It’s a little hard to think about a time without no-code, but back in 2019 when we launched Adalo, the term was hardly around. People were still saying “without coding” when describing their products (us included).
A lot has changed since then with Adalo and the entire industry.
We’ve launched External Collections, Custom Actions, our Component Marketplace, over 100 new components, our Adalo Experts Program, Templates & Cloneable Kits, Design Versions, Geolocation, the Adalo App Academy, and countless other product improvements. Heck, even On-Demand Publishing wasn’t around when we first launched (yup that’s right, you couldn’t just click to get your builds right away.)
And with all those improvements, you all have done some pretty amazing things — using Adalo in ways we never thought were possible. You’ve created businesses that have raised millions of dollars in funding; you’ve created custom apps to improve your communities, organizations, & businesses; and you’ve built profitable no-code freelancing businesses from the ground up. That’s all played a huge part in helping the no-code space evolve into a standalone industry that’s revolutionizing the development world.
Yet, one thing has remained constant the entire time: our pricing. 🤭
I imagine that by just mentioning this, some of you are beginning to feel a little nervous. And to be honest, it’s a nerve-wracking thing for me too. We clearly want you all to be happy on Adalo, and changing pricing has the potential to disrupt your app building journey. But as our product, and the entire no code industry has evolved, it’s natural that our pricing should too.
Many of you have your own businesses built on Adalo, and with community being our most important principle, we thought it would be helpful to include you all more in this process. At our townhall back in March, when I first mentioned this, I shared a link for anyone to book a meeting with me. And it was amazing to hear stories about what you’re building and how you felt pricing should work.
In the spirit of including you all, I’ll be blogging more about this. I’d like to start by telling you what I learned from talking with you and explaining the philosophy behind our pricing changes.
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📝 Quick important note. Before I begin talking about any of this, I thought it would be helpful to say up front that we wouldn’t be here without you, so for being loyal customers we want to offer the option for you to continue on your current plan for the next 12 months This is all part of our process to evolve our pricing and continue to get feedback from you all.
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Our Pricing Philosophy
There are three overall principles behind our philosophy. These came from conversations with you all, and we’ll be using them to help guide our new pricing model.
#1. Make It Fair By Tying It To Value & Usage
Right now most people are paying the same amount for Adalo. Yet a lot of you all are using Adalo in totally different ways and are in much different stages of your journey. Some of you have just a few people using your app, and some of you have hundreds of thousands of people using your app. Some of you have one main app that you’re working on, and some of you have dozens of apps that are live in the app stores. Some of you are small businesses with a consistent audience every month, and some of you are startups looking for funding with a growing user base. And some of you have really simple apps with just a dozen screens, while some of you have apps with over a hundred screens using every feature we’ve got!
All of these factors ultimately play into how much your apps are getting used, which in the end ties back to how much value you’re getting out of them. The more your end users are using your apps, the more amazing things they’re doing on them, and the more times their problems are getting solved.
#2. Make It Predictable & Simple to Understand
We recognize that there’s a flipside to all of the complexity that comes with everything in that first principle: it’s… well… complicated! That’s why it’s important for us to thread the needle here and find the perfect balance between being completely fair and based on usage with making it so that you all are able to understand what’s happening. We want you to be able to see and know how much your apps are getting used so that you can predict and plan for how much your apps will cost.
#3. Make It Work for Both of Our Long Term Successes
Everything we do at Adalo has always been tied back to our overall purpose to empower makers to bring their ideas to life. We want you to be as successful as possible, and in turn, that means we're successful! So in this case, we wouldn’t want our new pricing model to prevent you all from bringing your ideas to life.
The last thing we won’t do is to hinder the no-code revolution by making it more expensive than traditional development.
We also have to remember that both of our successes are tied together, so we have to align them with our pricing model. It’s costing us more and more to support your apps as they get more successful, and we want to be able to grow to better support you all.
Next Steps
I think the hardest challenge here will be figuring out a way to balance all three of these principles where sometimes they feel at odds with each other. We’ve got some things in the works that we believe will help us here, but as a part of this process, I’d love to continue talking with you all. I’ve opened up some time on my calendar if you’re interested in chatting about ideas that work with these principles.
Again, I know this might be scary for some of you all, and I empathize with that. I’ll try my best to continue to talk about everything. And finally thank you all for building on Adalo and continuing to push the no-code community forward!
