Our goal for our new pricing structure is for it to be fairly tied to value, easy-to-understand, & beneficial for everyone’s long term success.
To do that there are five elements that will determine the different pricing plans.
Number of Apps | Different plans will have different amounts of published apps available. We will continue to have unlimited test apps available for everyone.
Total Storage | Apps require a lot of data. We’d like to be more generous with the amount of data that each plan allows.
Monthly App Activity | To align our success with your success we plan to tie our pricing to how much app activity your apps have every month. We’ll be doing that with a new metric called App Actions — these are the amount of actions that are getting run throughout your app by all of your end users.
Features | Similar to how it works today and similar to most SaaS products, there will be different features available on the different plans.
Collaborators | Different plans will have different amounts of collaborators available in order to make them work whether you’re just a solo-creator or a huge team.
Today, we just released a brand new dashboard that has a breakdown of which apps are accruing App Actions during your current monthly billing cycle as well as a chart that shows the total amount of App Actions every month. We even have a way that estimates how much activity will happen the rest of the month and what we predict it will be next month. (See screenshots and more details in the full blog article.)
Our plans are not changing today. This post is part of our effort to keep you up-to-date with what we’re thinking about in terms of a new pricing model and to give you all a chance to talk with us.
I don’t see any estimates on the amount of actions that will be tied to each plan, even though it looks (based on my dashboard) that you’ve been tracking actions for at least a couple months.
Appears there is already a consensus on the direction you’re taking with pricing and we’re just not being told the full picture.
I dont like the pricing direction.
This very much feels like an Apple move - you’re hoping a few unicorns on your platform means you cash in big (a cut of their profit based on their viral / popularity and usage).
My app has only a handful of screens, no database entries, is entirely running off essentially two webview screens and you’re tracking me at 36,000 to 38,000 actions a month. And I’m on a monthly plan so that I can build out the second version which is far more complicated.
You’re tracking actions like switching to another screen, logging in, everything and anything besides actions performed by apple /google for permission requests. Even my external API connections, looks like even zaps - which I already pay for.
As far as I can tell, moving away from Adalo makes more sense for me.
Please get some clarity on pricing - actual estimates of the number of actions that will be tied to your current tiers.
I will leave adalo. The price made it attractive but with the current directions (tracking every action to cash in) Iam not willing to pay. The performance is still unprofessional bad. There is still no data center location-based. There is still no subscriptions.
Hello Davis, it would be good to know the approximate time in which we will know the new plans, since for those of us who are working with Adalo it is difficult for us to give a budget to a new client.
Adalo is a great platform with great potential, there is no doubt, and its new plans are going to be useful and it is to improve, but we need to know it as soon as possible to be able to continue selling.
Adalo is a good tool that has the potential to be a great tool but it’s not there yet to demand these sorts of pricing plans based on actions and the information about pricing is already sounding like something that’ll make me start looking at other tools.
Performance has increased a bit but it’s still marginal. I will be willing to accept this pricing offer when the performance is great.
App speed, App speed, App speed.
Notification badge,
Better sign up/login process with email verification,
Etcetera.
I’ve had a chance to read through this and I’m quite shocked at the approach taken by Adalo here.
1/ SaaS based companies are well known for charging a fixed monthly fee. This is also what made Adalo an attractive product. Trying to now introduce variable costs like this will only create uncertainty and confusion.
2/ You have communicated what is changing, however, you have not introduced the actual pricing structure, which again creates anxiety and uncertainty for your user base. Not a transparent and good approach.
3/ Many of your creators, developers and founders are using Adalo to prototype or build out their product, without earning any revenue themselves. A predictable, fixed price model works well for them. Variable charging based on app actions without transparency around what those thresholds will be is going to encourage these creators, developers and founders to look for alternative options.
I hope you reconsider your approach to avoid losing customers. Stick to a fixed price monthly model like every other SaaS product out there, including your competitors. I don’t have a problem with any of the thresholds you are introducing, including app actions, storage, number of apps etc. But what I do have a problem with is the fact that you are not able to clearly explain which threshold and therefore, which pricing tier your customers fall within.
Please release the new tiered pricing structure ASAP so that we can make an assessment whether to partner with Adalo long term or switch to another provider.
