Code-export, self host feature released!

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Hi weweb thank you for your recent release. I think it is a huge feature and was a really customer centric move, far beyond what others are currently doing.

However I have several concerns. I thought the self host feature would be more accessible especially for the base users, and not a premium one. I thought it would be as easy as integrating a backend or authentication, where we can choose how we want to host.

Ignore the UX, I want point out about the feature along with price. I have a huge concern with price. I totally understand with the power and value of weweb, I understand how one would charge a hefty price to their clients with development services and weweb’s pricing would be totally reasonable.

However, looking at a solo-developer perspective, that is trying to build small apps and projects, not knowing if there’s even revenue, weweb is extremely expensive. The pricing for me in Malaysia would be near my rent and 1/3 of our base salary here, for just one live project. I can’t afford that.

I think it is in weweb’s intention to allow people to build as many products as possible and be creative as possible, but I think the restriction would cost my creativity along with the pressure to ship as fast as possible as it is costly. I want to build as many as possible and ship as many as possible.

You might say don’t make the project live, or use the development environment that is coming, but that certainly isn’t the solution. As a builder I want to ship and by shipping we learn how to make our products better, then we adjust. Even then after learning for a long time, we still won’t know if we would generate any revenue, and it will already be costly.

Here’s my suggestion. I think weweb have 3 different markets:

  1. Solo developer/freelancer creating ‘mini’ apps/development
  2. Development agency offering development services
  3. Enterprises that uses weweb inhouse

I agree the pricing will be tricky, surely you want the most revenue from enterprises, but not sure what metrics to define them. I think you should allow dynamic pricing as an option, wether taking a percentage of incoming revenue, or of total no. of users/visitors.

This way, anyone that is trying to build an app aren’t pressurised by the pricing, and the enterprices/agency if they saw the value of static pricing, will definitely opt for the dynamic pricing. I hope @Raphael you and all weweb’s team would consider this. Sorry for the long rant. Thank you so much for this amazing product.

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Thanks for your feedback on the pricing and I’m glad that you are excited by the new self-hosting feature.
What would be a reasonable price according to you?

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@Raphael The most reasonable for me is dynamic pricing, as AWS does or firebase, whereas we pay as many bandwidth or users for each live project. Maybe limit the no. of visitors and users. I guess you guys are already doing that for the no. of users, but the most problematic for me is no. of live projects. I think users should able to release apps with .weweb.io subdomain for free/low price, if there aren’t any visitors/users.

I can’t think of how many awesome side/projects tools I came accross released with .webflow.io subdomain. And now framer is even better, free unlimited live projects, only if you want to really use it for commercial or scale you need to pay. Webflow is OK too if you buy the growth plan(editor pricing) for 28$ and you’ll get 10 live projects(unhosted sites) as they call it. 60$ and you’ll get unlimited unhosted sites.

I think the ability for users to ship real projects are great for marketing for weweb, imagine the amount of micro saas/apps will be available with weweb.io domain. For users, it is a proof of concept and we need test our products before we really scale with really small no. of users.

Let me give you a quick example of a good use cases. For webflow/framer you can see there are tutorials/videos people using it to replicate another site, to show the power of webflow/framer. And the first thing viewers do when they see it is they want to see the outcome, where it is available with .webflow.io / .framer.website subdomain. The one who does the tutorial can do that easily because of their low cost. For weweb if one wants to show a proof of concept, it is 79$ each.

Let me compare how framer’s pricing and webflow’s pricing differ, and it is basically the same model, only that framer’s is too generous. Also comparing it to weweb’s.

  1. Editor : Framer is totally free, unlimited live site/no custom domain. Webflow there are 4 tiers, the free tier include 2 live site/no custom domain/no code export. For weweb there are no live site, until the 79$ tier.

  2. Site: There are separate pricing of when you want to really use the site(with custom domain) and reasonable bandwidth. Alot of tiers in this one, where basically more uses is pricier(akin to dynamic pricing which related to no. of uses) but it is static. Weweb there aren’t pricing of this kind.

So what I imagine is, you guys must have the same pricing model. If you feel generous follow framer’s(free unlimited live sites w/o custom domain(capped at 1k visitors/month) or follow Webflow, where free gets you 2 live sites with .webflow.io subdomain, next tier gets you 10 live sites with .webflow.io subdomain, and next tier unlimited live sites with .webflow.io subdomain.

