Following an exchange with @jrmi from the application builder team, I’d like to continue the discussion here.
In my modest experience, I’ve observed that it’s harder to sell an application than it is to build it. Baserow should make it possible, in the near future, to create a no-code application open to external users who don’t use Baserow.
This is a huge opportunity for no-coders to build SaaS.
However, without a quick and easy way of selling access, few businesses will be able to get off the ground thanks to Baserow.
Indeed, it’s a real pain to sell access if you have to build a synchronisation between payments on the one hand and user rights on the other. This will require coding with APIs or using a chaos of no-code automations that will be fairly expensive.
I’m thinking first and foremost of a direct and clean Stripe integration. Stripe has everything you need to sell subscriptions, pay-per-use, one-off payments and so on.
Even though there are some excellent solutions for selling SaaS, such as Outseta and Memberstack, which have APIs and could also be integrated into the app builder, these solutions are still paying solutions with a significant cost of entry. Stripe, on the other hand, is free and has been massively adopted, including by Open Source manufacturers such as Ghost, which has superb Stripe integration.
I really must stress this point, because in my opinion it is crucial to real success with public applications.
Hey @bastien, we plan to add direct integrations with many different tools, and Stripe is definitely one of them. For now, I can’t say when we’ll start with it, but probably in 2025.
I’ll also check with the team if there are any other plans or thoughts on this topic.
Thanks @olgatrykush. I’m sure there will be Stripe integration. But I think it’s important to talk to the app builder community on Baserow to understand their need. It’s often an integration that’s not well done in app builders, where you have to fight hard to maintain a sales service that’s efficient for the seller and pleasant for the customer. In my humble opinion, you need to ask Baserow users directly about this: what do they intend to sell with their Baserow applications? How do they want to sell it? What sales models? What sales needs, what customer needs? And so on.
Hey @bastien, thanks for sharing your thoughts. We plan to build a marketplace, but we haven’t really figured out how it should work. I think it’s a good idea to start a discussion here and ask the community for their thoughts.
@olgatrykush, which is fundamental, because it’s a problem I see in all no-code builders, to varying degrees: it’s difficult to set up a payment system for the application builder.
The only reason for this is that the Stripe integration is poorly designed. Stripe is a very powerful tool, but it’s not easy to integrate. So I think this is a fairly crucial issue. In my opinion, the Stripe integration should meet these criteria natively (without the need for code or an external automation tool):
authentication with payment gateway must be native
user rights must be synchronised with the payment conditions set
the application builder must be able to provide access in several modes: freemium, lifetime licence, monthly/quarterly/annual subscription, usage, etc.
payment plans must be able to evolve without changing for current users (pricing change)
invoice generation must be automated
payment plans must be different for different roles
in the case of a dual-role application: we can imagine that access is paid for role 1, free for role 2, and that role 1 pays according to the number of role 2s he invites to his team
(workspace system)
we could imagine pricing that depends on the number of records attached to a user
These are such basic things when you’re selling an application, but they’re too difficult to implement in no-code builders at the moment. But I think it’s a question of whether or not Stripe integration is pushed too far.
Of course, it makes sense in this case for Baserow to finance this part. Baserow could very well take a percentage (1% for example) of each payment. This is what https://outseta.com does. I think this is an excellent model. I think Baserow could be inspired by what they have done.
@bastien are you interested in doing this on a self-hosted or custom plugin instance, or on the official baserow.io deployment ?
If you’re willing to get your hands dirty, you can do this yourself on a custom plugin. You’ll need to be extremely proficient with django, and you’ll need to integrate dj-stripe. This is not within reach for everyone especially if you’re used to low-code.
Having some kind of marketplace integration on baserow.io could open a new revenue stream for baserow if there’s some kind of sharing, could be a good idea.
But personally, on my plugin (Words), I am planning on selling access by having a freemium model where advanced functionality requires an API key similarly to how someone would plugin their OpenAI key. So the stripe integration is happening elsewhere, on a django site built with Saas Pegasus (https://www.saaspegasus.com/). I would not recommend this unless you’re seasoned web developer experienced with django.
I’m thinking of using the cloud version first before migrating to self host if I see any advantages. For the moment, not really.
In any case, I’m not a developer and that’s precisely why I’m asking for a well-built Stripe integration so that we can sell access to our applications as easily as possible.
