Focus on Business Apps
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@eddowding I guess the real question is how many paying subscribers are there?
I've no idea, but I'd guess there a sustantial number of us (100s? 1000s?
)It'd be very cool if Cloudron adopted some or all of the transparency one see's at e.g. Buffer https://buffer.com/open
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I agree 100% with @igaudette. I do understand that some of the applications voted up on the App Wish List like Zulip (one of the top apps for quite some time) take a lot of resources. And Cloudron seems to support both business and home users. But before increasing my paid Cloudron instances, I am waiting to see some of my business needs met. It's a simple question of "make" vs. "buy". I would much rather "buy" a solidly hosted solution from Cloudron rather than "make" it myself using my company's development resources. But I can't wait forever and have started to investigate Cloudron's competitors to see if they can provide these business solutions. I believe in this platform, the Cloudron team, and our community, but spending time adding apps because they are "easy" seems like a bridge to nowhere. Let's start building to somewhere.
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J joseph referenced this topic
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Relevant link: https://forum.cloudron.io/topic/7457/developer-perspective
Bounties have come up again and again. Surely it's at least worth a survey of members and developers to scope it out? Management doesn't need to action it, but if you share the survey results, someone might like to pick it up as a project.
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I sympathise but struggle with the lack of precision and generality of "we need more business apps".
Yes, there is the voting system, but frankly it's not reliable given that the forum UI "hides" the vote count / button until the user hovers over it in the right place - lots of forum users don't know or use it.
And scattered posts in different AppWishlist entries are not easy to aggregate interest & needs.My feeling is that the unmet needs which clearly some pain or angst need to be more clearly identified in an easy-to-reference place. Maybe a new updated survey ? (yeah, I know, surveys, huh).
Itches will always be scratched, leading to some low-voted apps making it through, and that's fine, if the high-voted apps get some attention.
And a sanity note - while there are "app gaps", let's remember the plus points of the Cloudron platform, as many wanting new apps have graciously acknowledged.
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Oh I forgot I made this back in June, the last time this bothered me.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Y08UdmmCqgwQcZyIqQW0XcYgxZ1Dne9ix9QT7XogcEs/edit?gid=0#gid=0
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@timconsidine one gap is the public-voting / roadmap app Fider, or similar!
#dogfood -
@eddowding +1 for Fider. That would be a much better system for voting.
@timconsidine But the votes are just a quarter of the real problem. I don't recall who but someone from the Cloudron team clearly stated that in selecting the apps you were integrating, an important point for taking your decision was how easy it is to maintain.
The main issue that Cloudron is solving is making management for self-hosted apps easy... I just think you guys are rerouting from your main objective and it's disappointing.
With all the respect I have for the Cloudron team, I think you are not as good marketers as you are developers.
Inflation is at its highest... Businesses are trying to save on cost where they can and the open source industry is booming. You have THE SOLUTION to help millions of businesses to save money but you don't move a finger.
The AI industry is also booming, businesses are looking for affordable solutions to automate their processes and one of those solutions is n8n, which you have and it's great... But multiple modules are required to be self-hosted like a scraper (FireCrawl is the best right now) and there are plenty of amazing agentic platforms (Flowise is a popular one) around that can help businesses create Chatbots to automate their customer support.
I think you should definitely evaluate what the market wants, and create a strategy for the apps you are adding instead of adding some random apps from time to time. You need a STRATEGY.
I am a marketer and built many SaaS so my vision may be different than some users here but my point is valid and if you think about it, you will agree with me.
I am also a business owner and like any CEO, I want to save money on my infrastructure and Cloudron has been a game-changer for me. The only con is the amount of business-focused apps to help me scale my infrastructure at an affordable price.
Some ideas that you could implement to set up a strategy:
- Voting system (You do already but use a better platform and take it more seriously)
- Look at trending repos (monthly period) on GitHub and spot the projects that get a lot of attention. Those popular projects will bring you customers because so many people want to host them but don't have the knowledge to do it. To name a few:
- Twenty CRM
- Plane Task Management
- Autogen (Their next version will be FIRE... Probably the best autonomous AI agent platform)
- Look on Reddit the self-hosted section to see what apps are popular
etc...
I have looked for an alternative, and to be honest, none are as good as Cloudron and it's why I want you to push your solution to a higher level. The same boring answer comes again and again: "We have limited resources" but just hire more staff. More customers = more revenues.
You could even change your business models to include Cloudron for free for personal apps, and charge a higher price for business apps (like 25$/m). Then you tag your apps as personal or business usage.
I think you need to revise your business model. You have demands and if you fail to meet your user's requirements, then you will miss on a big opportunity to make more money.
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@igaudette said in Focus on Business Apps:
@eddowding +1 for Fider. That would be a much better system for voting.
I agree to with this! Seeing another solution where suggestions are prioritized for apps vs voting in the forum would be helpful.
I realize all of the priorities with the platform itself, but for me to continue to show ROI vs some of the platforms coming out, I do need some additional business-based apps.
Since I became a customer there has been a ton of work done and Cloudron has come a long way and I appreciate everything done by the team. But I do feel there needs to be a better system like Fiddler to vote and prioritize apps.
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I do agree that as a paid customer I feel voting in the forum is a waste of time and also more and more of my questions in various topics are just not answered or the priority/ backlog is not visible to us so it feels like it's going nowhere.
I've seen several topics and complains like this very one but staff gives an impression of being too busy to improve and that's a red flag which becomes very visible to customers, so I Believe more transparency and action is needed or making it more easy for existing customers to contribute more apps and influence the strategy through a serious app voting system.
