Especially, in Users Limits you take care of distinction between personal email and business emai! We don’t have the control of users that sign up with their personal work email!
Different if it’s limitation is on internal business email, in this case it’s ok
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Yeah, I see a lot of customers / use cases disappear as well. But obviously not the clients Glide wants to focus on in the future.
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@david Some extra thoughts. I am an economist by education so let’s look at the economic angle behind all this.
Company data is not that public in the US as it is in Belgium but it seems that
Glide (or better Typeguard Inc, the company behind all this) has received around 24mio in venture capital over the last years. A serious ROI is expected on this VC. While valuation of Glide must have soared the past years due to customer base increases, changes are profit isn’t a lot as Glide is investing a lot. So that leaves hungry investors 
Let us zoom out a bit. The No Code platform market is currently at a size of 12.3 billion/year (Forbes) and is expected to grow to 187 billion by 2030 (57,39% yearly growth). At the same time, the total Business Software Market (which dominates the software market) is currently already 292 billion and will grow to 858 billion by 2028 (30,93% yearly growth) (Statista). A final trend is that SAAS software is going from 200 billion in 2024 to 700 billion yearly in 2030 (23,33% yearly growth rate (on average, companies are spending $2623 per employee per year on average on SAAS software in the USA).
It seems like Glide wants to be positioned in the No Code Platform market (because of it’s incredible growth rate) but at the same time focuses on the large business software market and more importantly, its new pricing is clearly based on SAAS software pricing (but slightly discounted).
The discount is necessary ($4-8 euro per user vs often around $15 per users) because Glide (for now) lacks in power (speed, data size) and security and has a startup/development cost vs SAAS software.
Let us now analyze some of the above:
- ROI for the company: when maximizing ROI, you want to essentialy maximize two things. Number of users and amount spent per user. For subscription-based companies like Glide, the dominating idea over the decades has been to take as large part as the market as possible before really going for returns. That is because a user doesn’t checkout just one time, (s)he checks out every month. So say that a company stays customer of Glide for on average 10 years. Then a new customer with a $25 monthly plan is not worth $25, he’s worth $25$ x12 months x 10 year= $3000. This is the reason why companies like Facebook, Airbnb etc first go for market size and then profit. After you have the markt size, you can also make massive profits, while offering every single user a very fair price because of your size. Thus disabling competition. It seems now that Glide is wanting to cash in on its efforts of the last years, forgetting about the much lager profits that are laying ahead. In a market that’s going from 12 billion to 187 billion and in which you have the position that you are a really preferred brand due to your unique positioning and affordable pricing, you want to keep it exactly that way (maybe even improve it) and keep profiting form the exponential word of mouth and community advantages. An example: since I started using Glide about 1,5 year ago, I paid around $4000 in Glide fees, but more importantly, I referred Glide to a dozen of entrepreneurs and customers who are now together spending probably around $30k yearly on Glide. From most of them (even multimillion companies), I am now hearing that with the new pricing, they are looking elsewhere for their new software or iteration. So instead that they would tell their friends (and each rake in another $30k/year for Glide), that money will now go to some other party, thus stopping Glide’s exponential growth.
- SAAS pricing: the new pricing is clearly based on SAAS software (with a discount factoring in less power for Glide and the fact you need to do your own development). However, given that the SAAS software market is going to explode to 700 billion in 2030, this essentially means that SAAS software is going to become SO good (and flexible with API’s) that for most businesses, SAAS will be enough for all their needs (unless of course you are looking at really complex specific software, for which I think Glide never will be a substitute). Already before the new pricing, 1/2 projects I proposed to friends/customers to make in Glide ended up being replaced by a simple SAAS subscription. When factoring in the fact tha SAAS software will become many times more powerful and flexible in the future and that SAAS prices (due to competition) will probably evolve with inflation, what will be the place of Glide in such a SAAS market? Furthermore, by shifting it’s focus to the SAAS market, and less the No Code market, there will be space (that will be filled in in our hypereffecient market) in the unique position that Glide had before it’s price switch.
Given the 2 points above, I believe that (contrary to the price choices made now) Glide has a way better chance of becoming a leader in the 187billion No Code market (from which 175 is still to be made the next 6 years) if applying the scaling principles of exponential examples like facebook than it has to become a leader in the SAAS market (where other solutions always be cheaper and easier than anything that can be build in Glide). It can become such a leader by applying the pricing the most popular No Code platform in the market (Bubble) has: usage based pricing with acces to all features from the start. Allowing people to scale apps to thousands of users easily (at which point Glide can profit way more than by limiting the number of users like now) but starting with very affordable prices.
This way, Glide will continue (or ‘Glide’ ) on it’s path of exponential word-of-mouth growth (I think if done right, it will even accelerate) and will take such a large part of that 187 billion market, that in a few years, a modest price increase of around ($10 per plan (not per app, not per user)) will be worth more than wat will be won now in the short term by the new pricing.
