I take that very seriously, but just to understand you correctly. Are you saying that because you self-host n8n and you pay some other entity (for example Digital Ocean) for that, it is not “fair” that we charge for these additional proprietary features? Following that logic, should all Desktop applications, like Photoshop, Word, Excel, … also be free, as you also run them on your own computer. Transferred into the physical world would probably lettuce, meat, butter, … and all other groceries have to be free as well, after all, you do not just have to prepare the whole meal yourself, you even have to go to the store and get them. If you have to pay and on top even leave the house anyway for that, you can simply go to a restaurant after all? And do not even get me started with IKEA!
I guess they all sound absurd, but that is actually the same to what you are saying. Sure, you do some work (hosting) and you pay for that (assume something in the $4 - $15 range), but honestly, that is not even 1/1000000000th of the work and money we put into making it possible that you are able to do that. And is not so different from the steak or the IKEA closet, the only difference is that we actually give away 98% for free and provide even (if we stay with the grocery example) free cooking tips and help if a meal does not turn out to be as expected.
And the total lack of support for the Teams plan almost feels like an insult. Right now, we already have the problem that companies say to our face that they do not see the need to pay for special support, as community support is so fast and good. So why get special support, how much of a difference could it make? The only way to repair that would actually be, to stop answering questions here and make it only paid that they feel a need. (btw. for sure, nothing we have planned!)
But honestly, if we would start to give people that pay us $25 access to email support, that would result in exactly the same. After all, would we have to give them priority over others that do not pay, and we would literally not be able to answer any questions here anymore. On top is $25 or even $200, not that a huge amount of money if we talk about support costs. The people we have in support are very smart and technical people based in Europe. They earn proper salaries. So each question we answer costs us real money, which is more than the above-mentioned amounts for most questions. With questions via email having the disadvantage that people would not even look in the forum and just write because they can. All answers will then be lost forever and not help anybody else.
And calling it extortion and exploitative, I do not even know what to say about that. First, I am not a native speaker, but from my understanding of the words, I cannot see how they can be used in that context at all. Nothing changed between the day we did not have any paid features and the day we introduced them. We did not take a single feature away or introduced any limits. You and everybody else can still use n8n 100% the same. We just added additional features, which would be paid. Things that did not exist before and things you and all other people could apparently previously live without. (and btw. still adding tons of improvements and features constantly for free at the same time)
Sounds like that just because we give away so much value for free, we are not allowed to charge for other things a fair price? “Totally fine if Zapier charges $500, because I know I have to pay them. But not if n8n does the same it is outrageous. After all, are they currently totally free, how can they even think about charging something similar?!?!?!”. Which is, btw. not even the case, pretty sure that 95% of the people that pay us $500 for 100(!) workflows would pay a big multiple of that to Zapier (then the $10/month for the Digital Ocean server does not really matter anymore).
I also understand that maybe not everybody is able to pay for those proprietary features. Which is sad, and I would love it if we could charge $10/month for everything and be done with it. Sadly would that not work. It would surely be “nice”, but we would not be able to build a sustainable business. Meaning we would then, in 2 years, not discuss how we dare to charge meaningful amounts of money for our proprietary features, but rather about why there are no more new features, no bug fixes, no docs, and no support at all because we have run out of money.
Also, is that sadly how the world works. Not everybody can have everything they want. I can normally not order a great steak in a restaurant and then rather go with one of the cheap options, others can not afford the $799 Zapier Company plan, and our proprietary features are maybe too expensive for you. That is the problem with capitalism, but as we learned, socialism is also not the solution.
But in the n8n case, it is probably better to be happy and thankful about all the things we can offer for free and know that some people can afford the proprietary ones. After all, will those people/companies be the ones that finance the whole operation and enable us to keep on giving away the rest for free.
Regarding what n8n is and what it is not (in short, we are not the “free Zapier”). I wrote something about that before, so before repeating myself, I simply link to it here: