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  • PhoneGap Build: Pricing Plans Update

    by andrew.lunny | Thu, Oct 13, 2011

    A couple of weeks ago, when we moved PhoneGap Build into public beta, we announced some preliminary pricing plans for the service. We received a lot of great feedback, via email, on our blog, and through Get Satisfaction, and we’ve updated the plans to reflect that feedback.

    The biggest change we’ve made is to remove the build limits from the plans. Sometimes, during active development, you’ll be doing dozens of builds a day, particularly if you’re targeting multiple platforms. The last thing we want is for our plans to get in the way of reasonable usage of the site, or discourage anyone from using PhoneGap Build.

    If you plan to send a few thousand builds our way every day – for example, if you’re building a service on top of PhoneGap Build using our API, and need additional capacity – then these plans won’t be a good fit. If you, or a service you’re developing, will use PhoneGap Build significantly more than a normal user of the site would, you’ll want to speak to us directly about finding the right solution.

    We’ve also changed our vocabulary a bit, to make the functionality clearer:

    • We’re labelling your unlimited free apps as public, rather than open source. This gives a better sense of what we mean – you can create unlimited apps that are publicly accessible through PhoneGap Build, and a set number that are only accessible by you, and your private collaborators. Public apps will be available on the PhoneGap Build beta in the next couple of weeks.
    • There is a limit on private collaborators per plan, not users. The apps you build can be distributed to as many end users, or collaborators on your team, as you wish; however, there is a limit on how many users can access your private apps through PhoneGap Build.

    Please note that none of this will change any existing apps or accounts on the PhoneGap Build beta – all of the apps you’ve built so far will remain private, and we won’t kick out any collaborators who have worked on your account. We’re very grateful for all of our beta users, and hope you all keep using the service.

    Hopefully that clarifies our plans – we don’t want to prevent anybody from building or distributing their apps, nor do want to enforce any licensing terms on the apps you build. Of course, before we charge you any money, we’ll have our full terms of service available to make clear that you retain your rights over your software.

    Thanks again, and please let us know what you think.

  • Mike

    What is this non sense. Who in their right mind would submit their apps source code to u guys. This is probably the stupidest idea u guys have come up with. Think about it. Know one is going to come to your website and upload all their secret code so u guys can do what u please with it. Gimme a break would u? Stop wasting your time with this project and do something helpful instead.

  • Meelooteen

    I would. You miss the point here. Js code, which is the majority of what people use to write for phonegap, was almost always public, as it is used for websites. You can minimize/obfuscate it before sending, if you are paranoid, but I suppose there is nothing someone who calls his source “secret code” can do that Phonegap people can’t.

  • http://www.nsbasic.com George

    Good call on eliminating the limit on number of builds!

    We’ll be recommending this to NS Basic/App Studio users.

  • http://alexandrubucur.com CoolGoose

    Mike, take a break and breath, it’s like you submitting your data to github or bitbucket, it’s an option.

  • http://joakimhedlund.com Joakim Hedlund

    @Mike: “Hello (troll) world!”.

    Phonegap is used by thousands and obviously there is a demand for the product. But hey you’re right, open source sucks. Let’s all go tell Github, Apache and W3C to do something useful instead.

  • Ryan

    Mike – you’re a retard.

  • Jay Balunas

    Personally I think removing the build limits is a great idea! The best workflow for me has been to build/test locally and verify via PhoneGap build.

    As for Mike: Please settle down – if you don’t want to use the system don’t, but it is a good service for those who want to use it. Nothing prevents you from building locally all you want. Plus I would assume there is some NDA type language in the terms for PhoneGap build.?.

  • Brett F

    @Mike: Uh….wow. I’m hoping you weren’t being serious….seriously. But in case you were, here are some points to consider:

    1. There are already a great many users of the Build service, and while some are probably bat-shit crazy, I’m betting the majority are sane and think highly of the product (at least until the beer consumption pegs the needle.)

    2. ‘Secret code’ can be compiled locally using the build chain Phonegap details clearly in the docs. However, you’ll have to spring for the aluminum foil hat.

    3. Perhaps be a bit more concerned with *your* time, than you are with *their* time, eh? After all, it’s….wait for it….*THEIR* time. It’s a bit stalker-ish, no?

    @PhoneGap: Keep up the great work guys! Looking forward to seeing how the product ecosystem growth accelerates post-Adobe purchase.

  • Ben

    That’s still rather confusing :S

    Does public mean: -
    1. Publically available source code
    2. Publically available, private/open source, compiled free app
    3. Publically available, private/open source, compiled pay app

    Does private mean: -
    1. Private source code
    2. Private source and compiled app (e.g. internal company app)

    If closed source apps are only covered under the private category, I think it would be good if the private limit could be unlimited, but you can only have 3 apps active in a limited period, e.g. 1 month, after which time you could swop active apps.

    As for “collaborators”, does that mean developers contributing to the source code?

  • Matthew

    Mike, why do you exist?

