Let’s Talk About Some Upcoming Changes To Our Pricing

:wave: Hey Everyone!

In March, during our quarterly Townhall, I talked about how we were looking to make some changes to the way our pricing model works. Since then, I have spoken with many of you all about how we’re thinking about pricing.

These conversations were enlightening & invaluable, and they’ve helped shape the way that our pricing is going to work in the future.

Today, I released a blog post that goes into the very heart & soul of how we believe pricing should work — bottom line: pricing should be tied closely to the amount of value you’re getting from Adalo!

:point_right: Check out everything I have to say about pricing in this blog post

Here’s the TL;DR

:astonished: Since the start of Adalo (in 2019) we’re never changed our pricing. In that same time frame, we’ve added a TON of new features, workflow improvements, and much, much more.

:balance_scale: After conversations with you all here are three principles behind our pricing philosophy:

  1. Pricing should be tied to the value you’re getting Adalo & your usage — which widely varies from maker-to-maker.
  2. Pricing should be predictable & simple to understand.
  3. Pricing works best when it’s good for your long term success and Adalo’s long term success.

:raised_hands: Any customer who is currently on a paid subscription with Adalo will have the opportunity to remain on their original plan for an entire year after we’ve updated our plans. Thank you for building with Adalo!

To learn more about our thinking & how we’ve arrived at this point, read the full blog post.

More to come in the upcoming days and weeks!

5 Likes

This is tough to read when there are performance issues already pushing me towards looking for alternatives.
And you didnt answer with what those upcoming price changes look like, how they’ll be measured, etc.

I understanding needing to expand pricing to keep up with growth and innovate. But even this forum had issues loading for me this morning.

I’ve been with too many bootstrap apps and solutions to know warning signs.
Stability for paying users should be a priority.
Transparency in usage that is tied with pricing should be clear and in the dashboard for me to view and optimize and extrapolate my growth potential and costs.

All businesses must control costs so they can scale.
Following up stability issues with price increases, without addressing the stability issues and getting those under control, is lowering my confidence.
Frustrated.
I also don’t like the idea that you have zeroed in on successful apps. The way the pricing is structured sounds like those successful apps were already paying for their data usage ($10 per 1 gig over the 20 is what I had read).
I don’t like that pricing structure will suddenly be changed on those that are successful - and locked into your product / infrastructure. Reads as predatory against those that manage to find success because you didnt plan out your own scalability.

4 Likes

I’ve been a beta tester for apps and startups and SaaS for more than 10 years. And while I’m frustrated, I do want you to succeed.

I like to be as helpful as I can be. I am about to be no-sugar-coating real with you. Because feedback is what companies need to know exactly where they are struggling.

  1. My pricing, and my usage tied to that pricing, should be viewable in my dashboard, this is not negotiable. Anything less is not a solution people will take seriously and you’ll be a service only for hobbyists. Businesses must, must, must be able to measure and control their costs.
    I would sooner use your pro plan and use an external data option that allows me to measure, estimate, and control costs than to use your blind pricing for data usage.

I actually referred another entrepreneur to the adalo solution and they passed because of this specific issue, which I didnt even point out to them.

  1. The #1 complaint I have seen online about Adalo besides lack of transparency on usage/cost, is that the cost for data is too high.
    I would estimate the majority of your users stick to the medium tier pro plan and use external databases.

The reason I assume this is because your databases are still external to the apps on users phones. So why pay the inflated data prices for the same or slower result by going with adalo databases?

  1. Speed - Anything that takes more than two seconds to load is dead. Dead. DEAD.
    I’m able to support 14k users on a $40/month wordpress install just fine but adalo started to have performance issues when I had 7 users in my testflight (with only me beta testing) the database. This is horrifying. (Granted, I will allow that this has been the past few days when maybe you had more performance issues going on).

You have some great functionality - like conditional assets, database filtering, some fancy components I can add and have paid to upgrade to - but I have to come to the forum to find out I should actually AVOID your best components so that my app will load and function?

This is … to put it mildly… insane.

Now, enough about me. You are suggesting pricing changes. You seem to have scalability issues.