Cap the no. of auth users/maybe below 20-30, and visitors below 1000, along with disable some advance features ,such as self host and code export right now, that is reasonable. You can disable stripe payments for example in the lowest tier(meaning they can only ship free apps).Don’t disable something that would provide value for the end users of the released apps, that wouldn’t be great.

Then, charge a different plan for each site/app that users want to release it for public, that they want to scale. Allow custom domain here and allow higher no. of visitors/auth users. And more things you could probably think off.

Again, my main concern if no. of published/live sites/apps. I want the freedom to be able to ship and build a proof of concept, for low cost. Imagine the no. of apps with .weweb.io domain there will be, it is good for weweb and users.

Side note: Custom .weweb.io domain would be good. And not like current the UUID subdomain :sweat_smile:

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Thanks for the great and detailed input. We are planning to update our pricing early next year, we’ll take this into account when working on it!

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Thank you so much for hearing me. Another input I would say is look at plasmic’s pricing. I think weweb should follow their direction in terms of scaleability and extensibility, although I think weweb is a more packaged one and have more whole functionalities now, as you should aim for the long term game. I won’t say anything about parity pricing, as that would be a little bit bias of me, but flutterflow is doing it and I appreciate is so much, theres the hint :sweat_smile: . Again thank you @Raphael for your time and I trust weweb as the infrastructure of the future.

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Just on this thread. Please do not implement per-user pricing for external/customer-users, that is one of the greatest advantages weweb has today, and user based pricing creates a ton of other technical complexity around free trials, allowing non-paying customers to return, etc. It is honestly the single greatest thing that has allowed me to build on weweb vs. other projects, implementing per-user pricing would be a devastating change to your pricing model.

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Agreed, I think on the enterprise levels or projects that makes money, weweb’s pricing is reasonable and makes sense. However I’m thinking of smaller projects which don’t make money yet, weweb’s pricint doesn’t support that yet.

To sum it up, reduce price for low-tiered users to increase accessibility and put a reasonable base and static price for higher-tiers. My main concern is the former.

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Yes, absolutely. We do not plan to charge per user.

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Yep, got it. Thanks for your inputs!

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I think code export should be also for starter as one time fee , if i’m a starter users and want the code then i could pay 50-100 and having the code ,maybe with limited downloads.I see also you’re growing and lots of struggling is with our times , financially speaking is hard , but , please , stay around 50 , all the no code solutions will fail if they won’t stay around it , to be honest if you target people as enterprises it makes no sense , lets do some math Scala plan is 249 (previously 199 and who decided that , without any other problems for the survival of weweb simply got his is head in the place of never Sun )249 x 12 equals 2988 and its the start , a small company then needs to have a good marketing and previously a good consultant to find you and then to payment for the people editing on WeWeb , ( i know that developing an app could cost 10-20K https://www.quantocostaunapp.com/ , yes i’m a little italian ,cheers from Florence ) but those costs are not affordable , neither culturally , by normal small companies that those kind of prices are forgetting .Then if i can export the code then i would like to try to host by my own because looking at those prices ,culturally, people around us would start to say " hey i know a solution of a friend of mine that is paying less … " and this wreck your hard work and stops you.
Last if a small company could afford to pay those prices maybe they don’t even need you , Vue is free language , all you need is to learn and with this financial crisis a lot of people are working for a lot less, we in athenamwt are receving daily Cv for people who wanna work for way less for us , we simply don’t accept because we don’t find ethically right doing so, behind the work there is always a person and the ones she/he loves .So I know its hard but the gold spot is 50, bread is made by crumbs and rivers have bed made of peebles.Lets start our bread together,lots of people i know are leaving solution which decided to start with 25 but without the features they had at 32 and to give those at 100, we must stay earth grounded, i’m talking about our company even if my heart screams weweb!!!Dhiwise for example now is free until is in Beta but believe me if they start to raise ( and no i don’t agree the pay as you go plans )they will fail ,Teta a small company is making differently and its growing so why don’t you , come on…, you won’t regret.This if someone listens or read here and to be honest seeing the chat i’m not so sure there is time but i understand you are working very hard, so thanks for your work, i hope your ( new,hopefully)prices could let me work with you, for now this is what i’ve done but i can’t continue without at least Role and permissions in the Starter.
Last , if you host our app this should be splitted from the total costs, ex. i develop the app in Enterprise ( please decrease the price…at least at 150) then i publish in your cloud and pay for ex .30 at month but without any editing capabilities , if i want to make any mod i can pay hourly , so for ex .5-10 for hour .Just my pinch of salt.

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