Open Source & Free  

Aligning Prices

Aligning Prices

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Our pricing has been inconsistent with the rest of the industry for quite some time specifically the price of the
basic subscription which is a losing tier. Based on Industry norms the basic subscription should be far more
expensive and doesn’t come close to covering the costs of running Codename One’s extensive cloud
infrastructure. So on June 1st we will raise the price of the basic subscription to 19USD which is still very
affordable. Notice that if you are a current subscriber or sign up before June 1st you can keep paying
at the 9USD rate!

However, if you let your subscription lapse we will not be able to recover it and you would need to switch to the 19USD
level…

This is an important step for the health of the company as the costs of hosting our infrastructure are growing fast
and basic subscriptions just aren’t carrying the weight.

As part of this move we also analyzed our build server usage and noticed many developers in the free tier who
place a very heavy toll on the build servers with long builds that eventually cost in service degradation to everyone.
That is one of the reasons we originally made the iOS build quota so limiting…

So we are now reducing the credits for iOS builds to 8 credits per build (from 20) but also placing a size quotas on
builds from free users to reduce both our storage costs and build times (upload/download and server instance costs).
We are sure this step will improve performance for everyone involved and help people try Codename One before
committing to a paid account.

20 Comments

  • Maaike Z says:

    I understand the price change, but I’m not happy with it (I do this as a hobby). For a company this is ‘nothing’ of course. But why don’t you make offline building easier? Then you don’t need the expensive infrastructure (or at least users place less toll on the build servers).

  • Shai Almog says:

    That’s why we increased the free quota for iOS builds to make it easier on the hobbyist crowd to work without a subscription at all.
    Some people seem to think we have an ability to build offline, we send builds to the build servers just like everyone else… Offline building is technically impractical since the build process is so complex, fluid and has so many dependencies.
    And don’t get me started on manpower costs… Offering things for free doesn’t keep the lights on in any company.

  • Fabrício Cabeça says:

    Hi Maaike, I think you may be understimating the offline building
    costs, and you should add to it your own time to keep your offline build
    server(s) up to date with all SDKs. I have a pro account and I have the
    knowledge and a minimal infrastructure that could be used to create
    offline build servers, but I prefer to focus in the development itself, that’s what codenameone is all about.

  • Maaike Z says:

    @codenameone:disqus : I totally understand that you can’t offer everything for free. It’s impossible for a company to do everything for free. That doesn’t wipe away my wish to have a good product for less :).

    @fabriciocabeca:disqus I wish I could choose. I have time to make a build server and if everything is set up well once, I only have to keep everything up to date. Sometimes I prefer to have my own server to be not dependent of Codename One (that’s actually one of the drawbacks for me, the dependence of the company).

  • J.C says:

    So, just to clarify, if I pay 9USD before end of this month, how much will I pay at end of June? 19USD or still 9USD? Also, why don’t you also include an option for annual or 6 month subscriptions for Basic users to help us save cost for monthly transactions fees?

  • Shai Almog says:

    Yes.
    We didn’t provide annual subscriptions because they won’t save much on the basic level (19 is still pretty low) you do have a point though, its something we should add.

  • J.C says:

    Sorry you didn’t answer my question, 19USD or 9USD?

  • Chen Fishbein says:

    if you are a current subscriber or sign up before June 1st you can keep paying at the 9USD

  • Maaike Z says:

    What about the 1mb quota for not subscribed users? Is it de jar sent to the server with a max quota of 1 mb or the final app or … ?

  • Shai Almog says:

    That email was poorly worded IMO. It was sent without my review.
    The limit applies to the built JAR before sending otherwise it would be meaningless since the servers would have had to do all the work (and wasted the paid quotas we are spending) so there would have been no saving.
    To be clear we didn’t just pull out that number, we reviewed the sizes of free user builds coming in and concluded that well over 90% would fit under this limit right now or with very small modifications. The goal is to stop the outliers so we can provide essentially more quota (e.g. increased iOS build credits). Things like the kitchen sink demo which is really wasteful (several huge themes, a video etc.) will not fit, but its not a common app.

  • Eric says:

    The resource file can only have the theme which can be bigger than 1Mb. This resource file is always added to the jar file before sending so the problem persist because a very simple app with a custom theme will not fit too because of the size of the theme file. How can you resolve that?

  • Shai Almog says:

    You can dynamically download a theme on the device to workaround that but yest that is something that won’t work as well…
    Most themes should be optimizable see: [http://codenameone.com/blog…](http://codenameone.com/blog/shrinking-sizes-optimizing.html)

    Unfortunately more elaborate themes won’t make it in. The main problem is that we can’t really tell how large your code is and how large the theme is (before doing all the work) and even if we could it would still cost us quite a bit more to build/host larger files. We tried to draw a line that makes sense for most and would allow us the leverage to increase build quotas which we felt were lacking.

  • huwab0 says:

    This effectively kills my project.

    Our project is much larger than 1MB because we suppy a chinese font and several word and character lists.

    I rarely build on the server, so I wouldn’t mind if big jars cost more build credits!?

  • Eric says:

    Shai, you must make a poll to users to know if they want more ios buid quotas or more app size. It’s not good to decide for users. If you cannot know the size of the code in the jar file so your first answer is not the right answer. You can not limit us if you cannot just track the size of our code without the resource file. This a serious problem that you create for developers

  • Chen Fishbein says:

    Resource files when packaged to the jar are reduced by size, besides plenty of complex themes are in the 400-500k range uncompressed.
    This should be sufficient for a user to properly evaluate the product before he/she commits to a paid account.
    This is a crucial step for the health of the company we need the heavy users to start and help us pay the bills $9 or even $19 is pretty valuable for the product and service we provide.

  • Chen Fishbein says:

    I hope paying $9 or even $19 for our service shouldn’t be the mortal point to your project

  • huwab0 says:

    Actually, we try to make our project break even, but since there is hardly any money in our kind of applications, actually all costs need to be avoided.

  • rhg1968 says:

    I for one totally support this change and understand why it is necessary. Codename one has been more than generous allowing you to build production applications for free for years. A company can’t go on this way forever and afford to stay in business and improve the system. I think it’s great that the free tier will still give people a lot so that they can truly evaluate the platform. I also think it’s more than generous to offer us the 9 price before raising the price. I have subscribed to the basic level now and look forward to developing with Codename one.

  • Benjamin Vander Stichelen says:

    This will kill the project i’m working on, when creating the app every 2-3 updates creates a bug and time to investigate what went wrong.
    I understand that every company needs adjustments. Buth why don’t do it like google.
    The existing accounts don’t get changes the new accounts get limitations.

    When google decides to remove the project it’s removed buth meanwhile it’s on you got it like it was from the beginning for you.

    I’m surious to need to say that when they ask me would you do it again with codenameone the answer is no.

    That’s my opinion, now you are forcing us to do it from now on with the existing proyect.

    Greeting,s

  • Chen Fishbein says:

    I understand the frustration, but in order to keep on providing the product and service in high quality the heavy accounts needs to start and pay.
    I hope we do become google one day, but even google when they change their terms or cancel projects it will effect all their users.
    We might consider exceptions in special cases, feel free to reach out to me.

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