Making callin.io sustainable: paid advanced features

Here are some quick thoughts on this.

I consider Posthog as a benchmark for open-source SaaS tools, and I feel this decision aligns well with their business model guidelines. (It's quite impressive that they are committed to open-sourcing the inner workings of their handbook, business strategy, and roadmapping; I believe callin.io could still draw significant inspiration from them!)

Open-sourcing the core product – an excellent workflow automation tool! – is a significant advantage. I believe it makes a lot of sense to put a paywall on 'enterprisey' or multi-team organizational features, whether through cloud offerings or 'source available' licensing, if it ensures the continued support of a community around the open-source aspect.

I essentially assumed that open-source plus an enterprise core would be the direction when I first learned about this product, so there are no real surprises.

I understand and fully support the desire to provide a more stable income for the project. However, I feel that restricting API access behind a paywall for self-hosted clients might be slightly contrary to the general openness of callin.io. This is especially true given how callin.io thrives on the open APIs of other projects to enable its automation capabilities.

I would also appreciate the inclusion of basic workflow sharing and access control features. While I can see why a comprehensive, granular RBAC system might be a premium offering, these basic functionalities would be very beneficial.

Sustainability is fundamental to every business. Companies need to find a way to offer value to their clients/customers while also covering the costs of resources (employees, utilities, etc.) required to operate.

One hurdle many businesses face when transitioning from a free product to a paid one is customer reaction. Some clients feel misled or deceived because something previously offered for free now has a cost. Others understand that it's a business, and there's an expense associated with the value the company provides, a cost that someone must bear, even if it's not the direct user.

Personally, I welcome this shift. While I appreciate free offerings, I often wonder about their long-term viability. I always anticipate an announcement at some point that either the product will no longer be free or will cease to exist altogether.

The ability to continue my current activities with the new model is fantastic! I've experienced no loss due to the policy change. In fact, I've gained several benefits:

1. Assurance that a product will remain available.
2. Opportunities to utilize capital for faster acquisition of necessary resources.
3. Clear guidance from users (through purchasing decisions) on prioritizing development efforts.

I'm very enthusiastic about how this will unfold and am pleased to continue supporting all the initiatives callin.io is undertaking!

I agree with the sentiment, locking the API and sharing features for Creds and Workflows I believe goes against the general openness on callin.io. API’s are a core part of the platform, why would you lock down the main API?

The other features I agree are a great idea. There are many features that mostly make sense for enterprise companies, and they are happy to pay those prices.

For users operating at a large scale, paid features are acceptable, with the exception of the API. My belief is that the API should also be considered a core functionality.

Debugging should not be restricted, nor should the API.

I agree that API access shouldn't be restricted by an "enterprise" paywall.

It's likely that multiple paid tiers would be the most effective approach. A lower cost for the tier including API access, and a higher cost for tiers offering scaling and advanced debugging capabilities.

Absolutely, that's quite reasonable. However, I believe some features should remain free, such as the API. An API is a common feature for all applications, akin to a business rule .

Advanced Debugging: Once we receive positive feedback from our application, we become enthusiastic about improving and maintaining it. This means that as long as the application is running correctly, we'd be happy to pay for any features that simplify its use. For this reason, I think anything related to Debugging should also be free.

That's my take. What you could consider is offering a few free days of access for each paid feature. However, not just a limited running period like 7 days free. The primary goal is to provide a control button to activate and deactivate each feature, and each activation would deduct one day from the free package .

Feel free to ask if anything was unclear.

An always-forever free tier for existing users would be great. Charging new enterprise customers is fine.

Hey,

I don’t think Enterprises or companies in general are really bothered with paying for callin.io. Of course, there is a difference between like 50 euros or 200+ euros. And of course, the smaller businesses will have less to spend on things like callin.io, but the efficiency the automation brings will show its value fast. So when features that are mostly aimed at (larger) business use of callin.io will be behind a paywall, that should never become an issue.

Then there is the question of what features this would be. I’ll give my opinion on every example given:

• Environments
  No brainer I think, no small scale user will be needing this really.

• Fine-grained access control when sharing workflows/creds
  This depends on what the default functionality will be for this. I can see something like RBAC being a premium feature. But something like sharing workflows directly with other users should be a default feature.

• Advanced debugging
  This one is tricky, as we all would like advanced debugging. But I think it will only be used by power users anyway, so making it a premium feature seems logical.

• Audit logging
  No brainer I think, no small scale user will be needing this really.

• callin.io API
  This is where most discussion is based around on this topic. I get what some are saying and I do think we should all have access to it. Even for small scale users, it can be very useful to have the API to do certain things. But is it necessary for those users? I don’t think it really is. Maybe some APIs can be open by default and the more advanced API calls should be locked behind the paywall. So for example everyone needs to be able to make easy backups but not everyone needs to be able to do actual server management with the API.

