My thought EXACTLY
I am using Adalo to solve the expense of iterating problem.
I hope I am wrong, and know that expense is relative, but looking at the estimates of others, I’m not sure this plan will solve my problem.
1 Like
Me, I came to Adalo for the ease of creation, the speed, but also the price that I found attractive. I am French
I have been paying for the pro plan for 20 months and have over 15 web applications published with custom domain names. so i would go from 36$ to 500$/month just for not posting from https://previewer.adalo.com/xxxx and i use less than 10000 shares per month
I hope Adalo will review its prices otherwise it will be without me.
I want to put my hand in my pocket to help further improve this promising tool, but there, it’s far too much.
Shame
3 Likes
Way too much for a developing platform. Please rethink
3 Likes
Does anyone know of a good alternative? This is almost cheeky. The cost/benefit/service ratio is zero.
4 Likes
Hi @David,
Thanks for the insight into your pricing plans.
I think the more differentiated pricing options are a good fit.
However: the actions limits are way to low to consider Adalo for anymore then a prototyping / mvp tool. Is this the direction you are planning to go? If so I would like to know. For Adalo to be a production-level consideration for me, action pricing should be about an order of magnitude less expensive than now proposed.
I’m just simply small scale testing an app with like 50 weekly active users and already almost up to the limits in the ‘professional level’ in some months.
There are 3 main things in my mind:
- It is scary to use Adalo because actions could balloon quite fast - way before an app has enough traction to start producing any revenue
- The many workarounds necessary at the moment to make things work in Adalo causes the amount of actions to be 3-4x as much as would be logical
- Counting ‘screenviews’ as actions just feels unfair
The rest of the pricing plan feels balanced and fair and as a nice growth (and lock-in ;-)) path. I don’t use the Collections API however.
I would propose the following changes:
- Only count actions for Create/Update/Delete actions. Not Read actions.
- Certainly don’t count screenviews as actions
- Change pro-business app actions to 50k-150k-500k/mo
- Change extra actions to 50k / $10
With these changes I would feel safe staying on Adalo for (starting) production level uses. Otherwise I would need to look for custom development way sooner then I would like. Just from a simple cost perspective (if I know I have to switch anyhow, better take the investment hit soon).
Again: thanks for sharing and lots of wisdom for the finalizing steps!
1 Like
To be really honest @David the price seems legit for me. But for the Professionnal plan, just have 2 published app comparated to now is a little bit limited.
BUT ! But, the price is correct if Adalo work to provide more FREE components. I see on Canny that you work on more responsive or capabilities for web app and tha’ts great !
Adalo is a great tool and I’m happy to see it growth !
2 Likes
Certainly glad I didn’t choose a year long contract.
1 Like
Definitely a sinking ship!
1 Like
Uff - thats a tough one to cope. I really enjoy playing around with Adalo, due to its vast functionality, and its possibilities. To some extent, I can see that limiting the number of published apps and actions probably will help the overall performance. I understand the programs need to follow the current inflation as well. 52/65 dollars a month seems ok (if some of the most critical issues with the platform is getting fixed). It will come over time - I really trust in you. I have been a paying user the last year.
But to spend almost 200 dollars to get the collections API has stunned me. It is a price increase on almost 200% - For me - as a hobbyist, this is a major setback. Suddenly I cant use Airtables anymore. Especially because all no-code/low-code platforms require some fee to open up for additional features. 200 dollars on just one will make this impossible for me. I don’t need 10 seats of editors, or the additionally 100Gb of storage. But I do need the ability to make it all work as I does today. Please… 
I urge you to include API Collections in the professional plan as well… It is a major setback for me - and other entrepreneurs just starting up…
/Mikkel
4 Likes
Hello, the truth is that this is very bad… in particular, I have several client apps published on download platforms and several on pwa… now with this new plan, how do we do with the apps we have made?
If a client uses the app for 3 months and we cancel it, how does that work?
The truth is crazy… they cared more about Adalo than about the ones we use… imagine here in South America we charge them a monthly fee of 10dl to pay for and maintain their app… look at the new prices:
Pro: 2 apps would be 32.5dls each
Team: 40dls each app…
I’m disappointed with ADALO… I think I’ll have to stop using it… IT’S VERY EXPENSIVE and it’s a shame that all the time invested with a plan now they change our entire business scheme!
LOOK FOR MORE INVESTMENTS AND DO NOT RAISE THE PRICES FOR US… TAKE CARE OF US
2 Likes
This pricing is like your selling Ferrari with 1L fuel tank.
Let’s say you got 100 users and got the Starter package.
How much actions do they have per month?
10,000/100=100
each user would have 100 actions/mo /30 days
=3 actions per day.
So you log in, click something, then log out.
You cant even use the included features. so you might as well forget about it.
That’s why I cant value that pack at $45
My suggestion is to put an encouraging fixed rate like $30/mo
Then set up a menu of items or features where you can charge them individually so that we can customize our plan. This may ultimately solve each developer needs.
1 Like
I’m suggesting the professional plan to have 5-6 apps, while starter should have 2 apps, also starter package needs custom actions for processing payments , since adalo does not support other payment gateways apart from stripe.
Geolocation should be a add-on , e.g if our client needs geo location we would tell them to pay for it
When would adalo provide support for other payment gate ways such as paystack from Africa
This is a shame… now we must rethink the whole business… or leave Adalo… crazy what they are going to do… they just want to earn more instead of retaining more
I believe a pertinent question that should be answered is why they are increasing prices to begin with.
Are they losing money? Breaking even? Just want more money on top of what they have? Is this increase investor-driven? If so, are the investors involved with the change structure?
