I’m still trying to understand the difference between Team vs. Client users.
Let’s say I want to build an app for a non-profit (actually, I do) on the Basic Plan. That makes me a “Builder”. I will likely be the only Builder for the foreseeable future. My email domain may be Gmail (or not). Does it matter? The user’s who will need to log into the app may use the non-profit email domain, or some (do) prefer to use their personal email.
Are they Team or are they Clients?
Does it even matter - given that I expect to have a minimum of 12 users (including me)? Basic Plan: 5+5+1 = 11
Oh oh. That ain’t going to work. And there’s no $1 per add-on user option.
And what if I need to have 20 users? Never mind that half of those may only login once every few months.
So the idea here is to force me (on behalf of the non-profit) into the Pro Plan.
Let’s say, alternatively, I go with the Pro Plan.
So Team: 10 + Client: 50
Are the non-profit users Clients or Team? If Team , I only get 10, still under my 12 minimum threshold.
The recent pricing update which includes fewer users is following the same logic GlideApps has/had (not sure if they still do this), where anyone with an email using the companies domain is an internal user and anyone without a company email is an external user. People were very confused by this. This logic, along with limited users, is why I stopped using GlideApps. I fear Softr is going down the same path.
As I’ve stated in a different post, I believe Softr and their customers would be better off with usage based pricing instead of user pricing. Include unlimited users and charge for usage.
Based on Softr’s pricing page, the Pro plan would fit your needs well if you want some flexibility. The additional app user at $1/month gives you that flexibility.
Regarding the distinction between team users and client users based on email type (business vs. free email): there’s no such concept on the web. It’s an interesting idea in theory, but it isn’t a standard or even common practice, so basing pricing on it would be (or already is as the original post suggests) confusing at best, and counterproductive at worst.
Maybe this is just semantics involving user type labeling, but Glide does differentiate “personal” from “business” users, as @TobyMacLeod mentioned, with personal being @gmail, @yahoo, etc., which are unlimited on lower plan “personal user” tiers and very limited on upper “business user” company tiers.
Softr started doing this several years ago as well, then shifted back to undifferentiated users across all plans, and now it looks like they are back to the same confusing model. I think the change is because they see the no-code app landscape changing with Airtable management about to change. Again, I think it’s because they want to prioritize “internal team” users at larger companies, who may become unhappy with Airtable depending on how it changes moving forward.
Seen these price strategies before with Softr, in attempts to better monetize their platform. I don’t blame them for doing it, as long as they follow through with what they tell their legacy users. Like improving and supporting legacy features that internal team users may not use (ex. Inbox block, Stripe integration,…). Or including ALL newly released features across corresponding plans when they make big changes to their feature set. Softr dropped the ball when they excluded their new database from legacy plans last year, until enough builders complained. They also forgot to mention last year that the “New” Softr’s drastically reduced style settings would be followed up this year with a requirement to use expensive AI for customization.
I think it’s important to call these things out, because in practice, changes for new Softr builders can have positive AND negative effects on the usefulness and value of features legacy builders depend on.