Can You Add Your Own Team as Portal Users in Airtable

You are exploring Airtable pricing and looking for ways to keep your team’s bill lower.

One idea is to avoid adding every team member as a collaborator and instead let them work through an Airtable portal. They would only update what they need without accessing the base.

The question is whether this is allowed and whether your internal team can use the portal feature.

Airtable portals are meant for external collaborators. Portal users must have an email domain that is different from the workspace owner’s domain.

This means anyone using your company domain cannot use the portal as a guest, so internal team members cannot be added through this method.

You might think of giving your team personal emails so they can sign in through the portal. While it technically works, it is not recommended. It becomes messy to manage, creates accountability issues, and is not ideal for long term security.

What You Can Do Instead

If your team only needs to update a few fields and does not require full access, a simple approach is to use Fillout forms.

You can create a button field that opens a prefilled update form, letting them change only what they need without editor permissions in the base or interface.

If your team needs a more complete editing experience without giving them full Airtable access, then a third party portal tool like Softr or Zite is the better option. These tools give you controlled editing views while keeping costs predictable.