What will happen to Public Facing Glide Apps/Pages when Glide retires these to focus on internal apps?
Nothing is changing as far as an app being public facing or not. Glideās focus is on apps that are used internally within a company, but they are not going to cut off any apps that are public facing.
Can I ask where you got information to give you this impression that they were going to cut off public facing apps?
1 Like
Through what the forum experts here are telling me in my other topic/post:-
All I want to do is build a public-facing paid up membership site/app for a software product planning, requirements, and testing solution, on a platform that will support the membership payment use case going forward, and low and behold, when I double check on the forum here I am told that I canāt do that anymore. (# pulling my hair out!)
As Jeff said, they wonāt cut off public-facing apps, but they have adjusted the number of public/private users allowed on plans recently, so thatās something to take into account when you want to develop a solution like that.
2 Likes
Whatās changing is that Glide is focusing on Pages and phasing out Apps. Apps were the original product of Glide, and Pages were originally created as a supplement to Apps, but in the long run, it made more sense to go all in on Pages because it scaled better for multiple different screen sizes and it just makes more sense to have one cohesive product instead of multiple fragmented products. Most features of Apps are, or will, make it into Pages with a small handful of exceptions, such as the Buy button. However, there are a ton of new features, including several integrations that will help to enhance Pages going forward, and allow it to far surpass anything thatās been possible with Apps. Anything you can do with Pages today, you will be able to do in the futureā¦including the ability to have a public facing pages.
Glide is not bringing the Buy button from Apps into Pages. I think it was just too much overhead for them to maintain as a middle man. However, they have introduced a plethora of integrations that include various payment integrations, so I think that will still be a viable solution for anything you need, and you will just need to maintain your own subscriptions to those external integrations. But, there has always been various other ways to build your own payment integrations. @Robert_Petitto has some good tutorials using PayHere as a solution.
Itās not that you canāt create a public facing app with Glide. That has and always will be a possibility. Itās just that itās not Glideās focus to build a solution that allows them host and process large user baseās per app, with extremely cheap hosting prices. Because of their reasonable prices, their goal is to focus on internal apps that that donāt take up massive amounts of server processing power. Hosting isnāt cheap, and Iām pretty sure Glide has a few customers that cause them to lose money. Thatās the primary reason they focus on internal apps. But the keyword here is āfocusā. Not a hard set restriction on public facing apps.
Also, to help clarify for the futureā¦Apps will be renamed to Classic Apps and Pages will be renamed to Apps. So the eventually, the term App will refer to the singular product that is currently called Pages.
6 Likes
Hereās the official announcement just published today:
4 Likes
ok well thanks for clearing that up. I think itās important for Glide to get their messaging right here to avoid losing customers and to avoid turning new customers away. If their messaging is just āNo Pay Buttonā in new Glide Apps, but then fail to immediately say after that āā¦ but there will be payment integration solutionsā customers and potential customers will get the wrong impression and look elsewhere. The messaging in the ānew Glide Appsā page you linked to above is just āNo Pay Buttonā in new Glide Apps. Anyone reading that then thinks āNo Payment Solution in new Glide Appsā
People have built tons of fun apps on Glide: social media clones, calendars, a impressive calculator (Jeff), tic tac toe, various games, etc. etc. etc. The list is long. Some of these projects one could see as showcases. Or challenges. Or hobby projects.
Iām not saying Glide cannot be used to create a membership website (Iām adding e-commerce websites and marketplaces to the mix). It probably can. And it would depend what you want to do. But itās not made for it. I donāt think anyone would recommend it. There are a ton of membership solutions out there (same goes for e-commerce and marketplaces).
Iām definitely not suggesting you should go see elsewhere. Iām saying that in some cases one needs to carefully assess what tool(s) they need for their project.
5 Likes
Thanksā¦ I see what you are saying, but the membership piece is just one piece of the puzzle I am attempting to solve. I assessed every low code solution under the sun before selecting the best optionā¦ ease of use, features and pricing, PWA solution, commercial positioningā¦ everythingā¦ Glide was head and shoulders above everything out there in my opinionā¦ which is why I want to stick to it
1 Like
When is this migration to new Apps happening? The Announcement page in Glide Docs displays the following when creating a new project:-
ā¦ but I donāt see that, I just see the standard Glide Pages or Glide Apps options?
I believe the screenshot you see will be going live next week sometime.
A Classic App will be Glideās legacy app solution.
Mobile and large screen will be Glide Pages (now renamed Glide Apps) with the starting screen either with a mobile layout or large screen layout in the Layout Editor respectively.
Have you considered a stack of nocode solutions and setting up integrations between them? The simpler the better of course, but sometimes one single tool canāt do it all.
1 Like
Has beenā¦is nowā¦will beā¦
Thatās a complicated answer. Specifically the change referred to above will happen March 20th as it says in the document, but itās been in the works for a few months now and will probably continue into next year. Just depends on how new you are to Glide. Older users are grandfathered into certain things that are no longer available to newer users and havenāt been for awhile now.
I have apps that are 4 years old, in an old legacy folder, and each individual app is on an old legacy plan with legacy pricing. Glide would love to get those cleaned up and moved to new team folders with current pricing so they donāt have to maintain multiple different billing and feature systems. They just want to get to one cohesive system so they can focus on improvements instead of maintenance. So as a result, they have been locking down the ability to create new Legacy apps in those legacy folders. That has been happening slowly over the last several months.
Glide has stopped adding new features to Legacy and Classic Apps, but has been making rapid fire improvements to Pages (Soon to be called Apps). After Monday, users who sign up for Glide will not be able to create Classic Apps, but the option will still be available to rest of us if we are more familiar with them. However, itās still encouraged to create Page Apps as thatās the focus and direction of Glide.
Someday my Legacy Apps and Classic Apps will have to move to new team folders with team pricing. At that time I anticipate that they will also be converted to Page Apps. I donāt know when that will happen, but I imagine it will be within the next year. I think Glide is trying to make a conversion process to convert Classic Apps to Page Apps, so it will be mostly seamless to us.
Nothing is changing at the drop of a hat that would shut down existing users. Thatās not Glideās goal. Right now they are limiting what new users can do without largely affecting existing users. Arguably, they are giving us quite a nice heads up so we can plan accordingly. They want to make it more enticing to get users to convert existing projects and create new projects using Page Apps going forward. There will be a cutoff date someday when everything will become Page Apps only. Whenā¦nobody knows. Probably several months from now. Just plan for it in the future.
As for the Buy button in Classic Apps, in all honesty, it was not very versatile and a little too basic in how it worked. It was never very useful. Thatās why people have created their own solutions and found ways to integrate them into Glide. Thatās also why Glide is dropping the Buy button. Too much overhead for them with no clear benefit. They used to even charge a fee per transaction, but eventually dropped it because it was not beneficial enough for them. The new integrations will be a better way forward. The integrations will make you the middle man instead of Glide. You aquire services you want, the API keys you need, and then integrate it how you want into Glide.
If you are new to Glide, you probably donāt realize the massive amount of improvements that have happened over the years. It will just keep getting better. You also probably donāt realize that this has been a complicated transition process and Glide is trying to make everything cohesive, simpler, more powerful, and less confusing to users. Itās a complicated process to get everyone on the same level without adversely affecting existing users.
Itās important for the long run to assess your anticipated usage and look over the pricing page to make sure Glide fits your anticipated needs. They have tried to be clear that their goal has always been dark apps meant for internal or small sets of users. Thereās obviously a grey area where some things need to be public facing or require more users than usual, and glide does not discourage it, but they are not focusing allowing users to create the next Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, etc. Large sites like that cost millions to operate per month. Imagine if every glide user wanted to create something like that at a price of $25, $90, $250, or even a $1000 a month. It would put Glide out of business just in the hosting and processing fees that they have to pay, while also providing bandwidth for those who are using Glide for free.
4 Likes
Hi there, thanks for posting this article. As a āClassic Appā maker, Iām a bit frustrated to see that all the new exciting features Glide has to offer (integrations, etc) are only available to Apps; but I understand the move.
In the FAQs, the article says āWe will release a conversion feature in the coming weeks.ā to convert from Classic to App ā Do you have a more precise estimate of when that could be? The new App features have a lot of implications for my app so Iād like to be able to plan accordingly. Thanks!
Sorry, I donāt have an ETA on the conversion. If I have more info, Iāll let you know.
Hey, thanks for the detailed answers! I have a question on what will happen to my users ofmy Classic App if I do the transfer to the new Glide App. Which version will they have on their phone? Is there a solution to āupdateā their version? If I have to ask all my users to re-install the app, itāll be a nightmare, and probably losing 70+% of them
Do a test first on two separate test projects, but you should be able to do the following:
- Copy the URL of the Classic app somewhere
- Change the URL of the Classic app somewhere to something random (like URL-classic)
- Publish your App (formerly Pages) and as the URL put the one you had for the Classic app.
It should be a seamless transition for your users, they wonāt have anything to do.
That process has worked for moving from one Classic App to another Classic App that had been copied to and revised. The only thing Iāve noticed is that on a desktop if you change the Icon / Title to an App, it does not update the āshortcutā on the desktop; but the most recent versions of Android will pick up the change and ask for confirmation to update the Icon / Title. I donāt know about IOS.
2 Likes
Great! Thatās what I had in mind as well. Thanks a lot
1 Like
I did the process, but on it says ānot foundā on my phone
Does it work when you access it from the browser instead of the installed app?