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Are premium apps a new thing? I was prototyping with SendGrid just fine on a free tier, now all of a sudden I’m getting a message saying I need to upgrade to an Advanced plan to use it
It definately looks like. Checking out the PipedreamHQ repo at GitHub it shows the documentation regarding premium app was committed 3 weeks ago:
That said, as part of the team adding new apps to Pipedream app store, as a contractor, I can tell you sometimes is a pain to get API access to build out integrations, and some apps want revenue sharing from mutual users.
So I can see both sides. I hear you this makes the free tier less attractive, or generous, but on the other side, I can imagine charging somehow from apps being offered is the only way to have them as an integration.
Sorry to hear it affects you as a user requiring Sendgrid, now a Premium app though
Ehh. Let’s be real, though–this is a case of Product and sr. mgmt sitting down, figuring out what are the most valuable/critical apps people are using, and then monetizing based off that. This is a conversation I’ve had at past companies with Sr. PMs.
I can’t blame them in that context, but it’s also a total bummer as someone bootstrapping and was excited by how this service could scale with revenue. I get how it’s a drop in the bucket for VC-backed startups to pay for.
Seems transparent in SendGrid’s case at the very least. I appreciate how the app saves time, but the same functionality can be achieved with some custom cURL requests using Bash.
We do believe that all users should be able to prototype and test out these app integrations, so we will be adding a 14 day trial of the Advanced Plan (which includes access to all Premium app integrations) to all new users in the near term.
Our pricing plans are fundamentally designed to scale as your business grows. If you (or anyone else) feels strongly that our heuristic for determining which apps should be Premium, we are definitely open to the feedback.
Thanks for the response . Why not just have usage-based pricing? (e.g. like Twilio services). You already have a valuable service that people will pay for with the nice UX and that is difficult to switch from once a customer has a lot of workflows built up and running.
I appreciate the apps take time and money to build, but why not treat those as your competitive advantage instead that keeps people hooked into, using, and loving the platform?
Here’s what seems off to me about the move: Pipedream is still designed for technical users who know how to code at the end of the day. It’s no Zapier. I would guess that most of your users/customers know how to write a few cURL commands on your platform that replicate the SendGrid app functionality or most of the other apps for that matter. I bet most people are using PD to avoid the DevOps overhead.
$150/month to send transactional emails…
At the jump to $150/month, I’m now contemplating either just rebuilding the SendGrid functionality with some bash blocks, or maybe even more likely now shifting everything to AWS w/ Lambda.
