Today marks Frappe’s 16 year anniversary or the Foundation day. We thought why not celebrate it with a treat for you all! Starting today, we are releasing a new $5/mo plan on Frappe Cloud, for everyone.
Why?
Before this, the minimum plan on Frappe Cloud was $10/mo ($120/year), which isn’t very high for hosting (managed) a B2B software like an ERP. But it is also not cheap when you are from a developing country like India or are an indie hacker.
Apart from ERPNext, we now have a variety of solid and independent apps like Frappe Builder, Learning, Insights, etc. that means $120/year will be minimum for hosting these apps on Frappe Cloud too.
We want to lower the barrier to entry even further by bringing it to half the cost, i.e. $5/month! Giving the same amazing no-CLI hosting experience.
Before you start comparing this with pricing of other cloud platforms, let me bring it up. You can definitely find cloud VPS for similar pricing (e.g. Digital Ocean’s $4 droplet), but consider the amount of DevOps effort required to self-host Frappe apps. Frappe Cloud provides unparalleled experience here. Don’t take my word for it, read this.
Possibilities
Let’s discuss a few cases where this plan can deliver amazing value to you!
Experimentations
If you just want to play around with ERPNext or any other product for a few weeks before making a decision, I think this plan is perfect for you. Even better, if you are a service provider or Frappe partner, you can give your prospects a demo site of their own for longer periods of time without worrying about incurring too much cost.
Websites with CMS
Frappe Builder combined with the power of Framework’s DocType capabilities, kick-ass content management system as I call it, gives you the power to build static and dynamic websites.
Let’s deploy a shiny new website (even a contact form!) for our friend Jenny’s wall art business with Frappe Cloud and Frappe Builder in minutes:
Let’s add a custom domain and make it Jenny’s own:
The site is live here. I really feel this combo is a game changer 🚀
Micro Sites
Just think about it, now you can have less powerful sites for things like Wiki, Gameplan (async workplace communication) or even an authentication server for single sign-on:
wiki.company.com, gp.company.com and auth.company.com!
I am looking at you microservices 🤣
Limitations
Apart from having a lower CPU, DB and storage limits, for this plan to make sense financially, we had to enforce some limitations that don’t exist in other plans. For sites on this plan, the HTTP request timeout is reduced to 30 seconds (normal is 120s) and scheduler tick interval has been increased to 10 minutes (normal is 1m).
But you do not have to worry about this restrictions if you are just getting started or your use case does not require a lot of computing power (30s is a decent timeout though). I tried setting up ERPNext (with demo data), HR, and a few other apps and it runs smooth. It just takes about 60MB of database space!
The apps you can install on a $5/mo site are limited to first-party apps and a few third-party apps like Raven and India Compliance. Currently, this plan is only available in Mumbai, India region, with US support coming soon.
Onwards and upwards!
This plan combined with new products like Frappe Builder and Frappe CRM is going to lay the foundation for new markets and possibilities.
Get started on Frappe Cloud today!
If you face any issues with using this plan on Frappe Cloud or have any feedback, feel free to drop an email to support@frappe.io.
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