  • Ty

    Can you clarify what you mean by x amount of private apps? The Team option, for example, allows me to have 10 private apps. Does that mean I can only produce 10 apps via PhoneGap Build over the year or does it mean I can only have 10 apps residing on your site at any time? Hopefully it is the latter.

  • https://build.phonegap.com Andrew Lunny

    Ben,

    There are three main screens (and corresponding API calls) in PhoneGap Build:

    1. A list of all your apps
    2. Detail about an app, with download links
    3. A form to edit your app

    With private apps, nobody else can see any of these screens for your apps. With public apps, anybody can see (a modified form of) screen 2.

    The subsequent licensing/distribution of your app – anything that is not covered by those screens – is unaffected by whether the app is public or private on PhoneGap Build.

    Collaborators are people who can see screen 3 (and make the corresponding API calls).

    Ty,

    You would have up to 10 private apps on the site at any time.

  • Ben

    Thanks for the clarifications Ben, that’s a lot clearer :)

    Could you just elaborate on the download links on the details page bit please? Would they be, for example, links to Android Market & Blackberry AppWorld.

    The service is sounding rather sweet though, now I understand it more B)

  • Ben

    Sorry, I meant Andrew…Ben’s my name :O}

  • http://www.k3media.com bcaille

    Great move to get rid of build limits!

    I’m still puzzled tough with your pricing plan. What exactly is a public/private app to you? Will Phonegap.com showcase public apps with a search engine and everything? Where will apps will be public exactly? Thanks for clarifying this as it seems to confuse a lot of people for now.

    Will there be a way to publish my app once finished to make it public? We don’t want potential customers to download our app in a dev stage! :)

    In a nutshell, we’re looking forward to add our CMS a deep Phonegap integration using the API. This will allow our dev to speed up their work and our customers and QA team to test the apps all at the same place.

    So we will never use build.phonegap.com but use the API instead. To me, this is where the true value of Phonegap resides. Being able to add such features to our software allows us to develop a market which was’nt accessible to us before and still give the same experience our client were used with our software.

    For someone in my case, will we be billed based on API usage? We’re building our first app right now so a small usage package would suit us. Plus, it would be logical for us to see our payments increase the more we use you system, therefore your API.

    Keep up the great work!

  • https://build.phonegap.com Andrew Lunny

    @Ben: those links would be direct to the binaries of the apps, as they are available on PhoneGap Build. At a later point, these public pages will be customizable, so you could have links anywhere you want.

    @bcaille: in the short term, you will need to distribute the links to make your apps available to people. As we iterate on that process, we hope to add features like searching, customizing the public page, etc. You can change whether an app is public or private at any point (for example, develop privately and then make it public).

    It sounds like, in your case, your organization would start with one of the standard plans, and move to a custom solution based on how much load you’re pushing through our system.

  • Ty

    Andrew, sorry for the late reply. Did not see your reply. To start, we would only have a few apps residing on your server at any time. Once the build has happened we would delete them.

  • Casper

    Hi,
    How many apps can I create using Phonegap without using the build service and sell them on iTunes app store? Is there a limit to this?

  • Tom

    I am looking to use phonegap to write an app that can be used on android and iphone. This app will never be public as it is intended only for a small group of people. What plan would this fit under? At this time I would only have the one app.

    Thanks

  • Icarus

    Great Product!

    1. We are currently working on an app for a client to be used by the client only.

    2. We want this app to be available on iOS, Android and Blackberry.

    3. How do you define our case. Are we developing one private app (point 1) or three private apps (Point 2)

  • Ty

    @Casper If you are using PhoneGap only and not the Build service, you can publish as many apps as you like.

  • https://build.phonegap.com Andrew Lunny

    @Icarus: this is one app.

    @Tom: you could build this on the free plan.

  • yoav

    Hello, am new to phonegap,and phonegap build.
    I still think the pricing planes and your explanations to that subject are very confusing to the common novel user.
    As an evidence see resent questions in this forum…
    I strongly recommand you put some examples to your explanations(like suppose you developed an application that…)

    my other questions is this: can i developed a regular WEBsite using the phongap.js library and it will still works on mobiles
    (access to goelocation,media,device,events etc…)
    WITHOUT turning it into an application?
    (whidout using the SDKs or phonegap build)?

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  • Yarbrough40

    How do I upload and get my working files?  I need an ‘idiot’s walk-through’ of what to do.   I have a working app running in my emulator and that’s all I have.  when I go to the upload site I see 3 choices (none of which I understand):1) create a new git repository.   when I click I get message –> Unable to create app: SSH public key must be present (ok.. so what should I do?)2) pull from a git/svn repo url.   when I click I get message –> Unable to create app: please enter a VCS repo URL (ok.. so what should I do?)
    3) upload an archive or index.html file.   (I don’t understand how Phonegap Build could possibly compile my app on that single file alone… shouldn’t I be uploading ALL of my application files???) 

    So being confused as I am with all three choices.  I thought I’d post my confusion here.   Someone please point out my idiocy… I won’t be offended. : )