If Adalo wants to place profits before progress, they’re going to run their company into the ground. It’s a shame for them but an even bigger shame for their current customers. Correct me I’m wrong, but isn’t Adalo’s whole business model based around providing a product at a reasonable cost with accessibility for entry-level app devs or quick-to-market makers?
This pricing structure negates the principal reason people joined Adalo to begin with. Adalo has many (many) issues, from support response, to bug fixes and backend performance, but these things are generally manageable, though frustrating, because the accessibility for many people makes it worth while.
But if you take that accessibility and trash it, while also struggling to address the many ongoing issues, retaining current customers en masse is going to be impossible; bringing in and maintaining future customers will be a struggle at best.
When I look for any project I want to utilize online, I immediately look at pricing and what that pricing offers before ever exploring the platform. If the pricing is out of my reach, I don’t want to fall in love with a service to only be let down in the future when it’s time to grow. Adalo’s pricing and feature set was exactly what I needed, when I needed it. And of course, there was no indication at that time that price hikes were coming.
I understand that businesses need to grow and to do so, have to make money (we get it, as app makers, many of us want to monetize our products also), but that growth shouldn’t come at the expense of wrecking your customers’ ability to make a return on their investments, too. Such growth should come naturally, and reflect the quality of services offered.
Each person here is at their own crossroad of how to proceed. For me, two of my apps are dependent upon a pricing structure that’s fair and makes sense. One of these apps will become wholly obsolete if Adalo proceeds with this pricing structure, as it will collapse the current customer base, to which my app is geared towards (and free to boot); the other app was adopted by and pre-funded by a customer in the emergency services district (fire, EMS, police, etc).
Thankfully, I haven’t moved any of their investment yet, but the level of embarrassment and yet another climatic hit to my brand name (second time in a month through Adalo) may make it impossible or at the least, a struggle not worth pursuing further in that industry to rebuild confidence; getting that bid to begin with was a challenge.
As of right now, I haven’t spoken with them as I’m waiting to see what Adalo does long term, but I jokingly considered to myself telling the police they can only use the app once per officer per month, and beyond that, the app will be a digital paperweight. Obviously, that’s an inconceivable, laughable and destructive proposition to make to ANY customer, let alone those who deal in emergency situations and need easy access to their accessories to perform the intended function.
From here, I hope Adalo reconsiders their current trajectory, because if not, I will be leaving to either reassess my mission or find another avenue that caters more to its customer base and less to profit acceleration.
1 Like
It’s all such a shame. A great design-first, easy to use app builder ruined by slow (or bad prioritised) development progress and now terrible pricing decision moving forward.
I stopped building/learning months ago to see where Adalo was headed and glad I did.
Recently I’ve noticed the only success in using Adalo is selling magic beans to unsuspecting farmers. People developing components and templates will be the only winners here. Buyers beware! All these templates and components are fantastic but what’s the point if they’re unusable in a high traffic, production setting?
Time to bite the bullet and move over to bubble. I’ll always check in and see what’s happening in the forums because I’m trapped in an abusive love/hate relationship with Adalo but good luck everyone!
3 Likes
Hi, please what platform is these
I believe Adalo will surprise us with their offering later.
Let’s assume hypothetically,
87% of performance cost are coming from free plan makers, both in editor and previewer (maybe 90% and 10% weight)
another 8% of performance cost from highly successful apps with highly active users, but very few apps
another 5% of performance cost from mediocre usage apps (not mediocre features) which consists of 99% of current paid plan apps.
If we can get win-win solution to get more conversions from 87% free loaders to be 20% more for paid plans (cheapest paid plan), there will be lots of money made.
And to keep the current paid plans happy but need to differentiate high performing apps, those 8% performance-sucking apps need to be addressed differently, perhaps they deserved dedicated servers and will be happily ever after with that.
When performance-sucking apps are gone from existing servers, mediocre-usage apps will enjoy more happy life and will attract cheapest plan to upgrade or even more conversion from that 87% performance cost apps.
The goal is to reduce 87% category (free plan) to be less and less, probably less than 50% in 2 years.
Again, this is fiction in order to get attention.
Even if Adalo’s performance improves dramatically, I would find it difficult to continue to use it if I had to pay an infinite number of additional fees for each action.
My app has an estimated 374,912 actions this month.
If a package of 15,000 additional app actions is added for $8, it would cost a total of $290 a month.
I had hoped to continue to use Adalo for years to come until this announcement.
However, if my number of clients were to increase tenfold and actions were to increase tenfold, it would cost me $2,090 a month.
I was expecting Adalo to be a “no-code tool not just for PWA”, but is it a “no-code tool just for PWA”?
In any case, if there is no cap on app actions and the 15,000 extra app action packages continue to be added for $8, I, like many of you posting in this forum, would seriously consider using another tool.
1 Like
“we”?
So, are you on Adalo’s payroll?
Just a thought here: The free plan should be viewed as part of the MARKETING budget.
i.e. I’m on the free plan, with an app 90% built. Not using it - Not using that many actions. NOT learning Adalo (because I’m maxed out) Thus, not engaging with the Adalo product. And haven’t been for nearly a year. I would think for a small flat fee - I could use the “free” version, with no users so I could learn more Adalo, and not have to delete my current work. And I am not going to pay for the current plan, and jeopardize my clients’ business & mine.
I understand no-code is not like code. But, Adalo is competing with lots of cheap / free alternatives backed by MIT, Stanford grads, & Ycombinator. Good luck, Adalo. I want you to win… but
Someone (not you) is not thinking clearly…
2 Likes