About a year ago we made a decision to drop the barrier of entry for Backendless Standalone. At the time when we released the free version of Standalone Backendless, we made a bet that users will go for the “enterprise standard” of server redundancy by introducing a second (non-free) instance and thus removing a single point of failure, increasing scalability and fault tolerance. Unfortunately, the amount of revenue derived from that model is not sufficient to cover our expenses.
We are staying focused though and are dedicated to providing value for Backendless users and customers. In order to maintain the focus and build a better, stronger, more reliable and scalable product, we made a decision to stop the distribution of Standalone Backendless and replace it with a new product called Backendless Pro.
So what will happen next?
- Starting today we stopped distribution of Standalone Backendless and it is replaced by a new product called Backendless Pro.
- You can install Backendless Pro on your Linux, Mac OS or Windows machine.
- You can launch a pre-packaged virtual machine or you can start a cloud instance, right from the browser.
- The product does not have any of the limits that one would experience in the Cloud version of Backendless.
- Backendless Pro must be licensed; it means a license key must be purchased for it to run.
- If you’re not ready to purchase, you can request a trial license.
- Without a license key, the product will run for two hours after a restart and will operate in a single-threaded mode.
- We offer special discounts for pre-revenue, non-funded startups with less than 3 people on the team.
- Support is included with every license of Backendless Pro, including trial licenses.
- If you currently use Standalone Backendless, it will continue to run and we will be happy to assist you with an upgrade to Backendless Pro.
- If you downloaded and installed the product prior to today and planned to purchase a support plan for your deployment, please contact our sales at sales@backendless.com and we will be happy to work with you. However, without a support plan, we will not be able to provide support for it.
Here are a few Backendless Pro highlights:
- Backendless Pro is more scalable out of the box.
- The product is more production-ready for users who care about building stable, reliable and scalable apps.
- Customers have more options on how to pay for the product; onboarding is now even smoother.
- Customers deploying Backendless Pro in the AWS environment have an easy way to launch and pay using a familiar workflow (pay-per-use model).
Stephen King wrote in 11/22/63, “Life turns on a dime. Sometimes towards us, but more often it spins away, flirting and flashing as it goes: so long, honey, it was good while it lasted, wasn’t it?”. We envision that some users of Standalone Backendless will feel that way. If it is going to be of any consolation – it was not our intent to take something away from you. After all, you are welcome to continue using it, albeit we strongly encourage considering Backendless Pro.
We hope you will understand our decision. It was a lesson learned for all of us. A free, unlimited product was too good to be true. We have made every effort to make sure that the new product is better than ever. We hope you will stay with/join the Backendless world and we’ll make the future together.