RFC: Changed pricing for Dexie Cloud?

[dfahlander]

We've been discussing our current seat based pricing model a lot lately and are looking into changing it to flat-rate plans instead.

Current pricing

Currently we have been basing subscription on end user count instead of resource utilization and at the same time offer unlimited evaluation users for free. The idea behind this was to make it easy for app creators to map their own costs against their subscriptions. However, we have been quite alone in this pricing model on the scene. And we've got a lot of questions about unfair pricing as the application grows in usage and the enforcement cutting off non-paying users. It's hard to build applications that targets massive amount of end users but with low resource consumption per user.

Proposed pricing

We're looking at a new pricing model without seat counts at all. Below is a screenshot from the ongoing proposal (dexie-web#51). But we need your feedback before settling it. EUR and USD currencies would be supported at a slightly different levels corresponding approximately to the current ratio between them.

Grand Fathering

Existing paid subscriptions can remain on the legacy pricing model with no planned end date, for as long as the subscription remains continuously active. Customers may voluntarily switch to the new model, but cannot switch back. If we ever need to retire or materially change the legacy model, we will provide at least 12 months’ notice.

Please comment!

I'm reaching out to the community for feedback.

[dfahlander]

Existing customers: Would you prefer jumping onto the new plan or stay on the existing per-seat plan?

Non-customers: How would this affect your likelyhood to choose Dexie Cloud for your next app?

[legowhales]

Would this pricing be per project?

[dfahlander]

Good question, no we'd definitely keep the same policy as current: same subscription can be connected to several projects/databases. The sum is counted.

[BraveRogue]

Hmmm, it's hard to know how my users would effect those free caps, and if it would be sustainable to pay the monthly charge to cover the storage needs of the whole audience, as I assume those data limits are for the entire DB, right?

I personally liked and chose this service because it was responsibility scalable so ifI would never be at risk and could predict my profit and make money based on how used the app was.

I'd need to understand these limits better to want to upgrade or not, but my preference would be to stay on the previous or current model for what Ive been building with that in mind. I don't have pics or videos in my app, so my users probably wouldn't need a lot. So if I end up being able to make more profit from the new models, fine, but if it's going to raise my own risk and overhead while trying to build my audience to make it worth that tier, that would be a tough sell in this economy.

[norairn]

Hi David, a couple of questions:

1. Will the license field still exist on the UserLogin object under the new model? If so, will evalDaysLeft still be tracked, given the evaluation/production user distinction seems to be going away with unlimited end users on every tier?

2. Is there any cap on the number of databases per subscription? It's not mentioned anywhere in the new pricing table (the old "Max Number of databases" row seems to have been dropped entirely) — I assume it's uncapped and only storage/Sync Units are metered, but can you confirm?

Thank you,
Norair

[dfahlander]

1. Will the license field still exist on the UserLogin object under the new model? If so, will evalDaysLeft still be tracked, given the evaluation/production user distinction seems to be going away with unlimited end users on every tier?

Yes, the evaluation licensing mechanism could still be useful and would work exactly the same as now. The difference with this proposal is just that we wouldn't count the number of prod users. The purpose of eval users can still be valid for those apps that have a similar freemium model for their end users.

2. Is there any cap on the number of databases per subscription? It's not mentioned anywhere in the new pricing table (the old "Max Number of databases" row seems to have been dropped entirely) — I assume it's uncapped and only storage/Sync Units are metered, but can you confirm?

The new price model would have no cap on number of databases either.

[dfahlander]

Next week we will launch an update to Dexie Cloud Manager with a "Usage" tab where it will be possible to inspect how much usage a database or a subscription is using. This launch is one step further for introducing a new pricing model (still with grand-fathering support for existing customers)

Please look out for a new blog post next week about this on https://dexie.org/blog.

[norairn]

I see the Usage tab. Thank you, very insightful! Any idea when the new pricing model will launch?

[dfahlander]

The plan now is to release the new pricing in mid/end November. Databases connected to legacy subscriptions will remain on the old pricing as we will continue to support it for existing customers. It will be possible to switch to new pricing for those who prefer that.