Introducing Apilio subscriptions

Apilio Updates
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Hello everyone!

2019 has brought many new and exciting changes for Apilio:

And we are ending the year with the news Apilio is becoming a pay-for subscription service in 2020. I know this won’t be great news for everyone, especially since we’ve been providing the service for free so far, but we need to move forward with a sustainable business model so we can deliver great service and keep adding fantastic features into the future. We feel we’re doing this in a responsible and fair way, recognising the value and support of our long-time subscribers and very much hope you agree.

So, to say “thank you” with more than words, we will send out a special discount code for 40% off our subscription plans to our existing users. You will also find the discount code within on the subscription management page.

Why start charging now?

We started Apilio the Business one year ago and since then we have been busy making things better. Professional hosting, integration with IFTTT and, most importantly, employing good people to help Apilio flourish. The reality is this all costs money, IFTTT charges a pretty hefty licence fee for example, and so we need to start generating revenue if we want to continue providing the Apilio service.

As Apilio users are all over the World, we needed someone who could help globally and so we have partnered with Paddle.com to be able to offer subscriptions worldwide.

What plans are available?

We have two plans: an entry-level Starter plan (paid yearly only due to transaction costs) and a more advanced Early Adopter Plan, with monthly and yearly options.

The Starter plan will allow you to run one logicblock, which suits a large chunk of our users, whilst the Early Adopter plan has higher limits for those of you with larger numbers of routines.

:point_right: We won’t start enforcing the limits for each plan for legacy users until after the end of January, so you have time to adjust your automations and find what works best for you.

As a new user can I try before I buy?

If you are a new user starting today, there is a 14-day trial period.

What happens if I already had an account before subscriptions were launched?

To thank you for being there from our early days, you will have a longer trial period, lasting until 15 January 2020.

What happens if I don’t subscribe?

Ultimately, if you do not wish to subscribe to any plan, your account will be deactivated when it expires, meaning it will stop receiving updates from and triggering actions on IFTTT. We will keep your configurations and information for 6 months (unless you decide to delete your account yourself earlier) in case you want to subscribe again, so you can continue right where you left it.

Please get in touch in you’re a charity or educational establishment as we would like to try to continue to support to you if possible.

I have a question that was not answered here

Please reply to this thread or get in touch directly with us, we are super happy to help.

Thanks again to all of you who have been with us in these past few months. Here’s to a great next year!

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It is not clear to me what counts as an Automation. What do I need to count in order to know how many Automations I currently have? My Dashboard shows I have Variables, Conditions and LogicBlocks but Automations are not mentioned.

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Hi @sdemills,
thanks for asking! I edited the original post to make this clearer. An “automation” is not a thing in Apilio but a description of what Apilio does for you in the end.
The elements that are relevant to choose the right plan are variables, logicblocks and IFTTT actions.

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I am quite disappointed.
I have only one automation task using Apilio, controlling my heating with 4 logic blocks.
It is much cheaper to program a few webhooks myself. I still have a few weeks to do that.

I fully understand the need for a pricing model from Apilio’s perspective. But my use of Apilio just too limited to go for a paid subscription.

Thanks, anyway. I now have an idea of what I need to develop myself.

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I am in a similar position to you:-

I have two “applications” both of which require more than one logic block.

One application is so simple in its purpose: a motion sensor switches on a light for 3 mins unless the light was already switched on manually. That one simple application cannot be achieved in just one Logic Block and that means it cannot be achieved within the Starter Plan, and yet the Early Adopter plan is too expensive for such a simple task.

I would be happy to pay the Starter Plan annual rate - or even a little bit more than that, but the Early Adopter plan isn’t worth it to me.

So, I guess I will have to do my two little applications using Tasker instead since I am an avid user of Tasker. I have an Android machine that is “always ON” and so can handle the job.

That’s a pity really as I do believe in paying for things that I find useful, however I don’t think the Early Adopter plan is worth the money for what I need it for. Plus, its name implies that it won’t exist for long and that it will be replaced by something more “regular” that will likely cost even more.

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Hi @janvv and @sdemills, thanks so much for your feedback! :slight_smile:

We want to make Apilio even better and we are grateful you gave us a chance, your comments are super valuable to see how the packages can fit your different cases.

We will keep evolving from here, the whole team is very thankful to get your comments, this will help us provide better fitting packages in the future.