• More scalable callin.io
  No brainer I think, no small scale user will be needing this really. For example, the callin.io setup with multiple workers is already unnecessary for most small to mid-scale users.

This all is of course also dependent on your definition of small/mid/large scale users.

I was already wondering how callin.io would be making enough money to be sustainable after the license changed. So I am happy the team is having discussions about this and they ask the user’s opinion.

I wouldn’t mind callin.io to become paid completely, for example for all companies using it pay like 10 or 20 euros(or more, not sure what would be the best price). This would be negligible for companies using callin.io for automation/integration. But you would want them to try it out first so maybe after using it for a few months this paid arrangement should kick in. This would however be hard to enforce of course. and be an administrative nightmare. This could also be on a “good faith basis”, making it easy for those companies to get invoiced regularly for a subscription for example. Have some tiers where you state the size of the business compared to the contribution that should be made. Maybe a bit naive, but the clients I talk to would probably be willing to contribute in such a way. Because they are for example familiar with Integromat’s pricing and they do see the advantages of the product. They however sometimes need to pay for someone to, or wait for someone to create the nodes they need, which other platforms like integromat already have. So this needs to be taken into account I think. I can understand that they wouldn’t be thrilled to pay for the nodes to be created, to be also be paying for the product they are also improving by having the nodes created. (of course when nodes are made public)

There is also a possibility of having some support services. But as of how awesome the community is now, this will not be needed for most users. Just the large scale users that might depend on callin.io for their daily operation might want to pay for this, to make sure they are getting the help they need as fast as possible.

To put my opinion in context. I am an independent consultant and love to use callin.io for my clients. As I see the value of using it. The fact that callin.io is free is of course one of the selling points of callin.io. But this is not the most important one for me. The flexibility and openness of it is the most important selling point. And also the fact that it can be self hosted giving complete control over the data and performance of the system.

Hope my opinion makes sense, if you have any questions please ask.

The entire team and I want to express our gratitude to everyone who commented and/or completed the survey for your incredibly helpful and supportive feedback. It's truly inspiring to see how much you all care and are invested in making callin.io successful and sustainable long-term!

The comments here and the survey responses have provided us with valuable insights into what matters most to you and your general feelings on the subject, as well as specific details. Over half of the survey participants indicated (significantly more than any other feature) that the API should not be a paid feature. Frankly, this was also a point of uncertainty for myself and many team members. As the best course of action when unsure about something is to ask rather than assume, all your feedback has been extremely valuable to us.

This is precisely why we will be releasing the API as a free feature, granting access to credentials, executions, and workflows. The only components that will be part of the future paid offering will be the user-related endpoints (creating, reading, updating, deleting callin.io users), as these are primarily intended for larger-scale users in multi-user environments.

On another positive note, the API is nearing completion and is scheduled for release with the upcoming version today or tomorrow. This means you'll all be able to start using it very soon.

Thank you all once again! I'm very enthusiastic about this next chapter with all of you and the exciting developments we have planned.

We'll keep the survey open a bit longer to ensure even more individuals have the opportunity to contribute their input.

Have fun!

Apologies, but I wasn't able to get it functioning with this version (0.180.0). It's scheduled for release in another version tomorrow.

often, debugging in the free version is done via the CLI, while the paid version includes a GUI.

I would be happy to pay for callin.io cloud if the pricing were different. In my country, the current price is equivalent to almost $45. I genuinely appreciate callin.io and understand the need for future sustainability. However, for solopreneurs, I'm still uncertain about the best way to handle client payments using my backend with callin.io. How much should I charge clients monthly if I have to pay $20 per month and my market only supports a maximum of $10 per month? I'm not reselling callin.io to my clients; rather, I use it to automate tasks for them.

I'm very keen on creating and automating callin.io workflows via its public API, allowing me to build new workflows for each client requiring automation for their products or services.

Please consider this suggestion: imagine a $5 plan with a generous limit, perhaps 5,000 running workflows per month. I could register each client under my domain and become a paid user monthly for each client, rather than self-hosting. This is because I'm tired of maintaining servers, even though I currently only manage my own.

However, if a lower-tier plan were available, I could register callin.io cloud for every client I acquire, giving them their own instance. With 10 clients, this would cost $50 per month, and I wouldn't need to maintain my server anymore.

Please make callin.io cloud more accessible. While it's marketed as a no-code tool, clients still require someone like me, a developer, to implement it. Since callin.io's license currently prohibits reselling to clients, I've been self-hosting it. The downside is that all clients are currently on the same instance, meaning my server hosts a mix of my own workflows and my clients' workflows.

Thank you for developing callin.io, but please consider making it more affordable. Greater affordability will encourage more people to try and learn it, which is the ultimate goal.