You might just want to get the product working before you try to pull crap like that. Build a robust product first and then you can retain a greater percentage of interested users. What I see is Adalo chasing customers away with a product that is barely functional, an alpha if you will. Help is dispersed over multiple pages with no cohesion. TBH it’s like the Wild West here. A lot of customers just walk away.
Will the quality be better then? Then maybe some would be willing to pay. But you won’t guarantee that, because something is always down and doesn’t work. You should have money through fundraising…why do you have to act like this?
A transaction-based fee and even all other planned changes will drive away all of Adalo loyal users. It would only be fair to keep users who already have paid accounts on them. These users help make Adalo bigger every day. If the model applies to new customers, they can decide whether they want to buy Adalo or not. Forcing the existing community to accept the new pricing model or to leave Adalo is completely unfounded and will cause lasting damage to Adalo.
Hello, it seems to me that before doing this many things should be improved, you can also charge according to the area where the apps are, since their operation is getting slower…
I went in to see my movements and I found a surprise I have an app that has not been working for a long time and MORA HELADOS appears
(1578) …
But I also believe that there are many basic things that have to be resolved for the success of the platform.
1 - Better technical support with more effective and faster response.
2 - Best Push Notification System.
3- Improving the control over the App UI is very limited.
And other things.
With the increase in cost must also increase the advantages.
The adalo community would reduce in number if any significant price change is done. We’re using Adalo because we want to do the app building easily and without too much resources.
If you take that away from us or take the price out of the reach of starters, it will be a big discouraging factor. If Adalo wants to become the number one choice and wants to grow organically along with mass adoption & a healthy user community, there needs to be transparency.
We cannot put all our apps on Adalo and then later find out we’re being fleeced to keep it running. Also if you wish to charge more, first get us chat or call based near-instant support so that we don’t have to wait weeks for the support team to reply.
I think that charging per action will create very weird user behavior incentives that ultimately don’t encourage exploration and building in a way that benefits either product or user.
Charging for usage (literally how many requests are made to adlos servers by the live app) would still be weird but at least based on actual server loads.
I think more though, the mismatch here is that adalo is currently an MVP builder but many are finding it’s not yet reliable enough to handle more than that.
As a result, the suggested pricing structure lands, for me, like adalo is trying to run before they walk, regarding pricing. Because it doesn’t seem like Adalo notices, this comes across as lacking in both self-awareness and connection with the community.
Finally, I realise that Adalo is trying to get feedback on the pricing model but this cascading reveal is probably causing more stress than anything. Sounds like the people want tangible numbers.
The changing of pricing models will always be a controversial and unpopular topic, unless said upcoming changes are explicitly foreseen as potentially being cheaper. But many are jumping to the conclusion that this pending change will be for the worst. There is a possibility that the pricing change will be better for a lot of people. It’s rumored that Adalo is moving their servers from one provider to AWS, which should solve a lot of issues in regards to performance. If thats true, then I’m sure Adalo’s server costs and overhead will change as well, so they’ll need to switch up things. At the end of the day, Adalo is a business that has to make money. But if Adalo is going with AWS, then they’ll be charged X for each action our apps perform. It’s only fair that, in turn, we are charged X times 1.5 or some other respectable variable. Whatever the calculation is, hopefully it doesn’t hurt the small fish or people who are sitting in the development phase for months. I purchased a Pro account at the yearly rate ($400) last September. Since then, I’ve only been in the creation phase. My app hasn’t hit the market and I haven’t profitted in any way…also my actions would be quite minimal to an app that’s active and being used. So maybe for someone like me, I would pay significantly less than $400…idk…maybe…but what I’m saying is that we should see how this thing will roll out, then we can properly judge. The good thing is that for those who are already grandfathered in, we’ll be able to ride the rest of the year out with the current pricing model, which would give us a chance to adjust if need be.
Personally, in preparation for me not liking the direction Adalo is going, I’ve been spending the last few weeks learning and training on other platforms, specifically Flutterflow. FF has its perks, but I’ve honestly gotten too used to the ease of developing and creating in Adalo…I’m riding with them until they give me reason not to.
I just downgraded my business account to free. My journey with Adalo is now ending after 3 intense months of happy learning and disappointment before it has even really started! I just signed up for Flutterflow!
That’s sad to hear. Can you provide a screen recording of the app performance issues? I recommend using Loom to record your screen. It’s free. I’d love to help dig into the issue. Also, you should message @jessehaywood about access to the IAP subscriptions beta!
