From @derrickshowers on Tue Nov 01 2016 01:50:55 GMT-0400 (EDT)
There should be a pricing tier between Hobby and Pro.
Hobby is great, but the 10 minute build time limit is quite limiting. For example, I tried it with what I’d consider to be pretty minimum on a relatively small app – build the app, test it, create an archive, upload it. Right now the build time is 9-11 minutes on average. I would love to add some more steps, and would be willing to pay a monthly fee, but $50 is pretty pricey for something that at the end of the day is still a hobby project.
I’d suggest a “Hobby Plus” option (or whatever you want to call it, I’m not always the best when it comes to naming things) to provide bitrise.io with some revenue, but not scare people away.
That said, feel free to vote and comment on this feature request, anyone who would like to see a mid tier plan - don’t forget to describe what the limits would be (the way @derrickshowers did)!
I would be very keen on a hobby type of plan.
I don’t need more than 1 concurrency, and don’t need 200 builds a month but I really do need more than 10 mins build time. Even for a small project 10 mins is just not suitable.
$5 to take that build time to 20 mins with less builds a month, or $10 for 30 mins would be really nice price points for a hobby or indie developer.
Thanks for the feedback @cyberax!
We’re still thinking about an option like this - what do you think about a $30 option, with 200 builds but with 45 mins build time limit?
I feel $30 is quite high for a hobby plan. I average well under 50 builds a month which sadly is now going to be less as my current project exceeds the build time now. So to spend $30 a month on a project that is not going to cover those costs for quite some time is a waste.
“Hobby” is the key word there
Its the build time that’s crucial for a hobby plan, amount of builds is less important.
For $5 I can build my own CI/CD server using a VPS solution, or get a cloud mac for $20 to do the same thing. But that requires a lot of effort and maintenance so not really suitable for a hobbyist.
For an indie that’s up and running it might be a good price point.
We definitely agree with you and see your point @cyberax, unfortunately there are some monetary constraints we have to figure out. E.g. it’s true that you can get a Linux VPS for $5, but not with ~8GB RAM, which is pretty much required for Android/Gradle builds. Add to this the cost of web servers, log and artifact storage, support etc. We’re not complaining, we just have to consider all these things to figure out a (long term) sustainable model for everyone.
We love hobby developers and we want to support all of you!
Until we find a long term / formalized solution, please:
Or if you just need a little bit of limit bump feel free to ping us through email or the onsite chat. Adding just a bit of build time won’t be an issue
Yes, you do have a business to run
Look forward to seeing what’s in the future!
Thank you for the support, I’ll be in touch.
PS: some of your competition has the free plan on 20 mins build time (but you still have the Xamarin support).
I’ve been playing with your cli and it’s quite nice, might even be a solution for me for now, but it’s still quite fiddly so not as nice as the hosted solution
Well it’s the same runner as the one executing your builds on bitrise.io
If you don’t like the YAML config you can now use the built in Workflow Editor too, just install the latest CLI it includes the editor plugin by default
If you have any issue with the new editor or with the CLI just let us know!
We’re still exploring the possibilities, it’s not set in stone, for now if you need a bit more than 10 mins just ping us (through email or onsite chat) (Note: not so long ago they had a free option with no build time limit but decided it doesn’t worth it, so 20 mins might stick or not, we’ll see. We’re also working on a couple of optimization which might help us with either a cheaper plan or with bumping the free time limit, again we’ll see ;))
I too would love to see a Hobby Pro or something like that and would be more than happy to pay ~$20-25/month for one concurrent build, 20min build time, 150 builds per month.
Alternatively, the ability to customise the free plan, i.e. less builds per month in return for more time per build.
I’d probably also consider bolt-on’s, i.e. I’ll pay extra to run my build on a faster build agent with an SSD for example.
Any update on this @viktorbenei? I was most recently using Buddy Build due to better pricing options, but since they’re getting rid of their free tier entirely, I’m looking for alternatives. Right now toying around with just setting up my own pipeline with Travis or moving to something more similar to Buddy Build like Bitrise. Would love to have some sort of hobby plan as discussed in this thread, though…
@viktorbenei Check out the free plan on the link you posted… they have a 20 minute build time limit (in my experience most build times with deployment around between 10-15 minutes for starter projects). The catch is your build can take awhile to run based on availability (similar to what Travis does). Seems like this is a better limitation for hobby projects, since there often isn’t a need for instant builds, vs a low build time limit that makes it very difficult to do anything beyond running a few tests.
Got it. So, while it’s true that the base limit of our free plan is 10 mins, but you can bump that up to 30 mins (which is more than what Buddybuild provided in their free plan) with the referral program. More info: Bitrise Blog
Is the referral program not an option for you? Or we just failed to highlight it?
Yeah I actually just found out about that via Twitter this morning. I didn’t see anything about it, but maybe I didn’t look hard enough. I guess the only tricky part about referrals with the 10 minute build is that it’s hard to experience the product enough prior to telling friends and colleagues – I usually don’t refer something unless I’m actively using it. Maybe it would be nice to have a x-day trial that opens up more capabilities or something.
Maybe it isn’t an issue for most, but something that would turn me away at first. Luckily for you all, there isn’t too much else out there right now.
That said, I do know enough about your product from research and using it in the past to feel comfortable telling others about it. Thanks for the quick responses!
That’s exactly what we do! When you register a new account you get 14 days of trial on the Personal Pro plan (45 mins build limit).
Ahh, that might be the “issue”, why you don’t see these notifications! We’ve made quite a few improvements in highlighting these options when you register a new account / for new users. Referral program should also be presented as a notification during the trial. So I guess it wasn’t presented to you exactly because you already had an older account, in which case we don’t send these notifications again / don’t spam you with these “getting started” notifications.
I’ll bring this up for an internal discussion with the team, I think we have enough context now to improve the notificaitons / wording - thanks for the feedback & details @derrickshowers!
@viktorbenei I’d like to raise this topic again, but from different perspective. Does “pay-as-you-go” make sense for you? Did you consider such business model, what do you think about it? In such case we’ll have no extra limits discussions