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If I accept the new pricing plans, but need Maker for one app, and Team for another - what I am to do? Do I need to create two glide accounts? How will I share my Glide Table resources across these two app?
To have the two Apps on different plans, yes, you would have to create the two plans with each one having its own billing and payment plan.
In terms of sharing tables across different teams, at the moment it is possible BUT apparently David communicated that it is not supposed to happen and Glide views this as a BUG and therefore devs should not rely on it because it will soon not be available.
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My advice: “Your user’s users are not an expense, they’re an asset.”
I think the only thing harder (for customers) than building no-code apps, is the need to change and rebuild an existing no-code app, and re-learn everything under the conditions, logic, and limitations of the new software.
I would think that smartest thing Glide can do to grow is introduce plans with amazingly generous user limits (if any at all). This would produce a significant quantity of people reliant on software make with Glide. Your user’s users are not an expense, they’re an asset. Honestly after some kind of KPI’s are met there, that would then be a good time to increase the prices for your users, who already have created large ecosystems reliant on Glide and acceptant of increased costs due to the value it brings them, and additionally not able to justify the cost of changing software just to lower their annual bill.
**Edit: Actually I wonder if this is what just happened 
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For the first time since I started using glide, I didn’t build anything yesterday. I didn’t even advance in projects or correct some details for my apps.
Analyzing why this has been the case, it is because of the lack of security. You could tell me now that the pricing plan is back to the previous one, that I would not trust the platform. Until when?
If glide wants to continue counting on my trust, besides correcting the new plans, not only in price, but also in terms of users and updates… they will have to do something else.
Establish clear and public rules about communication deadlines in the case of tariff changes. And in my opinion, these changes should not affect apps that are already published and operational.
I agree that the platform has been advancing and implementing improvements this year, but this does not mean that a price increase has to be applied to all users.
I think it’s great that you implement AI, but if I don’t need it in my app, why should I pay for it? and the same with other features.
If they do not provide security to the developer, so that he can give it to his customers… it will not be a reliable alternative to consider, even if you are an agency.
The fact that an application is used by 1000 people does not imply that it is technically complex. It means that it has a wide target audience.
If I have to pay 5000 dollars a month for users, in a couple of months, or in three, I have the development in code done, and those 5000 stay in my wallet, and not in glide’s wallet.
If I have to convince 1000 people to pay 5 dollars a month for the use of an app, I will do it so that it pays me, not a third party.
Glide may charge me for storage space, incremental updates and other objective data, but it can’t expect to take my business.
I get the feeling that you want me to develop a SAAS, and sell it, so that you can take the profit.
And one more detail:
In the case of glide experts … that they only receive commission from the first year’s consumption of their clients? really? I don’t know what kind of commercial strategy you have, but it is evident that whoever draws up these guidelines thinks he is much more intelligent than his target public. And I said that he thinks he is, not that he is.
I want to pay the salespeople I have in my company a lot of commissions, year after year, because this way I have business. If I tell them that I only give them commission for the first sale, the most likely thing is that they will do the following ones with other companies. It is true that this is more complicated in this case. And that is the thinking mind behind these conditions.
And for the record, this does not matter to me, because I am not a glide expert… but in the search for a more global idea of what is the commercial strategy and business ethics of glide, it is necessary to analyze it in all areas.
This thought is on everyone’s mind, or should be.
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But if I do that I will lost all my job and have to start the screens from zero… Sincerely, I joined glide because I just starting nocode webapps programming and this plan changing was a cold water.
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I will continue with the old Starter plan ($25) for as long as possible. My profile seems to be like that of the majority most affected here in the comments: one or a few apps with small updates, some unpublished apps in production, and possible test publications. My concern is when they stop charging the current Starter price - does anyone have any idea how long that will take?
In preparation, I’ve started transferring the apps, each to a team (since charges are made per team), but the transition from Google Sheets to Glide Table will be painful, as it disrupts the app screens, and practically, I’ll have to start from scratch.
Furthermore, it seems that from now on, to be free, the best approach is to build a template first, not the app from the spreadsheet, which was the great advantage of Glide…
Does anyone have additional comments on this?
Great system. Congratulations. In Brazil it could be easily a success MVP. But, for the subject, I think you could open a new team for each school until it is enough clients for the business plan…
Hi All,
I love using low-code/no-code solutions. For me, they are a practical realisation of the idea of democratising technology. I chose Glide after evaluating many solutions and fell in love with this tool. I’m using the legacy pro plan (now I regret not buying the business plan right away - I wanted to do it in February and didn’t manage…).
My biggest complaint about Glide is not that they changed the plans (that’s their right), but that they didn’t communicate this to existing users sooner - for example, 3 months notice would have been appropriate and we would all have had time to consider what to do. I think there would have been a lot less emotion than there is now.
