Budibase Will Soon Limit Users on OSS Self Hosted Version reddit / selfhosted ---------------------------------------------------------------------- absolutesantaja · 2023-11-14 15:09 Just received the email over the weekend but if your self hosting Budibase you will soon be limited to 20 users even on the open source version. This is very unfortunate for me because I was running a bunch of volunteer community projects on there and really liked how they didn't hide SSO behind a paywall. Not everyone using apps like these are companies trying to save money and having to pay $5 per user isn't feasible for volunteer projects that don't have any money to begin with. See [https://budibase.com/blog/updates/pricing- v3/](https://budibase.com/blog/updates/pricing-v3/) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- emeadows · 2023-11-14 15:33 Yup, that sucks. I have one set up for a noon-profit with 76 users. Guess I'll be developing my own frontend now. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- notdoreen · 2023-11-14 15:37 What kind of stuff where you doing OP? I played around with it for a day but didn't really know what it could be used for ---------------------------------------------------------------------- iamdadmin · 2023-11-14 15:40 There’s heaps of FOSS logic engines like this around. While very annoying, it should be easy enough to find a suitable alternative platform. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- absolutesantaja · 2023-11-14 15:41 I've looked at almost every one and this one was the cleanest and easiest to work with. It was also the only one not on the SSO hall of shame. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- absolutesantaja · 2023-11-14 15:42 I used it for quickly building interactive forms, I was scheduling volunteers, tracking who was going to bring what, how many hours every spent, lots of stuff. It even had the option to email calendar invites out based on whatever logic I setup. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- absolutesantaja · 2023-11-14 15:43 I'm planning on going back and seeing if Directus has matured enough, last time I looked it had some really awkward bugs with it's SDK. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- webtroter · 2023-11-14 15:51 I never played with Budibase, but I looks a bit like [OpenBlocks](https://openblocks.dev/). Maybe this can be an alternative? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- absolutesantaja · 2023-11-14 15:53 I hadn't seen this one before and it looks promising. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- psychicsword · 2023-11-14 15:59 It may be worth reaching out to them if it is actually saving you a ton of time. > **Does Budibase offer discounts?** > Budibase is happy to offer eligible nonprofit organizations a discount across all our paid tiers on annual plans. > Volume based discounts are also available for Enterprise plans. Contact Sales to find out more. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ssddanbrown · 2023-11-14 16:03 That sucks. This is one of the reasons I'm always really wary about any kind of open source project that's VC-backed, the financial pressure always seems to win and affect things at some point. If there's enough folks in the affected open source audience, it could be worth getting together to patch out the limits, at least temporarily. This effort could then form a user base for a potential fork if required. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- highedutechsup · 2023-11-14 16:09 OpenSource + Selfhosted = fork and change source? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- absolutesantaja · 2023-11-14 16:10 It sounds like that only applies if you have a company or a non- profit. What I'm doing doesn't even have an organization. It's just community members who got together to do things. Yes I'm keeping it vague but there is no structure at all and no money, i was paying for the hosting personally but even a discounted rate for 100 people just wouldn't make any sense for what I'm doing. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- absolutesantaja · 2023-11-14 16:12 Budibase kinda plays lose with the term OSS. Even the OSS versions depends on proprietary libraries pulled from their enterprise project and if you wanted to build a full OSS version you'd have to re- implement a ton of stuff. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dada513 · 2023-11-14 16:17 since it's open source, you could just remove the limitation. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- absolutesantaja · 2023-11-14 16:20 Unfortunately they use the term open source pretty loosely. I looked into removing the 10 plugin limit a few months back and all of the interesting parts of the application depend on proprietary libraries from there enterprise version. The limits aren't set in the OSS side and to use the app without the proprietary would require extensive rewrites. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- absolutesantaja · 2023-11-14 16:23 Several folks have asked why not just fork it? And I think that would be a great idea however like most of these projects, it's not fully open source and thus all the source code isn't available. Large parts of what makes the app function are only available as already packaged libraries in npm. All of that would have to be deciphered and re- written. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- liotier · 2023-11-14 16:24 Then it is not "OSS Self Hosted"... Thank them for the clarification ! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- absolutesantaja · 2023-11-14 16:37 I agree with you but its advertised as being open source all over their Github and everywhere else, unfortunate they don't mention that if you only use the OSS parts you won't have a fully functioning product. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- liotier · 2023-11-14 16:42 Their dishonesty should be more widely advertised. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ssddanbrown · 2023-11-14 16:51 Ah, interestingly I was just looking into this after having a quick look into how they manage their licensing code. I've [queried this with them here](https://github.com/Budibase/budibase/discussions/12377). I'm always interested in how projects may (mis)represent themselves as open source. I track such cases [in a repo here](https://github.com/ssddanbrown/Open-Source-Confusion-Cases). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- imsinghaniya · 2023-11-14 16:52 I'm building a Formester and happy to offer a non profit discount. We are not OSS though. Currently used by many non profits around the world. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- subven1 · 2023-11-14 17:01 >I’m using the Budibase community plan, and my account has over 20 users. What is going to happen to my account and users? \- You will not be able to add new users (if you’re over the 20 user limit). To add new users, you will need to upgrade to a paid plan. Maybe you are able to create a bunch of dummy users now (like 50 ghost accounts with various emails) and if you want to add a new user, you just edit one of the already created ghost accounts. Is that an option? Otherwise look out for alternatives or pay the price. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- absolutesantaja · 2023-11-14 17:02 While I appreciate it, there is no non-profit or any sort of orgnization and Formester doesn't look like it provides everything that BB was providing. I'm just a volunteer working within my community and all we really have to pay with is time. I was able to throw the app on a server at my house and only paid for a little electricity and not much else. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- absolutesantaja · 2023-11-14 17:03 I've also wondered what would happen if I manually add them directly to the couchdb underneath it but we won't know until that version has been released. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- imsinghaniya · 2023-11-14 17:14 I do understand and probably you'll find a self hostable alternative. I'll also see if I find anything. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- lilolalu · 2023-11-14 17:29 How is it an open source project if it needs closed source libraries? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CAP_NET_ADMIN · 2023-11-14 17:59 It's using proprietary libraries in the "open source" version and I don't think they are available without paying. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Nezteb · 2023-11-14 18:07 It looks like [the source (minus the "pro" package) is still mostly GP L](https://github.com/search?q=repo%3ABudibase%2Fbudibase+path%3A*LICE NSE*+language%3AText&type=code&l=Text); I wonder if there's a way to remove the hard-coded limit? Luckily there are ton of options in this space: - `refinedev/refine` (16.5k stars, [MIT](https://github.com/refinedev/refine/blob/master/LICENSE)) - `payloadcms/payload` (13.9k, [MIT](https://github.com/payloadcms/payload/blob/main/license.md)) - `illacloud/illa-builder` (8k stars, [Apache 2.0](https://github.com/illacloud/illa-builder#license)) - `windmill-labs/windmill` (6.3k stars, [AGPLv3](https://github.com/windmill-labs/windmill#commercial- license)) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- iamdadmin · 2023-11-14 18:08 I’m totally with you on the second part. I just meant for a little wiggle room to migrate. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- subven1 · 2023-11-14 18:09 Most of the time, editing the DB/User table is not advisable \^\^ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- webtroter · 2023-11-14 18:28 Oh I did not realize there was a break in the development. I'll take a look into lowcode. Thanks! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- jaxett · 2023-11-14 18:31 Checkout saltcorn.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- absolutesantaja · 2023-11-14 18:46 This looks pretty cool, I'll have to try it out. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- absolutesantaja · 2023-11-14 19:05 I've looked at some of these and many are either more limited or not as user friendly than Budibase was. For example Retool is limited to 5 users and ToolJet is limited to 5 tables. AppSmith the last time I checked only supported fixed width pages which makes it unusable on Mobile. I need to look through the rest of these so I can have a better opinion. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- adamshand · 2023-11-14 19:08 The enshitification begins … ---------------------------------------------------------------------- absolutesantaja · 2023-11-14 19:32 In case anyone from Budibase ever sees this, I did want to say that I understand needing to make money from what you do. I don't have a problem with open source projects having an enterprise version with additional features as long as they don't consider basic SSO to be an enterprise feature. Lots of other features like auditing, group and role based access controls, commercial database drivers for Oracle and others, high availability, multi user collaboration, rebranding, live deployments, project management features, etc make sense being enterprise only features. If your self hosting and need all that other stuff then you probably should be paying for the software. Plenty of other projects like GitLab and Coder work this way and the open source version isn't limited in a way that affects hobbyist. Budibase advertised their free/oss version as being unlimited users since the very beginning and it's a real stab in the back for anyone who's contributed to the project. