Subscription Club Wiki - Is this the right tool?

[Anton_Olshanetsky]

Hi! I am exploring using Coda for our subscription based platform.
Essentially, we want to have a ‘Folder’ that contains all our club-member materials.
We would like to know if the set of features below is available for the Teams plan, or available at all for that matter.
Those are the features that are important to us :

1. Ability to have a permission group where all members have ‘ready-only’ access to a folder. Adding and removing members using API (when the subscription ends).
2. Ability to have a small number of editors to keep our knowledgebase ‘fresh’, editing existing docs.
3. Ability to have ‘Public’ folders where all docs inside are accessible by anonymous users (read-only).
4. ‘Collaborative’ docs where people in a permission group can add records to tables (so imagine an editable doc in a ‘read-only’ club members folder if that makes sense).

I was studying the API’s - Coda API and Coda Admin API but couldn’t quite answer the questions.
Especially number 1 - I see a permissions API to grant readonly access to a Group, but I can’t see if I can control group membership through API? (And do I need enterprise or pro?).
Also I see most permission API’s are tied to specific docs, can I control folder permissions on Teams plan?

For our needs we only need 1-2 doc makers, is the features above accessible for Team account or we need Enterprise? And if so - what pricing can we expect for mainly viewer based usage? (last thing we want is a poorly-scalable solution).

Would appreciate your help!

[Piet_Strydom]

Hi Anton,

Welcome to Coda, and it’s community!

The short answer to your questions is, “Yes, but it depends”.

And I say it depends, mostly because if the fact that Coda is very different to traditional computer documents.

For example, when you say “folder”, in the Coda environment that translates, most probably, to a doc. You would typically manage access at a doc level. The one mistake that just about everybody makes is to have too many docs. Generally separate docs are only used when it is necessary to keep some information confidential. (If a person has access to a doc, they have access to ALL of the doc.)

Coda has makers and users, rather than editors, and you only pay for makers. Makers are people that can create new docs, and new pages in a doc.

Which is another difference to the traditional world. A page in Coda is closer to a complete spreadsheet, or a complete word doc.
You do not pay for people that maintain information in a doc, whether it is adding or amending rows up a table or, amending text on an existing page.

I don’t know how many users you have in mind, but maintenance via API or buying the Enterprise level is most probably overkill.

I am confident that Coda is one of the best, if not the best, tool for your needs. But the devil is in the details - you need to spend enough time familiarising yourself. It is NOT Excel, it is NOT Word, it is NOT Notion.

Again, welcome.
Piet

[Anton_Olshanetsky]

Thanks Piet!
I will start exploring and come back equipped with the appropriate lingo
As for the ‘folders’ I was referring to… I meant those :

Organize docs with folders | Coda Help Center

Since my business has 2 different ‘Viewer’ roles with different access needs, I thought of creating 2 separate folders filled with docs that enherit the folders permissions.
I was initially interested in the Admin API to grant folder access based on those roles managed in my business, but I’m eager to explore how that can be done with the Teams Plan (preferably with automation in mind - links/invites/api).

Really appreciate the elaborate answers and the amazing community!
Excited to learn how to best use Coda for our business needs.

Best regards,
Anton Olshanetsky

[Piet_Strydom]

Have you seen the below page yet?

I would highly recommend that you build some prototypes for a month or two and see what features best satisfy your requirements. Whether to use page/ doc locking, new folders, or new documents are fairly fluid, and each approach has advantages and disadvantages. It is only based on experience with Coda from YOUR requirements perspective that you are going to be able to make good decisions.

The doc locking I have highlighted may give you sufficient control over access.