What will be next ? A time limit ?
When you see how they added huge limit to free user forcing them to switch to pro if they were using glide actively, you wonder how long it will be before they add limitation to pro app removable by paying more money. You can’t use it for your business if it’s essential or you will be just a slave to glide choice. You can’t trust glide. Free version should be called demo.
To be honest, 500 rows is not bad at all for free version and I have built many MVPs with that row limit.
The edit limits has been introduced for a while, and I understand people’s frustrations over this, Glide & David should have communicated this before the release but for me, I understand the cost of reloading the data into the app in their free tier. I believe that’s still one of the best free tiers in the business.
Adding to @ThinhDinh point, I would say we need to understand that Glide’s business model will evolve frequently and regularly give their early stage. I assume that people using Glide did some research and understand that they’re a start-up. As they identify risks to profitability - especially the large ones, they have to react quickly or risk failure - which would impact all of us who are relying upon and trusting Glide with our businesses. I believe it is their core value to do the right thing but they cannot make everyone happy all of the time and cannot ensure that every decision they make is viewed as fair by every person.
Sometimes people really do forget that Glide has been in the game for just 1 and a half years, there will be changes frequently to their business model and with more transparency before rolling them out then I believe everyone would be fine.
Having read every single post on here for the past 4 months or so, I like how they always listen to the users and try to roll out updates as soon as they can. It’s a huge task following what people want and how to communicate that effectively, and they roll out new things every single week, isn’t that great?
Instead of complaining about the limitations, people can help Glide by introducing more developers to the community. We grow together.
The edit limit is perhaps poorly named. Edits made in your app will always work–it’s the edits made in the Google Sheet flowing back into Glide that we’re limiting in free apps. We’re having trouble explaining it.
You are right, though—if Glide is essential for your business, we will make changes to try to get you to pay for it. Besides controlling costs, that is the motivation for our changes. Please pay for Glide if it’s this important to your business.
Free tiers are inherently limited but are typically onramps to paid. For that reason, they should continue to offer value.
For the most part, I rely on Free for testing only. I view things from a PRO lens so it’s hard to gauge how useful Free is at the moment and what use cases it can adequately support.
Pruning features and imposing new limitations is hard. In general, there’s a fair amount of transparency on Glide’s part – here in the forum bubble. But I don’t recall one advance communiqué regarding major changes in the past. This would help soften the blow for those impacted who arguably have the right to express dismay without being invalidated. And who might upgrade as their needs evolve but now feel conflicted in light of the dynamic.
I don’t know how Glide segments its users or if they segment users. But it’s not incumbent upon everyday (light/non-dev) users to ponder/consider Glide’s business model. Or come to the forum every couple of days to see what features have been rolled out based on who yelled the loudest.
All this to say: Well-considered communication, I think, would do wonders. And it doesn’t have to be anything fancy. A few lines of text.
Good points! I’ve removed the details about how we pay for Glide apps — I don’t want to suggest we are running a charity! Yes, Glide is a business.
@ David wisely done. You and others have invested in glide - and you hope to make a profit. I do as well - otherwise glide will not be there. This is how it should be. It is business.
The challenge is how you benefit from the free tier users. Sudden changes for the free tier users are dangerous in my perspective. Be as transparent and predictable as possible.
A thoughtful decision to be treated it in kind. 
for #5 on “record of values” (circa 2017). I would add that a more visible, enforced, and (broader) feedback-driven product roadmap would be helpful. It instills confidence and further enhances transparency.
Then it’s a lots less worse than I thought. The “edit limit” explainaintion need to be more explicit (like you did in your post is perfect).
It’s true Glide need to make money. But what I see is that Glide make it’s apps know by giving a really nice free app, attracting lots of user. And then suddently make it useless without paying. So people who invested time in the app had two choice : be forced to pay, or loose time invested. And I assume a lots of people who invested timed time had to choose the second option because there were unable to pay.
It wouldn’t have been a problem if the row limit was there since the beginin or if it was statted that it would be added later.
Sheet Edit limits is torturing me.
Since there are lots to be explored and I have to keep adopting the changes made by Glide UI & logic limitations. May I suggest that the Sheet Edits Limit supposed to be 3000 instead? I’m almost at 700 edits and still going nowhere near 30% of what I have to do for the whole app.
After this, when I have to run the app for public,there will be no excuses to apply for the Pro version for sure, because, by my calculation, rows will be created like mad. I can’t help but to pay for the practical reason.
Or else I have to do the workaround (make the junk for you) by duplicating app and continue with the limitation. Which, from a Strategic side, I really don’t know why you’d preferred junk data to a real recurrent user stats in your portfolio…
Anyway, for the time being. Mercy, mercy.
Gliders,
For those who complained that glide is pushing to buy pro, well, of course. This is a business and if we want then to survive (and personally I want this very much) we need to understand that a business needs a solid payment flow or it will crash.
Glide have done here an amazing thing and made making super complex system available to anyone and they should get paid for what they do.
So stop complaining and pay up or try to find something else better suited to you (there isn’t, the rest are more expensive or crippled next to glide)
Kindly read mine before putting me into your ‘Gliders’ list. Thanks
I was not directing my post to anyone specific but rather made a point.
Another thing is you can always duplicate and get new limit and not have junk by deleting old versions and in any case during my process I always make copies when building my apps so I can recover if I did something not able to fix during the built up
Also keep in mind that bandwidth and storage space costs money. Each sync with google sheets costs money. Server traffic between devices and Glide costs money. Image and Video storage costs money. I don’t know the costs, but when you have hundreds of thousands or millions of users syncing, uploading, and downloading data, I’m sure it adds up pretty quickly, along with any other operation costs, loans, salaries, and benefits to all employees. It’s not all pure profit, especially for new companies that have to find a perfect balance between rapid growth and profitability.
It’s also my understanding that they are still fine tuning the sheet edits counter while working in the editor. Whether or not they have done that already…I don’t know. If you are experiencing rapid edit count growth, it might be worth a little time to see what’s causing those counts. As mentioned in another post, a user was keeping his app open all the time in separate a browser window from the editor. He also has a script running that updates the sheet continuously and those updates are constantly syncing to the app, because the app is left open. It’s my understanding that he has a pro account on a separate app that may be sharing the same sheet, so the Background Refresh is always active and keeps pulling those sheet updates.
I understand Glide is a business not a charity. So, if we are making money with apps we have to pay Glide for giving us the tools that creates that apps. But, I understand that Glide must communicate better this kind of changes. Pricing for Pro versions can be low for USA and some european countries, but are too high for Asian countries, Brazil ( where there is a strong developer base ) and even for my Country, Portugal. Market is very competitive and we can find native apps developers that works for 5 usd/per hour, or native app builders that are almost free. Glide is very important for me and I will stick with it. Trust in the team and the community is very responsive. As for sure Glide made its homework and knows already the market. And I trust they will find the better solution for all of us.
But is Glide a business app? Then that’s what you should shout out loud. Most people i know use it for hobby, family, etc
In one of the other threads David mentioned renaming the tiers (Free --> Personal).
I am wondering if Personal would still confuse people.
