I built a thing using Cloudron - testers wanted

[fbartels]

For me I see constantly changing prices on the website. At one moment Emby is 5,99, you do a reload of the page and then its 14,99.

The "Starting at £5.99/mo" is also wrong. As this is the price for monthly payment. When paying per year it is less than 5,99 per month.

[scooke]

I guess we are the testers!

[p44]

Hi @3246 very interesting project, is interesting also to understand how do you orchestrate automations and different cases. You have all customer instances on the same machine, or you will deploy a different one via API?

[3246]

@scooke thank you for the feedback! That's helpful. Let me have a look at fixing that glitch.

[3246]

@humptydumpty shouldn't be. Apps have different pricing based on resource use. Roughly three tiers. Can you send me a screener of what you are seeing? Thanks for your feedback.

[3246]

@fbartels uuhh, that's not what should be happening. The prices are fixed in the db based on resource use, roughly along three tiers. I think it might be a caching issue.

Please can you let me know what browser you are using?

Appriciate the feedback.

[3246]

@scooke why thank you Yes, I have only tested it myself, which as most scientists would agree is too small a sample size to draw meaningful conclusions from.

I appriciate all your feedback!

[3246]

@p44 thanks for looking. It's split over currently two servers, one for smaller apps and one for those that need more oompf and disk space. They are added to the orchestrator as servers with capacity info. The system then somewhat intelligently balances loads by monitoring real load up to a threshold. If it goes above the threshold for total capacity it will send me an alert to request I add another server.

[3246]

Thanks for your feedback, everyone. I really appriciate it. The offer of free apps still stands

I totally forgot to ask: please let me know what browser language and currency you select. I've tested in GBP only so far but EUR and USD update once a day automatically.

[fbartels]

@3246 I am using Firefox. The flickering you see is when I am doing a reload of the page

https://cdn.9wd.eu/temp/Kooha-2026-02-16-17-39-36.webm

[3246]

Thanks @fbartels, I'll have a look.

I also forgot to mention and link to from the homepage: https://blog.instantappshosting.com/

I'm planning to post more 'alternatives to... <favourite saas>' posts to encourage SME's and freelancers to switch to FOSS apps on the blog.

[crazybrad]

@3246 Very interesting concept. One caution: SoGo £5.99/mo. EAS consumes a ton of resources. Are prices per user/email account or an unlimited number of users. Also need to consider storage per user as a 25GB mailbox @ £.02/GB could begin to be meaningful to your profit margins.

[luckow]

@crazybrad psst. I want to shop a Jellyfin and throw in my petabytes of cooking videos.

[3246]

@crazybrad that's good advice. I don't know how it will play out. Right now I am shooting from the hip. I may move it to a higher tier if it becomes too much.

I don't want to charge per user but per app with realistic limits. There will be a disk limit which is currently fair use but certainly be in place for space hungry apps at some point.

[3246]

@luckow aww too late! Jellyfin and Emby etc should not be on offer. Let me fix that for you

[luckow]

@3246 The underlying problem is a lack of quotas for apps on Cloudron. Since this cannot be solved at the platform level, the only option is to set a volume per app. For example, you could define a volume of 10 GB for Jellyfin (or Nextcloud or Sogo ...), move the app into this volume, and give the customer the option to purchase more GB for more money.
Problem solved.

[3246]

@luckow thanks, that sounds like a good idea. I'll investigate that.

[humptydumpty]

Now the pricing is different. Initially, it was 5.99 for all but a few (Mattermost was one).

[3246]

@humptydumpty that looks right to me. I am looking at the caching which might be the root cause.

[crazybrad]

@3246 One idea is to separate the apps into high, medium, low resources (especially considering @luckow cooking channel). Launch your service with attractive prices using just the "low" apps, where you won't get burned and need to jack up the prices, something your target audience will likely hate.

Another thought is I personally find the list of Cloudron apps mind-boggling at times. I would also consider offering packages which might include bundles of apps that match business needs (e.g. CRM + Email + Bitwarden). You increase the transaction size, reduce the decision fatigue, and if you price it as Buy 3, Get 1 Free, the economies will surely drive some business. Solopreneur, freelancer, etc. Think about what they need and bundle a solution!