Revised Pricing Plans

[David]

Thank You For Your Feedback
First and foremost, thank you all for the spirited discussion and for talking with me throughout this entire process. We started this all the way back in March and I’m not even sure how to figure out the number of makers we’ve spoken with at this point, it’s been so many. So thank you for all of your feedback along the way. I’ve really enjoyed getting to know you and hearing your stories.

Clarification for Current Paying Customers
Before jumping into your latest round of feedback and our revisions based on it, I wanted to quickly clarify the timing of this for those of you that are currently paying customers, as I think there was maybe a little confusion in the previous messaging. For those of you who are on a paid plan today — regardless of whether that is a monthly plan or an annual plan — you’ll be able to stay on that plan until July of 2023. This means you will continue to pay your current price, have access to all of your current features, and not have to pay anything additional for the number of App Actions or number of Published Apps for the next 12 months.

Our hope is that this should give you all plenty of time to better understand and get a really good sense of how active your apps are every month. This will also give us plenty of time to continue to evolve our product. We’ll be able to add an entire year’s worth of features and added value for you all. Additionally, we’ll be able to move to a structure that better supports our most successful makers. Right now, everyone is mainly grouped together from both a support and quality of service level — regardless of how much usage your apps have. These changes set us up for a win-win here.

Your Latest Round of Feedback
I would say that a majority of those I’ve spoken with are supportive of a new pricing structure in general. And that you recognize the importance for both Adalo and you all to move away from a one-size-fits all type of pricing. I’d also say that overall this structure is in line with that. Where I think the biggest difference in opinions lies is within the specific details of those plans.

The most consistent feedback that we heard was that you all were nervous of what the costs for your app would be when it’s the type of app that starts to get A LOT of users and A LOT of activity — specifically as it relates to App Actions. This was not our intention, but we hear you loud and clear. We want your app to scale with us and for you to not fear that your costs would spiral out of control.

The other clear feedback point that we heard from you all is the importance of the Collections API while you’re building out your app. That needs to happen earlier in your app’s lifecycle and is required for setting up some integrations with Custom Actions & External Collections when you’re initially building out your app. We understand the importance of integrating with external tools for automation and other purposes & the Collections API is one of the main modes that makes that possible.

Based On Your Feedback Here Are The Four Changes

1. We’ve increased the App Actions available on the Business Plan from 300,000 actions per month to 1 Million actions per month.
2. Additionally, when you’re on the Business Plan, there will be special add-on pricing to make sure your app can scale on Adalo. So on that plan you’ll be able to add 200,000 actions per month for just $10. (And if your app reaches 10M we’re happy to discuss a price point that works for you.)
3. For every paid plan, we will have a feature that allows you to control your spending limits as it relates to App Actions. (Note: this change is not visible on the charts below and is still a work in progress. We will have this developed well before any current customers will be able to switch over to the new plans).
4. And finally, the Professional Plan now has access to the Collections API (along with Team & Business). This should clear up the confusion on what integrations you get so that Custom Actions, External Collections, and the Collections API all work together.

Here are the changes highlighted in teal.

Here’s the revised and finalized plan.

App Actions Now Scale With Your Growth
In my previous post, I had tried to note that if your app had a lot of App Actions that we would work with you all on a price. I realize now that this was not concrete enough. I can also completely empathize with how scary that must have been to think about how expensive it could have been to have your app become super successful on Adalo. And rightfully so when you look at the chart below. Our hope is that you’ll see how our revised plans address this head on. This should make apps that are super successful feel limitless in terms of the scale of users and amount of activity.

A Few More Clarifications on App Actions

• If your apps go over your plan’s limits on a specific month, we’ll add the additional 15,000 actions for $8 to ensure your app continues to work for your end users. This will reset every month based on the activity for that month. As mentioned above, we’re building a way for you to control this from your usage dashboard.
• Actions in the previewer and when you are working in the editor & database collections from inside Adalo will not count towards your App Actions. We want the value you get from your app users to go hand in hand with our plans.
• On the Business plan there will be a special add-on price for App Actions for you to add 200,000 actions for just $10 a pack per month.

What If You Need A LOT of Published Apps?
Please reach out to us! We’ll be happy to help here and offer a bulk apps pricing structure on a case-by-case basis. We love all of our freelancers & agencies building apps for others on Adalo, and we’d love to work with you and support your success. (We also have a lot of plans this year to help continue your growth.)

