Save Thousands on Make.com: Airtable Automation Strategies

Learn how to build cost-effective automations using Airtable to significantly reduce your Make.com subscription expenses. This video demonstrates three different approaches to processing data, comparing the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of each method.

Duration: 17 minutes
Level: Intermediate
9 Lessons
Automation Prompt Engineering

Course Timeline

00:00

🎥 Introduction: Optimizing Make.com Costs

Overview of the video's objective: demonstrating how to reduce Make.com operational costs through Airtable integration.

00:45

🚀 Make.com Automation: A Costly Approach?

Analysis of a Make.com automation, highlighting the high operational cost associated with looping through large datasets using multiple modules.

02:10

💡 Airtable Method 1: Direct Data Insertion

First alternative method using Airtable: directly inserting data into Airtable after fetching it from an API call in Make.com. Shows the cost-saving compared to the Make.com only method.

03:15

🔄 Airtable Method 2: Processing Data in Airtable

Second Airtable strategy. Instead of processing the data directly in Make, the data is saved to Airtable and then processed using Airtable automations and scripting.

05:00

⚙️ Airtable Scripting Deep Dive

Detailed explanation of the Airtable script, including data parsing, iteration, and capitalization. Illustrates how the script handles data efficiently within Airtable.

07:15

📊 Make.com vs. Airtable: Cost Comparison

Comparison of operational costs between Make.com and Airtable approaches. Emphasizes the significant cost savings achieved with Airtable automations.

10:00

⚠️ Handling Large JSON Datasets

Addresses limitations of Airtable's text fields and introduces a solution for handling excessively large JSON datasets. The limitation of the text area field is discussed.

11:25

☁️ Airtable Method 3: Google Cloud Storage Integration

Third Airtable method. Using Google Cloud Storage to handle large JSON datasets to overcome the limitations of text field size. The method uses file upload to Google Cloud Storage as intermediate.

13:55

🎯 Conclusion and Resources

Recap of the three Airtable methods and how to choose between them. Provides links to resources like Make.com blueprints and Airtable bases.