I hear you. I like free stuff too. Tagging @briggsy and @robertbigspark since yāall said something similar.
We are still working on free components, but this was a big undertaking (there is a lot of complexity involved in building a global marketplace which includes a lot of rules to follow) and we believe that this will have the highest impact on our business (so we can invest in some important areas that only we can work on) and on the success of app makers businesses. So, we intentionally focused on this before focusing on more free components. This release opens up the door for a lot more components to be developed and maintained. Because when we release a component, we not only build it, but we have to maintain it, update it, troubleshoot it, squash bugs, etc. Itās āfreeā for yāall, but it costs a lot of time for us. When a third party developer builds a component, they take on the responsibility for it. Therefore, they deserve to be paid. They also set the price for their components, not us. So if you have issue with the price of the component, speak with them. But we know the value in free components, so we have a team dedicated to components (thatās who has been working on this). Now that this has launched, that team will be freed up to work on other things.
Taking my āAdalo Staffā hat off, hereās my perspective. My background is ecommerce, and Iām a user of Shopify. I donāt see this as a gamer DLC model because Iām not a gamer. Iām not sure what that is, so Iām comparing this to ecommerce because I think the two are very similar. I donāt know how familiar the people on this forum are with Shopify, but when I first came to Adalo my initial reaction was how affordable the product is. I may have a different perspective than most, but Shopify is very expensive (along with all their competitors). Their cheapest plan costs $30 a month for 1 website. And you HAVE to use apps to accomplish what you need to run your business. Shopify apps arenāt buy once and use as many times across as many websites as you want. Itās a monthly or annually recurring payment for that 1 website. And the cheapest apps are usually around $20 a month. Shopify has stolen successful app ideas and built them internally to give users for āfreeā but then you lack the dedicated support for that feature and they tick off the app developer, and not to mention, even some of their Shopify developed apps have paywalls. So to run one full fledged ecommerce store well, youāre likely gonna be paying $100 a month or more just for the basic functions you need. This basic website of mine is about $100 a month. Sales are very minimal right now, so it hurts to pay that. This one I built and managed a while back on BigCommerce costs $600 a month. I got it to $250,000 in revenue (I donāt run it anymore, so IDK what it does now), so it didnāt hurt as bad, but $600 a month is still a lot. And that doesnāt include what you need to spend on marketing. So my perspective of Adalo is viewed through that lense, and I see it as a very affordable alternative to hiring a traditional developer. In regard to the component marketplace, when I saw that this was a one time purchase, my mind was blown.
I say all this just to offer a different perspective. It may help, it may not help. I understand things from your perspective, too. Stuff adds up. And if you are a startup building on Adalo and you only have 1 app, then it can get expensive in the grand scheme of things. We are looking into our pricing structure to better help those who donāt need unlimited apps. Itās in its preliminary stages so I canāt say much more than that. But I can say it will be in your best interest.
Iāll also take the blame for that since I handle our social media.
. The people we hire are our greatest assets.
thatās a lot of money.