Here is what I would suggest - and what I would personally expect on a mature pricing page for Adalo.

Pricing suggestions:

Test accounts / Not paid accounts - One app total, 50 lines of data, ‘in production’ banner.
You will end up with people that will create multiple accounts and ‘in production’ banner will prevent some elements of abuse. In production banner means it’s still able to be tested, can still be shown to clients, but it’s not something you can sell with that banner.
Which means - if you have clients, you can pay.
The free tier is meant to prototype. It can be a prototype forever. You get one prototype.

Once they have confidence in what they have made:
$10 a month (with incentives / room to do annual upgrades) - Remove the in production banner, keep the 'made with Adalo banner, 1 gig of data total (total for app size and database usage, split based on however the app is used). No external app access.
This tier could be paid and then canceled. But if they go over the data, the entire app breaks.

This won’t be your most profitable level, it qualifies as a loss leader judging by how you’re charging for data. But it will keep your costs from spiraling by limiting it to one app, versus many apps. Both Adalo and client grow - and expand into the next pricing tier.

That pushes them / me into the next tier.

$50 a month - 1 app that is 5 gigs in size, No banners, 5 gigs of database data.
Your consumable is your databases. My assumption (that’s all I can go off of) is that your primary users are on the Pro plan and that means perhaps most don’t go over 5 gigs for the size of their overall app. (I’m guessing, work with me).

This pricing method limits the size of the app, gives users a reason to keep their app size optimized, and makes a clear distinction between asset size and consumables (databases) that can be measured and controlled.

So you need to attach the add-on cost to the consumables - database size.
But you cannot break the faith with customers and be predatory.

Which is why the $50 plan would include external database options and you’ll need to stay competitive to cheaper data packages.

Each additional app is $50 a month with 5 gigs app size, and increases your database data by 5 gig.

They add on their data per app. This allows you to have agencies build out within your infrastructure and upgrade packages to their clients. Each app needs data reports.
Make it measurable.

If you want to be an enterprise solution, you absolutely need to have enterprise pricing.

I ramble a lot and I’ve streamlined my thoughts on pricing as structured below.

Free

  • One App
  • 50 lines of data
  • in-production banner
    (includes made by adalo in that production banner)
  • 1 gig total app size
    *Not able to be published

$10 Basic

  • One App
  • 1 to 5 gig total data (app and database usage combined)
  • Made with Adalo banner
  • Can be published to app stores
    – No External database access

** $50 PRO **

  • One App
  • No banners
  • 10 gigs (5 gigs app assets / size, 5 gigs database)
  • External Database access

** $200 Enterprise **

  • 4 Apps (20 gigs for Space - 20 gigs database) (to get started)
    No banners
    Dedicated database / servers, not shared hosting style.
    External databases

** Custom - Agency **
$200 per app/mo on Enterprise plan, wholesale database pricing

  • Client dashboard (not admin or editor), monthly cost per client dashboard. (not for editing, only for viewing usage, app reports, etc)
  • Editor seats, monthly cost per seat.
  • referral /affiliate commission if the Agency transfers the app to the client entirely as long as the client remains on Pro plan or above.
  • Transfer fee $1,200 for each client to take control of their app (within their own adalo account, free of the agency) and become admin/editor, the fee / offer is for the agency to decide and not offered directly from Adalo.
  • Custom ‘in production’ banners that can be branded to agency name

Agency is all about scale. It must must have stability to scale.

By giving custom agencies the wholesale pricing, but shifting clients to enterprise pricing if the clients leave the agency to manage their app themselves, you give agencies an edge without it being a detriment to your stability or a competitor.
And you have the potential, if that client decides to buy their app and manage it themselves, to make money on the enterprise data prices and passing some of that back to your agencies (profit share, in a way).

You should aspire to enterprise and Agency.

This gives you a way for some of your best forum users to create agencies, create apps for others and sell them to their clients.
You create an eco-system that rewards developers, bootstrap agencies, and your community.
It keeps your database costs in control, encourages developers to build on your infrastructure (growth), make sure your data costs are covered (wholesale data reflects your cost, not a locked in cost).