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I’m in a similar situation. The heavy limitations brought about by the simplicity in IFTTT transactions combined with the bugs in this platform make the starter plan laughable. This decision especially stings considering that I just spent the effort to set up here. I’ll code a way around it somewhere else and am very disappointed. I can’t see for a second how the folks here think their product is on the same pricing level as an enterprise product like pandora, spotify, plex, or vudu.

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Apilio is great and am sorry to say that you are destroying it ! Guys do you know what can 40 variables do ? Nothing ! Three or four logic blocks and they are done. At first when I saw that pricing is above 30$ I was surprised but then said its okay since it made it easy to integrate our smart devices but then I noticed that limitation to 40 blocks and 40 variables which are not logic at all. You should have made it 40 logic blocks and 200 variables at least … or better unlimited. But 40 variables ?!! It is a joke.
Guys you have to reconsider this. I am sad that I have just knew Apilio a week a good and automated my sensors and devices with it but actually buying a 30$ Raspberry PI with home assistant or OpenHab will be a better solution and I already used those setup before and are easy.
Thanks.

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First the criticism. I feel this should have been and email notification , i only released this came into force when I went to change a Logiblock as most of mine run smoothly with no need to adjust. (/Criticism)

Suggestion with the pricing plan:
Lose the first one, have up to 3 logiblocks free, this should be enough for people to get comfortable with how it works. You see what people are using this for and how they use the variables so if there is a need also limit them

Premium: Price is fine and even better with the early adopter discount. Equivalent to a family trip to McDonald’s and I’m sure I have risked more money on Bitcoins. I see your closest competitor as Conrad Connect. But find there interface easy to follow but buggy and inconsistent especially with location and time zones.

i have no issues with paying a subscription, mainly because the last automation app Stringyfy closed down (free). Now that was easy to follow and good integrations with major brands. visual flow diagrams etc to use if and or logic.

To keep me paying I would like to see movement towards

A Mobile app with at least location services to enable presence sensing and more accurate Sunrise and Sunset. If this is developed this needs to have a Family integration. IE install on my wifes phone so i get her location so that logiblocks run when she enters a certain area.

Quicker response times - the only way i can see this improving is a direct integrations instead of Via IFTTT
(only main companies HUE Lifx Smarthings etc)

Google Nest. Now they have stopped new user to IFTTT from connecting to Nest this might be a good selling point.

You are also relying on a “free” service and they do loose companies and gain companies.

Maybe offer credit towards the next subscription cost for people who help others in this community

Keep up the good work hope to see a road map on what is coming next :wink:

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Also very disappointed. Please rethink your business model completely! You shouldn’t pay IFTTT, they should pay you (or buy Apilio) since you are just and advanced IFTTT, bringing tech experts to the IFTTT platform and making sure their ecosystem keeps on growing. This will bring IFTTT new payed contracts of companies willing to become popular via IFTTT.
The business model of IFTTT is a perfect win-win. This Apilio business model will kill Apilio. I’m not willing to pay for IFTTT and neither for Apilio, even if using 16 logicblocks, since I chose the devices I buy based on their IFTTT compatibility and thus expect the device vendors to pay IFTTT and Apilio to secure their market share.

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any recommendations on where to start? Apilio has been great for me over the last 6-8 months, but its a nice to have not a necessity, so can’t justify the subscription.

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I understand the need to make the company profitable. Any company wants to grow and be able to pay its workers …

That said, I think the price plan is not entirely correct … As some user has already said, I think the starter plan should be free and even more expanded. Nobody will pay for having 1 logical block, 2 variables and 3 actions. With these limitations you can not do anything … Just try apilio, so I think it should be free.

I also think that the Early Adopter plan is too limited, mainly because of the variables. Basically because Apilio forces you to enter the constants as variables … If the constant term were introduced without any limitation I think it would be more fair, since these constants do not imply any overload for the system and are only used to make the conditions.

Currently my automations go smoothly into the Early Adopter plan, but I only have 3 automations to simulate presence at home … Very possibly in the future this plan will be too small for me.

I think that with these plans and these prices, advanced users may end up leaving and assembling our own systems …

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Thanks for the comments everyone,

The last thing we wanted to do with the introduction of subscriptions is upset anyone, so we are personally very sorry if we’ve done that. However, we also have to balance doing great Apilio stuff with living in the real-world and I think everyone can understand we can’t move forward unless we start covering some costs to build a sustainable service model.