Final Thoughts & Timing
I realize that is a change from how our pricing has worked (since it was originally set up back in 2019 when we launched). And I know that change is tough. But change is also necessary to evolve to greater heights. We believe this pricing structure ties our success to your success. When your apps are getting used they are truly solving problems for your community or organization and that’s the end goal. And being able to better support apps that are more successful and teams that are building a lot of apps will be a win-win for everyone.

We will begin rolling this out to new makers only this week. If you’re already a paying customer, you won’t see any changes in your monthly bill, features, or be charged overages.

As these changes are going live this week, we will be closing out this post at the end of the week.

If you’d like to talk with me about anything (your thoughts on these new pricing plans, your need for a lot of apps, or any other feedback about Adalo), please book a time on my calendar.

Again, thank you all so much for your support, not only to Adalo, but to the entire no-code community.

[ishantanusrivastava]

Hi,

I think you should give 5/unlimited published apps from the professional plan onwards because anyhow you’re charging customers for app actions. Because a lot of customers are here because of low-cost development compare to regular development. And as per adalo pricing page tagline “Bring your idea to life without breaking your bank” I think it should follow the same thing with new pricing as well.

By the way, here editors mean adding teammates?

I hope my feedback will help you.

Thanks

[David]

Hey Shantanu! Book a time to chat about bulk app pricing with me! And yes editors does mean teammates/collaborators/seats/editors.

[Santiago]

Hello, I would like to book a talk but I don’t think they speak Spanish… they should have support in several languages, for those in South America a plan of 10 apps for 200/250 dls per month KILL US… I have several apps that I made, some of clients and with that I am going to lose … it means all the new clients that I do now and I propose the price scheme to them, it is more likely that they will reject it, they should create a category that is if the app is for a client let it be 1 app but for 10 to 20 dls so we create the account for the client and put his card so that they debit him directly … and if they use it or not that does not harm those of us who develop the apps

[Adalotaco]

This is a good response. I’m not unhappy with this response. But there are still concerns.

There are assumptions that I think Adalo should address. The devil is in the details and assumptions can take you out at the knees without even realizing it.

Businesses understand measurable things - data takes up space. database records take up space. leads turn into sales, turn into happy customers.

You have a faulty assumption that each app action directly ties to increased benefit by the user or app owner. I feel this is a very dangerous assumption.

Also, I can optimize a database, I can clean an email list, I can purge old user accounts.
But as far as I can tell, Adalo actions are not something that can be optimized in it’s current form.

I am hearing a lot about Adalo pivoting to web apps and I’m hearing a lot of things about components for native mobile apps not being worked on. Every time I search this forum, I find stuff that’s been broken and patched for months, even years.

My app feels like it’s held together with bubble gum and shoe laces - and it is very concerning that you’re pivoting to a product focused roadmap (web / desktop apps) where you have no industry edge and at the expense of your product leader (native mobile apps).

The pricing clarification on month-to-month until July is appreciated.
The pricing adjustments you’ve made for actions / scalability are (on the surface) reasonable - but only if those tasks and actions are efficient. Even then, I’m reminded that you’re charging for app actions like button clicks and not things like API requests that I would be looking at on a competitor’s pricing chart. (Zapier doesnt charge me per data that comes through, only a task I need and is essential to my business that I have determined has value)

App actions are not the same as API requests, the idea of paying for every action in an app, and any action connected to an action in an app (some of my buttons have 4 tasks / actions tied to it) means I’m still uneasy about the direction of this pricing.

I’ve been in beta saas spaces for what feels like my whole life. I like to support start ups when I can and when my business can deal with any hiccups and quirks. I’ll stay month to month and I’ll feel out where this goes. But the assumptions that app actions are directly tied to benefit is where you’re losing people.

Data you can measure. API connections you can justify (zapier).

But I’m not optimistic about your roadmap - it seems like you’re abandoning improvements on native mobile apps.
So it feels like I’ll be hanging around - from bubble gum and shoelaces for a while.

Also, as soon as I heard your commentary on zapier integrations, my first thought was ‘it sounds like you’ve never used them.’ Or if you have, you haven’t used them recently.

Zapier is supposed to be easy and I’ve found adalo’s zapier connections essentially useless because of your record ID issues. My own user database (the most important one) does not connect to zapier - and I was given a hack to get around it which required creating a shadow (duplicate) database of my users in real time…these are some serious structural problems.

Do one thing really well, not two things in a mediocre fashion. That’s my feeling on it.

As far as the app actions, I want to repeat - I don’t agree with this direction at all.