I stopped suggesting apps to the wishlist because the existing apps in wishlist are waiting for too long without any follow up like nobody from the staff cares anymore. And I want to think I'm wrong. -
Imagine being able to post something for Satya Nadella and fully expect him to read it, respond to it, and act on it! Or most other CEOs! It's taken the Cloudron team at least 8 years to get to this point, and if you look beyond the apps available, the infrastructure is simply amazing. Yes, it seems simple to add more... everyone supplies Docker images... but have you ever looked inside one? My goodness, there is no "one method" that makes any given Docker image work. Then the Cloudron team has to figure out how to integrate it into the Cloudron ecosystem (and then adapt on the fly as the CEOs of those other apps revamp everything in their next update!)
Getting to these complicated business and AI apps... have you written to the maintainers/CEOs of those to demand that they simplify their Docker apps so that they are easier to get up and running? You should.
FWIW, their business page, https://www.cloudron.io/business.html, lays out what Cloudron aims to do. I think it is succeeding. Nowhere does it say, "will jump when users say jump and code any requested app, no matter the difficulty or challenge of integration into the existing 'compliant, secure and flexible' Cloudron system." Personally, I've always found it funny that so many of the Requested Apps come from the Cloudron team!
Like I've said before, go ahead, go try some other vendor and you will see just how incredible Cloudron is. Others will either be way too pricey for what you get (and pricier when you want more), and you will find NO help for problems, no matter what payment tier you are in.
I would add that if the Cloudron business page, or elsewhere, promised that they will make any and all requested apps available as part of the payment then perhaps a complaint is warranted. They promise "timely updates", "latest releases and security fixes", "production ready apps".. check, check and check. The recently updated banner shows some pretty good and business-appropriate apps, too.
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Your post seem to imply we ignore the hard work, but what I think is rather the customers are concerned with staff priorities and worry of the status quo or regression in quality.
There are currently thousands of topics in the wishlist section and no way to see clearly if any will be on the roadmap in the future. If you then compare with how many apps are in the app store it means it would take decades before current wishlist can even partially be addressed.
The staff also mentioned they have more work so cannot deliver interesting apps or apps requiring more complex setup, which raise the natural concern of the customers who see bugs being introduced and dont see more popular apps be included.
So yeah Cloudron has an incredible value but wouldn't be nice to be able for customers to have more influence at least the apps to be picked? Or at least to cleanup the wishlist from the apps that are waiting for too long in the forum to at least not create false hopes.
And as you say packaging Cloudron apps is a challenge but then what is done to simplify this or to call for contributors?
What is done to motivate more customers? Even the referral program was cancelled.
There is of course lot of work around quality and maintenance of apps. This is I believe understood by the customers but yet doesn't invalide the complaints. -
@scooke Cloudron is great. We love it. That's why we're here.
And we care for it, too. That's why we speak up.
@girish - you and Johannes have our full support and appreciation. Do drop me (or many others here) a line if you'd like to talk more fluidly about how Cloudron's second decade can be even better — and crucially even more lucrative so as to support the mission.
Update: Related idea - might AI help with packaging? https://forum.cloudron.io/topic/12862/using-ai-to-build-a-package
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@scooke I totally agree with your points. And I was critical of the lack of business applications. But doing things right (as the Cloudron team always does) is more important than anything else.
Perhaps this is more a process or communication issue. For example, how are new apps chosen for inclusion in the platform? What are the ongoing responsibilities and difficulties of sustaining any particular application?
And lastly, I would be willing to pay more so that the Cloudron team can add resources to accomplish more. That being said, sometimes growing is not the right answer as other things change (and not for the better).
But when you experience a good thing, it is only natural to want more if it, n'est ce pas:)?
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@SansGuidon said in Focus on Business Apps:
There are currently thousands of topics in the wishlist
1,600 to be precise --- with the top-voted Wireguard now being open for 5 years!
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@girish and @nebulon have created Cloudron to scratch an itch and make a living out of it.
Not everyone needs or wants to scale, even if you yourself want them to help you make bigger business.I also don't expect them to publicly talk about their business here, that's not how they have operated these past years. (See for example this 158 posts topic with exactly 0 post from them)
But I'm pretty sure they are reading, so hi!
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@ruihildt said in Focus on Business Apps:
See for example this 158 posts topic with exactly 0 post from them
Incorrect!
https://forum.cloudron.io/post/10861
https://forum.cloudron.io/post/11131 -
I’ve been less active in the Cloudron forums recently (sorry), but still use Cloudron daily for my freelance business. While I’m not a large business, I do like to act and think like one when it comes to hosting services, so I saw this post and wanted to add some thoughts.
With a business perspective, I would prefer the focus to be on infrastructure features rather than adding more apps for now. I think business-focused features such as 1️⃣ allowing multiple backup locations with custom retention rules, 2️⃣ better spam IP blocking with managed IP lists via URLs, 3️⃣ improved spam filtering in mail, and 4️⃣ syncing a secondary Cloudron instance with the primary Cloudron instance for either load balancing or failover… I consider these to all be very important features that most businesses would consider critical before investing big into Cloudron. And these are just off the top of my head as hopeful features to see added soon. For some of these I know users like me have been waiting for years. The good news is I believe there is some movement for the backup improvements soon.
These features are very important, especially for medium to large businesses that prioritize uptime. I’d absolutely love to see various apps added sooner than later too (such as some of the website analytics apps), don’t get me wrong, but I think for me at least they’re less important than adding resiliency and business feature sets. And heck, the improved spam filtering / blocking would be helpful not only for businesses but personal users too.
