Well, yeah.
Wouldn’t the cost of Bubble skyrocket?
to keep this thread consistent, I thought it’s worth to add this update here [New Feature] One-time payment model for premium plugins
Levon Terteryan
Founder @ Zeroqode & Bubblewits
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@jakubdab I found your work interesting so I decided to scrap the bubble pages of premium plugins, and here is the result. I though some of you might be interested to see the evolution 1 year later.
First, the list of the most used premium plugins :
Then a breakdown by developper with the number of plugins and the estimated total if everyone is billed on a reccuring basis and if everyone is billed only once.
Of course all of this is subject to interpretations and may contains errors. I’m also pretty sure that the amounts of money displayed here are not the real amounts earnt by developpers.
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I wish these figures were anywhere close to reality, then we’d be driving lambos long ago 
I believe Bubble’s usage stats are not very accurate. very often users install the plugin to try and then unsubscribe, so I don’t think Bubble reduces the number of usages when someone unsubscribes from a plugin (although I’m not totally sure about this as I didn’t experiment to check that).
anyway these estimates are really far from the actual numbers
Levon Terteryan
Founder @ Zeroqode
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Thanks for the confirmation Levon, it confirms what I though about these numbers
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nice work 
usage numbers are buggy with plugins. also bubble takes a 25% cut so you can update the table there.
I’d bet that allowing something other than stripe to join the marketplace, allowing to sell bundles of plugins and also allow tiered plugin pricing would greatly increase the adoption of paid plugins, which will make the marketplace more interesting for developers.
By tiered pricing I mean a plugin can have different pricing based on what plan the app is on, personal being $2/month, professional $7/month and so on.
That way, cost aware people would get cheaper deals and be able to feel comfortable to only pay more when they stabilize income and scale.
Hope I’m not too late to the discussion 
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Tiered plans make a lof of sense.
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Hey @jarrad, are you saying that you sell Bubble plugins outside the Bubble marketplace? If you don’t mind my asking, how are you managing that? I mean, don’t plugins have to be installed via the Bubble store? Or did I misunderstand what you’re saying?
I’d also be curious to hear from other devs on one-time vs. subscription pricing. What have you found to be more popular? It seems like some devs use the monthly subscription option primarily as a way to offer a low-cost trial.
That seems to suggest there is no way for the developer themselves to grant a trial or free license. Is that correct?
Look at settings. You can have a private plugin and grant access to any app. I don’t think adding such apps can be automated so this would have some manual order-fulfillment components…
But if @jarrad knows differently, I’d be very interested to hear about it!
Ah yes, that never occurred to me. I assume that doing so would not violate Bubble’s TOS? Perhaps that would be one way to offer tiered pricing right now - have it listed in the marketplace at one price, and then grant enterprise licenses outside the marketplace.
But if it’s not automated, it sounds like potentially a lot of work. If Bubble improves the marketplace with additional features and tools, I’d prefer to go that route and support the platform anyway.
You said it @levon 
I wish I was getting 50% of what my forecasts say. Thanks for the insight @vparpoil, many new plugins coming this year after server side actions are here
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this is against Bubble’s TOS and Jarrad is not doing it since we acquired all of his plugins last year.
and yes, that would be hell of a lot of work once your have several plugins listed.
Levon Terteryan
Founder @ Zeroqode
That’s what I suspected initially. I appreciate the clarification, @levon.
BTW, do you have a sense for how may of your customers pay one-time vs monthly subscription?
I won’t disclose real figures here, but I think it’s important to have both options. Subscription is good for safe trials, one time is good for those who are not comfortable to keep paying for a plugin on a recurring basis.
just find the right balance of the pricing and the ratio between them.
Ok, thanks, I appreciate the info. (I was thinking in terms of ratios, BTW - not specific numbers.) My guess is that most folks would prefer a one-time payment, as long as there’s a decent value proposition.
With so much else being subscription based, it seems a one-time licensing fee might be more appealing. The issue, of course - especially with software - is the ongoing cost of maintenance, support, and upgrades. It’s not clear at this time how much of an issue that will be.
yes, that’s true
that’s actually a big issue.
as of today we maintain 201 plugins (30% of all Bubble plugins)
our plugin team consists of 2 js developers + 1 product manager + Bubble developer (for demos, gifs, icons etc.) + me = we barely have time to work on new plugins now as most of the time is spent on support/bug fixing/plugin improvements.
And the problem is that someone pays let’s say $25 (of which we get 75%) and then have issues with it and expects the support team and devs to spend a lot of time trying to figure out the issue and help them out. In many cases that can be possible only by going to the user’s app and fix things inside there.
depends on what kind of complexity the plugin is of course. But you get the point.
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The price of a plugin should really be based on it’s feature set / value it offers to users. If it’s a simple slideshow, it’s one price. If it’s a store locator with heat maps, it’s another.
Pricing is not an easy subject, but it’s something that can be experimented on. If you charge too little, you’ll know because there won’t be enough customer churn. If you charge too much, there will be a lot of churn. So based on the conceived value, the market will eventually dictate the right price.
This doesn’t mean a plugin should be accessible to everyone. It shouldn’t. Those that are willing to pay for it are the same customers who get the most value for a plugin. So an e-commerce product with tens of locations will get more value than a small single shop, which could simply use a standard map.
Pricing is also not only about making a living. If someone is able to find a niche market, and serve it well, they can charge what the customers are willing to pay, and get wealthy. That’s rarely the case though.