Mostly because it’s not the standard for your direct competitors so if I was starting over and I saw XYZ company giving me a comparable rate and offering 80 million API connections (that’s a real thing) for $900 a month. I’ve been pricing out competitors all weekend and that’s specifically for api calls, not actions… you’re not going to be the one I choose if I’m shopping for no-code today (as a new user). You’re just not. So the long term viability of that pricing model appears to be your main blind spot.

And it feels like adalo is cheating/stealing out of my allotted actions if I have to use inefficient actions to make simple things work on top of that. I saw a mention that screen views would count as an action and I didnt even bother entertaining that idea for a second as legitimate.

Agency and Freelance plans do need work - Agency freelancers are practically loss leaders. Give your community experts incentives to build an ecosystem that supports a growth in users. When agency freelancers build, they align with your brand. They build you up. That’s why they are built to be loss leaders. No amount of marketing is the same as having loyalty of freelance agencies that say ‘I build on Adalo’ when someone commissions an app.

I’m glad you’re giving us - and adalo - a 12 month lead time to iron this out.
I do think it’s far from perfect and needs a lot of work.
That said, Thank you for listening. I see progress and communication.

I hope that with time you find a pricing plan that keeps Adalo in business and in profit.
I promise to remain your harshest critic.
And when you get it right, I’ll say as much.

Thank you to the community leaders that stayed calm when the mob struck this weekend.
That was about as bad as a situation could have been. It’s all downhill from here.

[Adalotaco]

This is very long and probably has typos. No doubt, if you ask for clarification, I will give you all of my opinions and extra ones on movies, snacks, and your brand colors.

[Adalotaco]

Hot Tip - your best community builders should be elevated to ‘Partners’. If you would promote them on your website / marketplace as reliable Adalo builders - you should be giving them loss leader partnership deals. (or at least close to cost)

[marklive]

Hey @David. Thanks for being open, sharing info, and keeping us in the loop as best as you can.

Can you please go into more detail as to why/how you came up with these app action numbers for these plans?

How were app actions calculated to determine these averages for these plans?

Most importantly, why even lock us into app actions?
If you could explain the reasoning why, like maybe server loads, a more backend point of reasoning.

On the surface, locking us into app actions and having the counts incredibly low thus upcharging us $8 rubs me (and most) the wrong way.

This entire pricing model is confusing, overwhelming, overkill, and too many tiers, etc.

Thank you for the 12mo extension on current plans though. That will help a lot.

[BlackGrouseMedia]

Appreciate the revision and the consideration of feedback but with 3 published apps, I’m still facing a ridiculously high price hike.

Very grateful for the 12 month grace period though as it’ll allow me to migrate all my current and future apps to another platform.

Still very sad as Adalo had such potential and I have become very conversant with it and feel like that’s all wasted time now.

[StevenU]

Hi David,

Thank you for the changes!
I still feel that the actions jump from 30K-100K-1.000.000 is a bit off in pricing levels. And I still feel that charging for reading/navigation actions is weird and feels unfair.

I miss the cost off add-on data storage. Important for content heavy apps.

I also miss more information about performance on each level. Most important upgrade by far is app speed (still). Will this be upgradable (server speed/capacity) by level? Will database location choices (in my case European servers) be level dependent?

Cheers!

Steven

[preptogether]

Hey there David, thanks for getting back to us on this. Good to hear from you.

It seems to me, though, that our voices fell off somewhere in the midst of the madness, as I’m not seeing any significant changes to the pricing model, aside from yet again building up the more profitable customers, and limiting the new to no code and startup/self-funded ventures.

I know folks have varying degrees of opinions on what they want more of, can make do with less of, but generally, it seems most folks are pretty dialed in to the app action limitations. I won’t rehash in detail what’s been hammered home, but there are many issues with Adalo that require hacking it to bits to make things work, which could cause 4-5 actions in a single tap of a button.

I’m pretty disappointed to see absolutely no budge on provided app actions to the pro or team plans, but a massive upgrade for the business plan (plus a hell of a lot more extra actions per month for a couple bucks more). I’m confused as to how you can justify awarding 1mil actions plus an additional 200k for $10 to what would equate as your “non-startup” companies and app devs, thus taking the “accessibility and success for all” concept and handing it over to the “accessibility and success for some” group, so long as they’re able to dish the dough.

Let me clear, I’m not suggesting that the business plan action allotment be reduced, but rather you should provide more breathing room to the smaller plans, which would 9 out of 10 be purchased by the smaller devs - less startup capital, less market exposure, etc, but still a significant potential for using a considerable amount of actions per month given the reasons already mentioned, plus the need to real-world test our apps since the previewer is horribly inaccurate. I have yet to publicly launch a single app, and just in testing by myself, I’ve used close to half of what my monthly allotment would be (30k actions).