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Not_your_guy_buddy42 · 2023-11-14 19:35 I wonder if [docassemble](https://github.com/jhpyle/docassemble) might suit your needs ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ssddanbrown · 2023-11-14 19:46 There are some legitimate cases where an open source project can depend on closed-source/proprietary elements to work. Game mods and projects like OpenRCT2 come to mind. Or some open source projects are built around non-open APIs. So it can depend on what value is being advertised as open source, but yeah this is probably not one of those cases since they're advertising the project as a whole as open source, so would be misleading if it indeed can't be built and ran on just their open source code. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sexyshingle · 2023-11-14 19:48 wow thanks for your work! this is great to know! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- opensrcdev · 2023-11-14 19:59 Get rid of Budibase and use [Windmill.dev](https://Windmill.dev) instead. Back when I evaluated Budibase, it was horribly buggy and unusable. [Windmill.dev](https://Windmill.dev) is full-featured, self- hosted, is pretty darn stable, and AFAIK doesn't have these user limitations. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- opensrcdev · 2023-11-14 20:01 [Windmill.dev](https://Windmill.dev) destroys Budibase in terms of stability and features, and Windmill is more stable as well. I ran into all sorts of problems with Budibase, back when I tried it out. That was just a few months ago, and it was completely unusable for me. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- absolutesantaja · 2023-11-14 20:11 It appears to have a 10 user limit on the self hosted version. See https://www.windmill.dev/pricing ---------------------------------------------------------------------- GlassedSilver · 2023-11-14 20:35 I'm using Directus myself and really like it, but I got a bit of a sour aftertaste when I learned that it must take a lot of convincing for them to consider implementing functions that are part of the standard repertoire of even spreadsheet applications like Excel. Now I don't mean this in the way of them needing to have feature parity with Excel, but I'm not talking about some formatting, UI or otherwise feature, but the actual core functions. Call me oldfashioned, but I think a database shouldn't wait for user pressure in the form of upvotes for a feature request to implement something like Excel's XLOOKUP... But despite that, UI-wise it's a marvelous application and makes designing a database really simple and within a very limited scope beautifully designed process. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- iamdadmin · 2023-11-14 20:37 Nice, it supports SSO as well! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Vincevw · 2023-11-14 20:40 A "Pricing" button on the website of an open source project is always such a big red flag. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ssddanbrown · 2023-11-14 20:57 I've been meaning to put together a blogpost on red flags, but mine are generally something like this for established-looking projects: - Locked down features / pricing tiers - Complicated license setup that requires assessing multiple files - A large banner requesting GitHub stars in the readme/website - Significant push/advertisement of their "ProductHunt" page - Mixed license (open and non-open) main project repo - Blog full of frequent subject-tangential blogposts - Banner/blogpost advertising getting millions of $ in funding - Very frequent posts here on Reddit with loads of emojis and keywords - Bonus flag for [obvious gaming of Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r /opensource/comments/136nt2b/appwrite_cloud_beta_is_live/) These usually indicate a project is disproportionately visible compared to others via marketing and desperately pushing for growth which can often signal plans are short-term and changeable though. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- alex2003super · 2023-11-14 21:03 > limited to 20 users even on the open source version Lol sed -i 's/20/9999999999/g' * ---------------------------------------------------------------------- absolutesantaja · 2023-11-14 21:06 If only it was that easy lol. Unfortunately the code that places that limit will probably be part of the proprietary packages and deliberately obfuscated like the 10 plugin limit is. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- vicks9880 · 2023-11-14 21:09 Sooner or later every opensource software will pose such limitations. There are hundreds of examples.. Its just greed of mankind. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Khargara · 2023-11-14 21:56 Well, it was predictable because they changed their pricing several times this year. With [REI3](https://rei3.de/en/home) you will never face such limitations for the free version. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- absolutesantaja · 2023-11-14 22:08 I'll have to spend some time looking at REI3 but it looks like it does some cool things like letting you write functions directly in postgres pg/plsql ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Vincevw · 2023-11-14 22:16 Contributor License Agreements are the biggest red flag of all, where even if the project is GPL they sometimes still take your copyright! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Khargara · 2023-11-14 22:17 Yes you can write custom functions, upgrade safe, in plsql and also frontend functions via JS if needed. Most easy way to try REI3 is to download and run the portable version. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Ivanow · 2023-11-14 22:18 Not necessarily. There are many business models for open source projects that warrant “pricing” button, and aren’t predatory, for example company offering hosted services of OS project with guaranteed SLA and support. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- absolutesantaja · 2023-11-14 22:25 I was able to get it running pretty quickly, doesn't look like it supports SSO but it does support MFA. If I had just randomly found the site I wouldn't have been real clear on what the software does. Hopefully the product continues to grow. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ssddanbrown · 2023-11-14 22:35 Ah, yeah, good point. That's a biggie I forgot. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mdxdave · 2023-11-14 22:58 But only with 10 users. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- tradinghumble · 2023-11-14 23:22 Uninstall - pronto ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ashooner · 2023-11-14 23:35 I personally prefer my OSS developers to not require food, clothing, or shelter. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- violet-crayola · 2023-11-15 00:13 Not if noone is interested in forking ---------------------------------------------------------------------- violet-crayola · 2023-11-15 00:17 Its one of those firebase clones? We used one called directus and they just changed license to BSL not allowing us to use it anymore. Typical - build up the sheeple base that trust you then start shaving the sheep ---------------------------------------------------------------------- teachoop · 2023-11-15 01:30 Appsmith has dynamic layouts for mobile now. I know some of the developer relations guys at Appsmith and they're good folks. I don't work for them. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- absolutesantaja · 2023-11-15 01:41 I’ll take a look again, it also looks like they don’t support generic sso unless you upgrade to enterprise. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- robertjfaulkner · 2023-11-15 01:58 Open source =\= free. I understand why people think it does, but they are not synonymous. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- falcorns_balls · 2023-11-15 04:33 This. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- HoustonBOFH · 2023-11-15 04:36 Nice list. Will be watching it. You may want to look at pfSense. Some have expressed concern... (Not wanting to start a side thread here.) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- HoustonBOFH · 2023-11-15 04:38 That is a hard limit for me. I will NEVER sign one. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- softwarebuyer2015 · 2023-11-15 09:53 it's just so hard to know what to build. total minefield. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- OtherUse1685 · 2023-11-15 10:27 Windmill has a 50 SSO users limit in its free self hosted version. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- OtherUse1685 · 2023-11-15 10:33 What? It used to be 50 users limit, now it's 10... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- softwarebuyer2015 · 2023-11-15 11:18 i looked into a few of these. some names from memory : supabase, baserow, nocodb, ragic, saltcorn. can't immediately swear which are self hostable. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- codeagency · 2023-11-15 11:44 A pricing button should not be a red flag in all cases. Not if the pricing is just for a hosted / cloud version. Similar like eg rancher.com Everything is OSS, no features locking etc... The pricing is only if you're interested in a hosted version or if you want premium support. That's a totally understandable and fair model in my opinion to justify a pricing while also calling the project OSS ---------------------------------------------------------------------- setipio · 2023-11-15 13:22 use UrlyUp for free to a local version of buddybase, https://urlyup.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- r1ckm4n · 2023-11-15 14:12 My old business partner wanted to do that with Magento when Adobe bought it. It was a neat idea but he had trouble aligning the base he collected and they gave up. The Buddibase OSS community could very well execute a successful fork. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SolFlorus · 2023-11-15 14:23 How do you propose OSS receives funding to pay their developers? The red flag should have been the [license](https://github.com/Budibase/budibase/blob/master/LICENSE). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- violet-crayola · 2023-11-15 17:44 Appwrite is another one ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sir_winston_gerbil · 2023-11-15 18:06 What about Baserow? Not a perfectly equivalent solution, but depending on use case may be complementary. Or does it also have proprietary libraries that prevent it from being readily forked? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- parski · 2023-11-15 19:21 Very nice. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- absolutesantaja · 2023-11-15 19:39 Not sure how this helps anything. Looks like another CloudFlare Tunnel or ngrok alternative. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- absolutesantaja · 2023-11-15 19:43 They're not really the same thing. Supabase is a replacement for Firebase but really it provides is the back end and until recently was not real friendly to self host securely. Baserow and Nocodb are more like shared excel sheets and don't really support building out a fully functional site. Ragic appears to be commercial only. I need to evaluate saltcorn. I'm thinking about putting together a page comparing all of them. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- absolutesantaja · 2023-11-15 19:46 Baserow is more of an AirTable replacement and from what I've seen doesn't let you build full featured custom web sites. It's more of shared spreadsheet kind of system with forms. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- setipio · 2023-11-16 00:26 Did u try with ngrock free? or Cloudflare? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- absolutesantaja · 2023-11-16 00:44 Those aren’t the same thing as budibase. They’re just ways to host apps without a public ip. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- setipio · 2023-11-16 00:46 oh buddybase not a selfhostedapp ---------------------------------------------------------------------- aceton · 2023-11-16 00:52 >changed license to BSL not allowing us to use it due to the $5 million limit? or what's the catch? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- absolutesantaja · 2023-11-16 00:53 It is self hosted but using cloudflare or ngrok doesn’t change the new user limit. It’s part of the software. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- setipio · 2023-11-16 00:55 Sorry for not being of further help then. If you want something pure wireguard u wont get it with cf and ngrock though. Cloudflared proprietary and ngrock same. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- setipio · 2023-11-16 00:56 setip.io pure wireguard so u can mix and match proxy ports with direct access as well. Both tcp and udp. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- aceton · 2023-11-16 01:19 Going through the comments and alternatives, seems like the only option without limits on users if you want to use openid/oath SSO is Directus. Is that it? :/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- violet-crayola · 2023-11-16 02:38 Yeah 5 million total. You would be surprised how many businesses fall into that category. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- trieu1912 · 2023-11-16 05:26 sorry i don't use it but is that a limit user of the form app you created or an limit to user access the editor from budibase ---------------------------------------------------------------------- powerfulparadox · 2023-11-16 06:57 No easily findable links to the code from the main website (if any). Note that this isn't necessarily a deal-breaker, but if you won't direct me to your source code while claiming to be open source (or worse, don't even mention being open source on your site) I immediately get suspicious. Unless I absolutely can't have my needs met by any other software you go to the bottom of my options list. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- kervel · 2023-11-16 08:31 [https://github.com/windmill-labs/windmill/commit/4dbaf2f56b1d494fbe35 68ba1b2d557bc58dcb20](https://github.com/windmill- labs/windmill/commit/4dbaf2f56b1d494fbe3568ba1b2d557bc58dcb20) seems it was changed last week ---------------------------------------------------------------------- absolutesantaja · 2023-11-16 12:13 I’ve been taking it to mean total number of user accounts. If it was just the number of editor accounts it wouldn’t be that big of a deal. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ankalagonthered · 2023-11-30 04:41 This is shame for open source project ---------------------------------------------------------------------- elduderino1996 · 2023-11-30 09:19 This is a real bummer, particularly as we started using budibase for our volunteer-run organization back in the spring specifically because the BB people promoted it as being a less-restrictive alternative to all the other low-code app builders. In fact, having unlimited users was specifically [mentioned here on reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/n ocode/comments/12xn579/comment/jhxue9t/) by a co-founder a mere 7 months ago! It's also a drag because as nice as I think the platform is, it's still buggy; it comes with the OSS territory and was tolerable because updates were relatively quick in coming, but now we can't update 🤷‍♂️. I get that these companies need to make money but they benefit from an open-source community and the least they can do is make the self- hosted versions relatively *open*. Putting enterprise-level features behind a paywall is all well and good but limiting user count on a self-hosted version is very uncool, particularly given the pricing. There's just a huge gap in coverage here... clearly we're not the only non-profit/volunteer organization using the platform. We don't need enterprise features, but we have more than 20 people who need to use the app we built. It's a crazy expectation that small orgs start paying $150+/month for the platform just to get more than 20 users on a self-hosted install. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Aneurism1 · 2023-12-22 17:32 I'm quite happy that I saw this bait and switch coming from a mile away and avoided being caught out and embarrassed for putting this forward as a potential option for use at work.