I’m currently building a client portal system using Glide, and I’ve hit a major concern regarding scalability.
The Business Plan only includes 30 private users, and from what I understand, it starts charging per user after that. However, we already have over 50,000 clients, and once the system is fully built, each of them will need access to the portal for booking services and tracking their order status.
Given that the portal will be self-service only (just viewing status and booking), we don’t need advanced role-based features, just a simple and scalable way for each client to view and interact with their own data.
My key questions:
Is there any recommended workaround or alternative plan for supporting a large user base like this on Glide?
Would using public apps with row-based filtering be a more scalable approach?
Are there best practices for building scalable client portals that don’t require each user to be a “private” user under Glide’s licensing model?
Should I consider integrating Glide with another front-end or authentication system to handle this kind of volume?
I’d really appreciate any advice, suggestions, or experiences from others who’ve dealt with similar challenges.
Additional question:
Can I build the public-facing client portal inside my Maker team, and at the same time, manage our internal admin/operations system under a separate Enterprise team?
You could do separate teams. The tricky part is sharing the same tables between both teams. I don’t think it’s officially supported, but I think it works to start building the second app in the same team folder with all the tables you need, and then transfer the app to the other team. The tables should stay linked between both apps in both teams.