With that outlook, there’s no way I could feasibly launch an app that I hope will succeed on my current plan, let alone test it prior to launch. And until I reach a level of success that warrants third-party funding, I can’t feasibly afford to pay more on a hope that my app will break through the many millions of apps available to be the next big name in the industry.

The current action structure places far too many limitations on someone with an idea that may or may not be successful to be able to develop the concept and test the waters. And likely, app actions would far outpace the financial success of an app, even if the app was gaining traction. With significant overhead cost as a result of needing more actions for a new to market developer, their potentially successful app would come to sudden stop simply because the dev doesn’t have the funding to keep paying $8 for another 15k actions.

App actions don’t necessarily equal app profit for the developer. Sure, more actions used could indicate the app is growing or it could indicate a simple curiosity, but that doesn’t automatically imply the developer is suddenly making money from that growth or curiosity. The dev could be taking the approach of progress over profit, where their app needs to establish itself in a firm foundation before it can begin generating revenue, whether that’s because of uninterested financial backers or because the dev doesn’t want to scare off potential long-term customers (which should feel familiar right now) by putting up a paywall too soon.

Yet, with each passing day, the dev is paying more and more to sustain their app actions in a way that could be reasonably and fairly mitigated. So, they either risk tanking their app due to paywalls and negative reception, or the dev tanks their bank account. If I were to guess, at that point (or prior with the current pricing model), small-time or self-funded app devs will likely migrate to other platforms where cost versus service versus growth are balanced, and overhead cost doesn’t grow with actions used but rather in concert with growth/actions/revenue. Actions used should not be the core indicator that an app is succeeding, but that certainly is what’s being implied with the current pricing model.

The pro plan to me seems like nothing more than a way to build a concept and then try to find a way to demo it to potential clients without actually letting them have hands on, secure their purchase, and then upgrade the plan in order to support that client, which this scenario only works for devs looking to custom build apps for specific people or industries, and leaves out the devs who just want to publish an idea to the app stores, to be discovered naturally.

So, here’s my stance. If you’re going to reward the more established app devs and those with more capital funding with a ton of actions and cheaper price-to-action allotment add-on, then you should be adding a similar benefit to the folks in the entry market and self-funded market.

Pro plan should have at least 100k actions and team should have 400-500k. Add-on actions should be $8/30k-50k actions for pro and team plans and something comparable for the starter plan. As it stands right now, your pricing model screams “we cater to big business,” which is counter to everything your company has claimed to represent. Also, unused actions should rollover if they were from a purchased add-on. I would be miffed if I needed 100 more actions to get through the last hour of the month but had to pay the full price and didn’t get to keep/rollover the remaining of what I paid extra for.

[Rios]

The stater plan could have at least twice as much action and more functions like api integration and external collection.

if I don’t have this request I’ll have to leave Adalo like several others.

my app is a property rental management app and it is already over 50% produced.
I was about to enter the paid plan to acquire api integration.

In addition to the high value, I will have to pay for the api plan from other manufacturers and the actions that go beyond the plan.
It will get pulled for most APP creators due to the stock issue. The ideal would be for space in the database.

I am Brazilian and the Brazilian currency is devalued against the dollar.

the Flutter Flow platform has a regional discount depending on the country

[tolara]

Hi @David

I will start by saying the response to this entire situation is appreciated but honestly it seems like you decided to pick out the issues that were easy for you to answer to and leave out the rest of the complaints that most people had.

I’ll save myself the stress of repeating issues that other users raised that Adalo seems to be ignoring. My main issue is with three things:

First is the app actions limits. How can we have a $65 plan with 30k actions and then a $250 plan with 1 million actions? Even by mathematics standard that doesnt add up. The ratio/difference between them is alarming.

Did Adalo actually speak to any of their users to understand the average actions their apps have? Because the fact that everyone is complaining about this suggests that you did not.

Second, Adalo says they are making it easy for everyone to create apps, especially beginners. Your new plans do everything but make it easier for anyone to start out with app building. I am on a the $50 plan and frankly dont mind paying $15 extra but that is when it actually works. $65 for 30k actions is honestly unfair and quite laughable.

I can count at least 12 features that your competitor Flutterflow has that you do not and their highest plan is $70 especially the fact that I can download my APK and source codes. Adalo doesnt even have any major features and we are already getting billed this way. When you start adding these features what happens then? Will we have to start worrying about costs hiking to the ranges of $1000 per month?

