier account to do updates for each individual Airtable account (complicated and limited but free as air).
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oo good idea! I could probably do some mixture of forms and automations to limit user seats too. Hm…I’ll see how far I can get with the free version.
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