Please be very sure we are listening to everything you are saying and we will try to come up with something to help those struggling with the plan boundaries - which we thought we had done rather scientifically and logically by the way. And if you have suggestions of your own (there have already been some good ones in this thread) then please send them our way. At the end of the day we would like everyone to feel they’ve been treated fairly so will do our best to make that happen.

Thanks again for talking to us.

DanT

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Best wishes, Dan. You certainly can’t let the vocal minority sway your business decisions and I’m sure you’ve done your due diligence on whether the new business model will pan out. I’m pleased you gave those of us who can’t justify the cost of a subscription on our little tinkering projects some time to migrate elsewhere.

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Yet another free service, that makes people build solutions that they rely on, just to start charging for the service under the excuse that they need it to move on.

Good bye

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I was really happy of Your service but now I lost enthusiasm.

I understand that without money nobody can live. But if there was a small fee with unlimited conditions , logicblocks and variables I could valuate but with this cost I m not interesting to continue. thanks for all. Bye

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I am very surprised how this project came to a paid subscription however I quite understand the team need to grow and this need to be in a sustainable way.

The issue with paying for Apilio resides in the fact that most of us use it for quite simple things. It is viewed as an IFTTT extension or kind of a fine grain logic check.

Let say IFTTT would send me a notification for that specific thing everyday at a specific time but Apilio would have allowed me to send it only if I’m home.
I wonder if it’s worthy to pay for that extra bit of logic?

What I gonna do is abandon Apilio, I’ll receive the notification no matter if I’m home or not as I feel it is not worthy to pay for the extra logic involved.
IFTTT might comes up with a similar solution in the future perhaps.

So I am here to sadly say good bye Apilio.
It was good when free but I can live without it. Sorry guys.

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Just subscribed, but one minor point - it said my trial lasted until mid Jan, but when you subscribe- the expiry is the anniversary of when you subscribed and not the end of the trial.

Never-the-less, fully understand the need to charge and hopefully you will be successful, and as a result looking forward to seeing the platform grow…

Regards

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Thanks! Yes, that’s a limitation set by our payments service provider I’m afraid; it’s something we’re still looking into with them. DanT

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I came across Apilio in the last month and tinkered with it trying it out with a particular product where I was looking for a particular result. I created two logic blocks for that one product so it would do two different things. It worked well and I was very pleased. I was planning to tinker with it more to see what else I might do or how I could use Apolio with my growing home of IoT. An opportunity to get creative and be innovative. Unfortunately, this subscription (while I appreciate an innovator wants to monetize his creations) really puts a wet blanket on tinkering to find out what I can do with Apilio and if it’s the right product for me to continue on with. There have been a number of good suggestions in these comments about how the current subscription plan might be revised to give new and light-use users an opportunity to explore and get hooked and add to the Apilio community with their intellect. The current subscription tiers are just too limiting and unnecessarily so. I think what may be overlooked by Apilio is that a subscription which does not allow room for folks to tinker for free indefinitely and get hooked on the product is perhaps a little short sighted. The future viability of Apilio is arguably based upon the innovative uses the community of users do with the product and bringing new users t the community. You need that community and want it to grow. The current subscription approach does not encourage people to come try out and use the product and does not encourage users who have dipped their feet into the water to stay. In my instance, I just started and created two logic blocks, which would require the most expensive subscription. That cost threshold - for a user that just started to tinker with Apilio - does not encourage me. Hopefully, Apilio will reconsider the structure on its subscription plans to provide more leeway for light users to work with the product and explore. Perhaps, a free user-plan for those using 4 logic blocks or less. And, for heavy users, a subscription plan like that Apilio has announced already. Light users may eventually become heavy users and Apilio will reap the reward of those users moving into the paid subscription plan to pay for their heavier usage, and Apilio also benefits from the innovation those light users bring to the community. Apilio might also consider other ways to raise revenue - sell advertisement space on its web pages - it’s a perfect platform for smart product manufacturers to advertise their products. (Interestingly, by selling advertisement space, it creates an incentive for Apilio to bring more users and traffic to its webpages and free usage within a set framework is probably one of the best ways to encourage people to come, use and stay - look at how community forums for enthusiasts of a particular area have worked for years.) . Apilio, thanks for a neat product/service and hopefully, you’ll reconsider the structure of the subscription tiers.

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