Will the owners of Glide change the new licensing model to a more user-friendly (read: less expensive) one? - I don’t think so, if there are any changes they will be cosmetic.
Will the owners of Glide force the transition from the old plans to the new plans? - Definitely - probably it will be a matter of 9-12 months (that’s my guess - they will wait for the emotions to subside and then introduce a more or less forced migration; I am writing this based on experiences with https://www.softr.io/ - for example, old plans do not have new features introduced and they have more and more limitations).
Is it worth developing current applications in Glide? - If you have a legacy plan and it is an MVP - yes, something more serious, like thinking about scaling - here everyone has to answer for themselves - whether they will earn enough to pay for the new Glide plan and for themselves.
And the most important question: what instead of Glide? What solution do you recommend? What alternative do you suggest - Bubble, Ninox, Appy Pie - or maybe something else?
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To be honest, all these “no-code” platforms are disastrous. Glide WAS the best of the lot due to its pricing point and now that has gone out of the window due to whatever reasons…
Somehow I think it would have cushioned the impact if there was some warning for the current users OR AT THE VERY LEAST explain the reasoning behind this type of pricing strategy BECAUSE it’s not just about an increase BUT they have changed PLANS altogether. It would be understandable if they had increased the price and kept the plans the same, that can be attributed to inflationary adjustments but the manner in which they have handled this one. There was a lack of consideration to some degree and I strongly believe they were badly advised because this type of thing can put a serious dent on the brand and it does affect GOODWILL which is a balance sheet item by the way…
Will I continue to use Glide, you bet I will BUT now it is with a different emotion. Just like someone in a relationship who has lost trust in their partner. You slowly disinvest in that partner and invest resources elsewhere as you bide your time until you are best placed to strike.
I will NEVER trust another platform that does not allow you to EXPORT your code and I regret now learning one such platform. There are a few out there but it would be unethical to list them here because this platform is paid for by Glide and it would be UNETHICAL to promote another service provider here.
That’s just good ethics and conduct…
In short, you won’t find better at the moment in the market. Glide is the leader by my reckoning bar this disastrous change in strategy.
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100%
I mentioned earlier that Glide needs to really make a choice of the direction: what really is their dream, forgetting a second fears and pressure. In my mind, there is no question that going for the NoCode/low code market (rather than SaaS) is the biggest opportunity.
Thousands if not millions of people will start on nocode/lowcode platforms. It is also more in line with the earlier goal of billion users. And it contributed to a big change towards a more free society where work and power will decentralize from big companies to individuals.
We can see already the quality and enthusiasm of this individual community and it grows by the day.
And despite what some people may think, I truly believe some smart Glide users will manage to scale their apps beyond what we can imagine. The world is big and many will find use cases that scale beyond their local community.
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You can have multiple teams with different plans in the same glide account.
Assuming this is true, from a business perspective then it is better to go for 1 big client looking for a SAAS platform that will pay $1000 and probably use the platform conservatively than to go for 10 clients that will pay $100 each and then use the platform like crazy driving your costs through the roof and making a killing from selling your resources to clients while you could have provided that directly.
That is why from a business perspective, I don’t think Glide can be blamed for their decision, it’s just the manner and maybe just fine tuning the plans but in the main, we should understand the decision, if we really are business people ourselves.
This is an incorrect assumption. Glide sells an app building methodology and hosting. They don’t sell the individual apps.
The developers that use glide rely on value added by developing the apps. The developers don’t use their account like crazy. When their client starts using the app like crazy they will go with the plan best suited to thier needs.
If glide had the option for self hosting the usage wouldn’t even be a factor. But I don’t think it was developed with that in mind. And I don’t know what technology they would have to put in place to make that feasible.
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I believe they have. I think part of the consternation is that some don’t like their choice because it leaves them in the dust. Not that they don’t have options, but it will take considerable effort to redesign in other platforms.
We probably should have seen this coming when they started the attrition of classic apps.
A clearer moment of change was to me when Glide started calling itself a tool to build internal B2B apps. Before that even Instagram-like apps were used to prove the power of Glide.
Just have patience and refrain from making drastic decisions before learning about Glide’s new announcement regarding their plans for customers, as they promised. Based on everything I continue to read, I believe that everything could be resolved by allowing users to be free, all plans with free users like the Make plan, and then they can determine where to set limits for additional payments. I also think that payment should be required for updates, and finally, for the number of applications, it should increase based on the plan, or make them free initially so that payment is ultimately for updates and additional features in each plan, not for users. That’s what everyone is saying in their comments. Patience, they will surely surprise us with good news. It’s honest of people to recognize when things aren’t going well and propose new solutions.
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I use my own domain name as my primary email as well, its more of a personal branding that let’s people know it’s really me. I checked the validator and it doesn’t pass. It is set up in GSuite but that doesn’t seem to matter.
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