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SaaS Architecture of a Paywalled Database
I am looking to no-code build a small saas (closed membership) in which I have a paywalled database (with airtable). The considered workflow ist this: User visits landing page / signs up / has access to search page / can search database. Concept like this site: https://presshunt.co/
I'd like to build it in this way: https://medium.com/@LjNaumov/the...:
1. frontend and hosting provider: Webflow, Bubble etc.
2. database and backend: Memberstack (or smth similar); Airtable for database
3. payment processor: Stripe
But I saw that webflow has problems with airtable (but has good integration with memberstack); Bubble cant integrate with memberstack but airtable would work perfectly. Do you have any other approach / idea / way for solving this problem?
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@mfrz Thanks for your help. Yes paytable is a cool solution but imo you lose the control over the data and hand out the full database. Thats okay for a quick product like the community list but not for smth bigger. I am thinking about doing it with bubble/webflow and some plugins so I can query the database :)
@robinkunz I think we are looking tu build similar frameworks. Tipically Gumroad+Airtable alone has lots of security issues because the database can be easily shared/copied. Paytable solves this, but i am not fully convinced if its the best option. I didn't want to build a solution from scratch (even with lowcode), and wanted a faster option. There is also some Notion to sites (two launched in the last two days) that could solve this but not sure yet.
@mfrz Yes exactly. I find the combination of Gumroad and Airtable very bad. You lose all control over your own database.
In my opinion, this is also true for Paytable. In my case, it doesn't make sense to give the "naked" list to customers; customers need to be able to do searches as well - I don't want to show my airtable list as a whole but only make queries on it.
Hey @robinkunz what are you using Bubble for? Doesn't Memberstack support all the auth/paywall stuff?
And as for Airtable <> Webflow, what's the issue there? I would think you could just embed Airtable on a page and "protect" it via Memberstack.
By the way, Remember that this is only JS/Frontend protection, so users could pretty easily circumvent the Memberstack auth. What I like to do is save the Airtable embed code in a Memberstack variable :-)
Hope that makes sense!
Hey @richard_francis2; thanks a lot for your detailed response. Yes memberstack does it all for you but I think for a saas is bubble (at least in the backend) a better solution than bubble. E.g. in webflow you need for anything a paid plugin (search with Jetboost or PowerImporter for Airtable). But the only thing I am unsure with bubble is the membership stuff. I don't want to built that by myself and would like to just purchase a plugin.
I am very overwhelmed right now ^^
I don't want to show airtable list as a whole but only make queries on it. A user makes a subscription (monthly subscription for a few dollars) and gets the possibility to make search queries. So the user never sees the whole database, but only the search results.
So basically it's a very simple app. I think I will have a landing page (onepager; domain.com) and an app page (app.domain.com) where he does the searches. Besides that, I think there will be a page for the user's account, where he can see how long his subscription will run, when he will pay, cancellation options etc.
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