Hello, Glide community! My name is DJP, and I am a product manager at Glide.
I wanted to ask you all what your ideal Free plan would look like. You can see what our Free plan looks like today by checking out our Pricing Page.
Thank you in advance!
Hello Gliders !
I discovered Glide in March 2023.
I am developing a fairly complex business application.
After several months on a free account, I just switched to the Starter plan.
In my opinion, what is needed in the free plan:
And more generally, on all the offers, a greater number of updates!!!
Here is my point of view !
Cordially
Thomas
Right now I’m working on an app with a free plan that will probably go to Starter. It won’t have a lot of rows or updates, but will use a ton of images. It would be great if Glide could connect with Google drive and somehow allow image upload and storage to my Google drive, sending just the image url to Glide. This would greatly reduce my Glide storage and my Google drive account is already set up for a larger storage space.
I don’t know how this would be accomplished, but possibly with a specific folder that the images would be loaded to? Anyways, it would take a lot off of Glide servers with images hosted in Google.
I’ve recently been looking for a tool for my business. If I plan to use the solution for my business to create value, I never expect to use a free plan long-term. However, I do want to be able to test out all its features, if possible for free or at a low cost.
So a few ideas:
The Free plan is for testing. If plans don’t all offer the same features (which is often the case), then I expect a free trial on all plans. If all plans don’t have a free trial, which is currently the case with Glide, then I would expect most features to be available in the Free plan. Otherwise, how else would one be able to try the feature one needs? Then it’s a question of limiting the scale to which the features can be used in the Free plan or trial plans.
Integrations. I would make all integrations available in all plans. Many businesses and especially small and medium sized businesses, I assume depending on the scale of their needs, will be choosing the Pro plan or Business plan. What if a business would like to try any of the following integrations: Push Notifications, Google (Gmail, Calendar, Analytics, Tag Manager), Slack, DocsAutomator, or PDF Monkey? These integrations are very important. Yet, currently, these integrations cannot be tested. All of these deserve to be in the Free plan so they can be tested. Limit usage.
Friction to testing. Inputting a business card to try the Business plan is unnecessary friction. In many businesses around the world including the US and the EU, middle managers don’t have a corporate business card, yet they might like to test a solution before building a case for it. What if they would like to test the HupSpot integration because that is what the marketing and sales teams use? They would not be able to test. Here too, HubSpot and Outlook are important integrations and deserve to be in the Free plan so they can be tested. Limit usage.
Big Query & Glide Big Tables. The same goes for BQ and GBT, they deserve to be in the Free plan so they can be tested.
Limits. In many ways I think the Free plan is too generous (functional published apps for hobbyists) and in others not generous enough (all integrations could be available on all plans). Limits could be reduced to avoid non-business hobbyists and businesses using a fully-functional app. They should be able to build and test, just not benefit from long-term usage:
Before making drastic changes to the Free plan, especially if to become less generous, I would consider the word-of-mouth marketing value of the Free plan.
Thanks for the detailed reply, Nathanel!
One point of clarification that should help: The Free plan is not for businesses to test features before upgrading to a paid plan. Businesses should instead get a Business plan free trial. The Free plan is for individual and community use.
What that in mind, how would your ideal Free plan look like?
I think free plans are great to spread the word and people (builders and users) to get to know Glide. If people start using Glide for their own little plans or projects they will later on introduce it to their company when there is a logical moment. It’s unnecessary that @nathanaelb is promoting fewer options for the free version 
I would personally limit usage, not functionality. It’s great to get to know all functionalities and get enthusiastic by them and when you get frustrated by the limits you upgrade to a paid plan. But it should give you enough options to make an app of value.
I agree with this, it’s how many of us got started with Glide. And as I am happily paying for two pro plans right now, I am always testing new features and ideas and personal projects with free plans. I would not want this to be greatly reduced.
I happily pay 100 dollars per month, but I need a free version as an ambassador of Glide !
Outside of supporting external file storage, what other changes would you make to the current Free plan?
What problems are you facing with the current Free plan, and what types of apps are you trying to build?
I do two different things: I built apps for clients, then I don’t need the free apps per se though sometimes it can help.
Another thing is that I give courses where I teach people how to build apps without code. So making them a Glide-fan is a part of what I do there. Show them what is possible, that they can build solutions for their own (or their company’s) problems, etcetera.
To be honest, I’ve been having the impression that Glide is going all the way to B2B and more into the direction of higher tiers, so it felt to me a little that the idea of courses for my target audience was maybe not very future-proof. Because of Glide’s direction.
But if a free version remains that is valuable things are different for me of course. For example I want to start a course where I teach people to build 4 AI apps with Glide. That way they start seeing the opportunities. And hopefully they will move to a paid version.
I’ll try to dive a little deeper in what I would need other than the option to make an OpenAI integration
I don’t see anything else that I would want changed, but I would really like to see Branded Sign-in on the Starter plan. The Starter plan is perfect for getting a small business going to show value, but branding is always important to them. Asking for a $25/month commitment to improve a process is an easy yes, and then once the value is proven, the increase to $99/month is smoother.
My 2 cents here is we shouldn’t encourage using Google Drive as an image storage option. If you use Drive links extensively to display images in your app, there’s a chance you will surpass some sort of limitations from Google and your image links won’t be viewable anymore.
The personal plan could have several purposes:
So while this post poses a great question, I think the question should be split into two parts:
How would you want the Free plan to change (if at all) for these use cases?
In my use case, the images are for reference as needed and would not be accessed constantly, so I don’t see that as a problem.
Which use cases (1…4) is Glide trying to support?
My guess is not 1.
Because you purchase one plan for all projects, you’re only deciding to use the free plan (or upgrade) once.
I’d suggest that 4 needs all features so you can try all the features and decide to purchase a paid plan. Maybe it already does, if so, great!
Does 3 get special pricing? If not I’d suggest “adding” that.
If you’re doing 2 then you probably want the same as 4 (all the features) so you can demonstrate them to prospective clients or users you’re educating.
Again, if you’re purchasing a plan and therefore not using a free plan it only happens once per account. So if you’re doing 2 then you likely have a paid plan already and the free plan isn’t required.
I’d like to know if anyone is ever using a free plan on an account when they already have another paid account. If this happens rarely, then the primary use case seems to be you need to test Glide before purchasing, in which case you can use a business plan trial and you’re sorted.
Does anyone ever stay on the free plan indefinitely? If so are you building a business app (Glide’s focus) or something else?
More questions than answers 
sorry Hope that is still helpful.
Working at a school, I mainly use Glide for teaching students
There used to be a plan for schools which I hope still exists. Unfortunately, I could not use it due to financial constraints at my school in Croatia.
Looking ahead, I’m optimistic that such an affordable $25 per month plan could receive funding from our Ministry of Education. If not, I am even willing to personally contribute to allow more students to participate in Glide Teams and benefit from my coaching. While I don’t foresee every student developing profitable applications, I see great value in inspiring and teaching a select few to become power users of Glide.
I would like to take this moment to proudly share that seven of my students participated in an IT competition last year, creating mobile applications using Glide 
. Although they did not secure victory, their efforts received praise and sparked increased interest among fellow students in building apps without coding. This experience reinforces my belief in the need for a special plan for schools as they raise the next generation of gliders! 