You should give Adalo users the option to allocate their extra app size data to their database. It encourages adalo users to keep their apps light (static on your servers). I assume app assets take up more space and resources, while database entries are cheaper on the data side for you as you expand at wholesale prices. (please, be aware of my assumption here). It also gives users a good feeling that they can optimize and best use the resources they’re paying for.

This is how I think on a the developer side, on the entrepreneur side, and my experience with agencies.

Perhaps it’s not the right place for this feedback. Or the right time.
They would be pretty massive changes.
But since Adalo looks like it’s undergoing some pretty big changes, it was worth typing it all up and offering it.

Whatever happens, I hope you succeed adalo.
for my sake!

2 Likes

Yes in my opinion, what Adalo provide is worth much more than 50$ a month if you have a successful business built on it, considering the amount of hosting, services, development and time that you will save

rearrange your prices to make it fare for all based on usage and benefits, but please do not get greedy and try to get some shares from users.

I do like Adalo a lot, it is way simpler and better than other no-code tools, BUT … without the ability to extract the source code, and/or improving the performance drastically, the moment your competitors come close to Adalo’s level, most of your users will run away without looking back

for me I am not really considered about the source code right now, just give me close servers to my location to get rid of the huge latency and I will be glade to pay 1000$ a month instead of 50$

best of luck

1 Like

@adalotaco
I know Adalo is making many improvements in many of the concerns raised, I can’t give more details though.

On the other hand I really thank you for your second reply it really gives very valuable feedback and insight on the product. This is super valuable to us and believe me we will work on it.

Also anything else just tag me in the forums or there are some slack channels we could invite you to.

Thanks a lot for this awesome feedback, this great and long article and this idea sharing!!

3 Likes

@mohmdfawzi where are you located?

@jose-adalo Middle East, currently I am in UAE and building an app for a business in Jordan

Glad you are discussing this. Awesome.

As a non-tech solo startup, here is what sucks about the free plan:

I have spent hours learning (to be expected) But, I still don’t know if Adalo is the right solution because of the plan’s limitations. I have 90% of 1 app built, and I am out of space / records.

I want to build more, like add more records & build a few more small apps on the side (no users) so I may learn more, WITHOUT deleting my current app, without making multiple accounts. And I don’t want to spend about $50 / month + time-to-learn + be under pressure (because of the limited time) just to know if Adalo is the correct solution. I feel like I’m being charged money just to learn Adalo’s limitations.

Secondly:
Speed. It’s gotten better. Looking forward to more.

Lastly:
I appreciate all the effort, communication, updates, university, etc.
Thank you! Keep it up!

1 Like

Being an Adalo Lover, I hope the pricing comes generous and you don’t walk into the precipice. Many Years in WordPress and ERP/systems developments and I saw many movements like this being the downfall. Look at Elementor for example lately, and the exodus to Oxygen, Brizy, Bricks and so on.

I hope you really work the pricing per value compared to not only Adalo itself but also competitors. I work with 6 other no code/low code tools and in my opinion, Adalo is third when it comes to Mobile Applications and comes in the bottom when it comes to webapps. This when comparing features and stability and usability.

I would prefer to pay 25$/month for 1 to 3 killer apps than 50$ for a buffet of all you can build apps that then are slow, buggy and lack of features.

I don’t even mind keeping the source code in Adalo if all works well (That is one of the purposes of No Code, not touching code) as opposed to other competitors that offer that.

The core strength of Adalo is the process and the speed of building, but now you need to work on System uptime and speed (move to AMZ and focus strongly on that) and also in adding essential features missing yet. I would be happy already with system uptime and speed.

2 Likes

I am already having a hard time keeping myself working on the adalo apps, and lately my work has decreased because there are many more “experts” around.

With the increase in prices I do not think I can get away with it.

I absolutely agree that the price does not have to be the same if you have only one app or twenty, but in this way there is a risk of making those who have believed in it so far away from the platform.

I had already talked with Ben from adalo about this in past, we’ll see what happen…
Luckily we will continue to pay 50$/month this year.