The third thing is that your customer support is terrible. There is always one issue or the other wvery day. If it isn’t that the log in button is not working. Its that components are acting up or that you cant access your database. Do you read the forum at all? Its mostly about people facing issues and bugs than it is qbout people sharing new ideas or showing each other how to do things. 6 out of 7 times you use Adalo there is something wrong with it.You have to glue your apps togwther with other services so it doesbt break and because you know the support team will respond to you after qeeks if you are lucky.

The fact that there is all this and you decided to increase the price by such alarming rates again is quite puzzling. Adalo should be honest with themselves and change their target market to enterprise and big businesses. No one will fall for the helping new no coders sob story with these prices.

I’m going to stay on Adalo until I fully move all my apps cuz this is ridiculous. Even Bubble didn’t treat their users this way and again they have more functionality and use cases than you do.

I advise people who do not have the strengty for this to start migrating to Flutterflow. They currrentky have a discount on the $70 plan for new users now at $28 I think plus they actually allow you try out the tool first.

As a matter of fact it may help them to know that people are pissed of with Adalo and may soon be looking to them for an alternative sibce Adalo has decided to disregard and chase away its customers.

[JL_LJ]

Hi David,
Don’t want to stretch the text long, but I think still some changes should be made.

1. Too much focus on the business plan, I feel you are trying to push people to the top tier plan when we all know it is just small number of customer that always go to the top tier.

Based On Your Feedback Here Are The Four Changes

1. We’ve increased the App Actions available on the Business Plan from 300,000 actions per month to 1 Million actions per month.
2. Additionally, when you’re on the Business Plan, there will be special add-on pricing to make sure your app can scale on Adalo. So on that plan you’ll be able to add 200,000 actions per month for just $10. (And if your app reaches 10M we’re happy to discuss a price point that works for you.)
3. For every paid plan, we will have a feature that allows you to control your spending limits as it relates to App Actions. (Note: this change is not visible on the charts below and is still a work in progress. We will have this developed well before any current customers will be able to switch over to the new plans).
4. And finally, the Professional Plan now has access to the Collections API (along with Team & Business). This should clear up the confusion on what integrations you get so that Custom Actions, External Collections, and the Collections API all work together.

1. Team plan should have 300.000 actions in this case.
2. Sounds fair to me
3. Ok, not really a bonus, but good to know
4. Great, this should be standard

This plan sounds more fair, but I would still say, Adalo should work on the current issues before applying this pricing, after showing stability and performance, I would be more than happy to change to these plans after having guarantees of:

• Performance and stability

• Moving to AWS from Heroku

• API - Working on the API enhancement, this would improve the compatibility and increase of use cases for API and external apps.

So what are the plans and transparency until July 2023 that Adalo has in order to guarantee that in July 2023 I will pay the bucks for the performance and stability? Thank you very much.

[JL_LJ]

Hi Tolara,
Just a side note, long user of Flutterflow here, both are different, Flutterflow is more packed with features and functionalities, but Adalo has the upperhand of user friendly in terms of building apps.

As long as Adalo ramps up and offers what Flutterflow has, Adalo price will be worth it specially if you sell or build multiple apps, I build Apps much faster in Adalo than Flutterflow. So Adalo still has chance of being the winning horse.

So let’s just say if you advise people to migrate to Flutterflow, be ready for a different building approach. I keep both, depending on the customers.

[Adalotaco]

I told my business partner that it would be better to invest in learning code than to rely on the adalo framework. Especially as you’re focusing on setting your ‘sites’ on web apps.

I patched my app together and hobbled it into production.

I woke up to automatic fields not being set in forms / being blank, I woke up to APIs not triggering a single time and not getting any errors, I woke up to a spike in crash reports.
And because the zapier integrations don’t work,
I have to manually update - I am paying more to work manual data entry in 2022?

It’s pretty. But it don’t work.

[Adalotaco]

I programmed an MMORPG in college. My programming is out of date but I’m probably expert compared to most of your no-code people.
I’m not accepting excuses or more hacks.

It’s not me. It’s you.

[simm]

Hi.

I’m happy to hear the revised pricing which does not have so big an impact on the cost.

I want to know the definition of ‘App Action’ clearly.

When a user clicks the button and runs actions like the following, how many ‘App Action’ would happen?

1. creates new records
2. update the records
3. link to the new page

Is it one action? two actions? or three actions?

And another question.
When a user only sees the list and detail page, is it ‘App Action’?

Thank you.

[Wammen]

Thx for listening

[Taro]

Perfect, I would say I’m happy with this revised pricing plan.
Best of luck