Licensing Costs Question

RedVox · 12-21-2022 08:45 AM

I have tried many times to get a response from sales and from support regarding sales but no joy. While waiting, perhaps the community can help me understand costs/licensing better so I have some confidence that I’m not heading down a dead end street.

Scenario: I am working for a nonprofit club with about 200 members. In the app I’ve designed, each member would need to sign in to view and edit their membership info.

Q1: How much would it cost me to deploy such an app to the membership?

Q2: I’ve designed the app to support multiple clubs. If I were to turn the app into something that I’d hope to profit from, potentially having say 4-6 clubs as clients and say 2500 users, how much would the licensing cost?

Q3: if I supply all the users with an enterprise credential, does this change the licensing?

Q4: has anyone succeeded in licensing an AppSheet app under similar terms? (The radio silence from sales is making me worried about spending any more time on it.)

thanks!

WillowMobileSys

@RedVox wrote:

Scenario: I am working for a nonprofit club with about 200 members. In the app I’ve designed, each member would need to sign in to view and edit their membership info.

Q1: How much would it cost me to deploy such an app to the membership?

Typical cost is $10/User/Month @ 200 users the cost would "normally" = $2000/month. BUT, AppSheet has in the past given discounts for certain non-profits as well as for volume of licenses. You may be able to get a reduced cost.

@RedVox wrote:

Q2: I’ve designed the app to support multiple clubs. If I were to turn the app into something that I’d hope to profit from, potentially having say 4-6 clubs as clients and say 2500 users, how much would the licensing cost?

The cost for licenses follows the same basic rules but again with this amount of users you would surely qualify for a volume discount.

@RedVox wrote:

Q3: if I supply all the users with an enterprise credential, does this change the licensing?

Yes, to be able to use business credentials/domains, an enterprise account is required. Along with this comes increased features such as database connectivity, better logging and others. The cost of the licensing will depend on agreed plan and probably the number of users.

@RedVox wrote:

Q4: has anyone succeeded in licensing an AppSheet app under similar terms? (The radio silence from sales is making me worried about spending any more time on it.)

Yes, of course. I work as a co-author for a couple of clients who utilize AppSheet under these conditions/terms. However, they too have had frequent trouble getting in touch with Sales. I believe this is due to a huge spike in demand in recent years.

The good news is that you can be developing apps for free until you get situated with an appropriate account.

RedVox

Thanks. I guess I'm basically asking "how long is a string?" Answer is: it varies. My club would just laugh me out of the room if I presented costs anything remotely like the published rates. To date, I've been providing similar functionality via Joomla and some add-ons for about $400/year. Appsheet is better but not several thousand times better! It seems like a fool's errand to continue building in AppSheet while I have no idea if/when or how much it will cost to use the tool. This project is going onto the shelf for now.

WillowMobileSys

@RedVox wrote:

To date, I've been providing similar functionality via Joomla and some add-ons for about $400/year. Appsheet is better but not several thousand times better!

It's not the cost of the tools themselves, It's the cost of getting to the end product. The people cost in time to build the apps. It all depends in what you are looking to get out of AppSheet. If Joomla was was serving the business well, you probably wouldn't be looking at other tools.

AppSheet, and other no-code/low-code platforms have simply taken the traditional development efforts to build the common business components and extrapolated them into a platform that assembles those pieces together for you more quickly. This speed saves time and that saved time saves money!

RedVox

I’m retired, developing this as a volunteer, so there isn’t much cost in getting to the end product. AppSheet is my preferred option, but if they won’t even respond to my inquiries about buying it, it doesn’t much matter that it’s my preference. I really don’t have any choice but to shelve the project.

jeffminder

In similar situation. Everyone sees value in what it can offer until the price tag is shown. Cool platform, but kinda like a brick to the face.

Getting an org to pay $5.00 per user/year would turn many off. $60/user/year is way beyond a conversation worth having. At the same time, this doesn't include total costs of putting the app in google play store, or in itunes. Would be interested in seeing the total lifecycle cost.