1 Like

I agree, but experts around is also an effect of the “Low code/No code”, easier to learn in general and tools are accessible to public in general.

More than 50$ I would say is risky, I use another competitor also for 70$ with same Buffet all you can build apps, but the stability and features, Adalo is still way below. The difference is Adalo is much faster to build, I stopped using Figma ever since, pun intended :slight_smile: .I am currently using Adalo 50% of the time with the other competitor.

If they step up to what the other already offers, then Adalo would be number one in my opinion.

Hi,

Give everybody who are serious there own VPS or VPS’s and let them do your bidding. I have heard all about the difficulty in scaling and manpower involved, but seriously, have you spoken to real experts, who ever you have spoken to has no idea what the are saying. There is almost absolutely nothing today we can’t do. AZURE came to being because we have been virtualizing all Microsoft, products when they were still hunting down licenses. Those days are gone, you supply the software, we buy a license to use and if you really want to make money you host the VPS’s yourself.
It is just a matter of time when somebody copies your Model word for word and rent it out as a server, trust me it WILL HAPPEN. I already know of a few people working on it as we speak and some of them I have tested and they are very, very close to what you got right now.

The light at the end of the tunnel: IT IS NOT about your Pricing for Us, it is way to SLOWWWW, we are in Australia and when the USA goes to sleep it speeds up for us but the moment the US and Europe wakes up the apps become unusable.

So please get some servers this side of the world.

3 Likes

Hello, is it known if the plans are not going to do more with unlimited apps? Or when will we know the new price methodology? Thank you.

Hello David, does the methodology of being able to create unlimited applications change? or when we will know the new plans? Thank you.

Sure @David it is time to talk about the pricing.
I am paying your services since more than 2 years.

I have now zero commercial apps since there is no way to assure a real commercial performance with Adalo that will allow me to charge the potential clients.

Since many (!) months I just pay your Adalo services and check once per month to see any change with the performance.
And it is unbelievable: no big changes since so much time…

The only reason that I keeping my account functional is the workflow that is great and the hope that maybe (!) will be a real change related to the performance.

So yes, let’s talk about some upcoming changes to your pricing…

2 Likes

I think it is fair to have some kind of change in pricing structure, but I also think that would imply that all of Adalo services work as advertised (performance, stability, actual support). I hope the latter happens before the price change, so this way we can all be happy.

What I like with Adalo is the unlimited apps ability. 50$ for unlimited apps is very correct I think.

I have so many ideas and I will be very frustrated if I can’t test out my ideas. 50$ is “great” even if I don’t make money with my apps

I also agree with the Free tier to build one app with 10 users and $50 tier for unlimited apps with small number of users and data.

After that I would be happy to pay per app for increased users, data, and speed.

I assume and hope that with Adalo willing to discuss and prepare for changes in price that means some big changes/upgrades in servers, performance and all things related to backend are on the horizon. I’m willing to pay for a great product with great service as long as it makes sense. So fingers crossed for major news soon regarding backend improvements.

1 Like

Hi, Could I add a thought or two on pricing: I think we need something between $50 and $200 .

  • If on the $50 plan and need more data storage then provide the purchase option of an additional 5 Gigs for $20 and so on until the the owners plan reaches 20gig - then advise that they have to move to the $200 plan

  • If a owner is storing large images or videos without compression then perhaps they require a warning of additional cost, I make sure all my images have been compressed to the max or should I say the minimum before adding to the database.

  • A pricing category for my clients who want to manage their own Adalo account:

    • $25 per month 2 Gigs of storage
    • Limit the number of app users actively using the app per day to 50
    • Limit the number of local or external database calls (posts, gets, puts) to some reasonable number per day
    • If the client wants to add more users or data then they go to the $50 plan.

A cautionary tale:

  • AppSheet started out great and helped techs like me develop AppSheet apps for clients at reasonable prices. Then they decided they didn’t want the smaller clients and they jacked up the prices without consultation with their loyal developer supporters of several years and removed features from existing plans up to much more expensive plans. Quite a few of use left.

Many thanks for this opportunity. Adalo’s success is key to my success. thanks, Mary