I couldn’t agree more. Hopefully, they’ll get back to us soon. I’m in the same boat, I need to know for when I hand apps off to clients. I can assure you that this is not something they are taking lightly and the extra time spent evaluating the pricing is to ensure that the pricing is reasonable for users while providing the best possible value to customers. That said, it’s difficult to provide an exact time frame for when changes will happen, as they may be influenced by a variety of factors.
Can you also provide a screen recording of your performance-related issues? The more information we can provide to Adalo’s staff about what’s going slow, the better. Can you also explain the “notification badge”?
It sounds like they will offer a variety of plans to encompass the various use cases of Adalo. They are looking at this from multiple perspectives. Individuals that create one app and users that create a ton of apps. This will be interesting to see as I have a ton of apps myself as I create a new app for each template that I sell. They are aware of users like me and how I use Adalo so I think that’ll be taken into consideration. I understand why it would be ideal to charge by app usage rather than a number of apps. My assumption is that they are considering that you start with a small app and it scales as app usage increases, which totally makes sense.
This is exactly what Adalo is trying to do here. Their primary focus this year is performance. The discussion of pricing helps them fine-tune their business model to allocate for prioritization of performance-related issues, feature requests, customer support, and many other things.
I imagine it like this, let’s say 100 users sign up for a free account and 10 users upgrade to the $50/month plan. That’s $500/month for 10 users. Let’s say 1 of those apps, just 1, blows up and gets 200k users. That $500/month of revenue just got decreased significantly due to resources required for the 1 successful app. Then a month later, a 2nd app blows up and gets 100k users. At that point, I feel they’d be operating at a loss.
That’s what Adalo is trying to do. They’re working on performance. There has been a significant increase in performance over the past couple of months already!
It would be helpful if you could provide a list of the things you state should be improved. I can ask about data centers in different locations but I’m sure they’re already aware of this issue.
I messaged the Adalo staff about an idea for better technical support. Can you explain what you mean by “best push notification system”? I really like Adalo’s current push notification setup, it’s really easy to use. And can you also explain “improving the control over the app UI”? I’ve been able to pretty much build anything I can think of visually and haven’t had much of a limitation when it comes to UI design.
Wonderful idea, but this does leave the possibility of Adalo operating at a cost. See my response to DaBoo.
I like this idea. Unfortunately, we have to wait to see what they say about it.
This is not clear for most users bro. A lot of users, including myself, want to use Adalo for full-production live apps, not just MVPs. The word “MVP” does not even appear at all on the Adalo homepage. Instead, the wording on the homepage states that you can make “real apps”.
It definitely is causing stress amongst the users. So we can hope that the pricing remains reasonable, but we won’t know for sure until Adalo actually releases the new pricing information.
The path is to create pricing plans that are flexible based on the user and their apps that don’t force them to operate at a loss. The 5 elements completely make sense. How many apps are you making, how much storage are they using, how much activity is going on in the apps, which features should be offered in which plans, and how many users can access your apps as an editor. Which can I provide more info to you about? I’m happy to elaborate.
Agreed. We’re not sure which direction this will go, but it sounds like they are taking into consideration users like you. Since none of your apps are live, I can guess that there are not a lot of actions going on in the app, which could potentially mean that your apps would be on the cheaper side of the plans.
That’s sad to hear, especially since I know I’ve helped you out a lot here in the forum. Maybe one day you’ll come back and everything will be golden when you return
Hey Everyone!
Our goal for our new pricing structure is for it to be fairly tied to value, easy-to-understand, & beneficial for everyone’s long term success.
Today, we just released a brand new dashboard that has a breakdown of which apps are accruing App Actions during your current monthly billing cycle as well as a chart that shows the total amount of App Actions every month. We even have a way that estimates how much activity will happen the rest of the month and what we predict it will be next month. (See screenshots and more details in the full blog article.)
Our plans are not changing today. This post is part of our effort to keep you up-to-date with what we’re thinking about in terms of a new pricing model and to give you all a chance to talk with us.
Book a meeting with me if you’d like to talk more about our new pricing plan.
As a part of us prepping to make some changes to pricing, we released the ability for you all to get your invoices inside of Adalo!
And finally another reminder, if you’re a paying customer, you’ll continue to have access to the current plan you’re on for the next 12 months.
