Thunkable has a lot of features I’m looking for as a creative small business owner. However, from the outside looking in, there are some red flags that I was hoping I could get some clarity on from the existing customer community, which Thunkable seems to be counting on to do a lot of their support heavy lifting since there’s no other avenue to ask these questions on their site.
Am I correct that the highest tier I can subscribe to on their site is the Pro plan, which is around $450 annually, and to gain access to higher-tiered plans so that I can have basic features that seem to have been arbitrarily tier-walled, like custom font uploads and not advertising for Thunkable on my paid-for app’s splash screen, means scheduling a call for a sales pitch?
I love the polish and presentation of their product but I’m worried about what I perceive to be some semi-grimy sales tactics even before signing up and a sales-only focus for a product that would seem to require quite a bit of internal knowledge and support, not just salespeople.
I don’t mean to seem like a downer, I’ve just bought into a few products in the past with hefty price tags that don’t live up to the cost and leave customers floundering once they’ve paid.
I’d love to know what the paid experience is like in contrast to how it seems out here. Is it better on the inside? Is their tier-walled messaging support also subsidized to 3rd party call centers, with support largely left to the community?
I don’t work for Thunkable but I’d say you have that right.
Tech support is great if you can get it. Having a Pro or better license means that you have access to 1:1 chat with a staff member. The response time varies but I’ve always felt like the responses I get are professional and are based in strong knowledge of the product.
Better on the inside? Yes. Subsidized support? No. See above. You’re getting access to people like @ioannis and @matt_conroy who are active on the forums. I just wish there were more of them!
I’ve been using the product intensively for a while and love it. But I’m also a very patient and forgiving person. Your mileage may vary. I’m very active on the forums and the feeling is that users provide more of the support here than staff. But staff are definitely present. You can read my recent concerns here: Download to iOS feature needed & Customer service feedback
I left a developer community like this a few years ago because they had:
A great product that needed some tweaks and bug fixes
Expert staff available to customers
A failure to communicate in a timely or transparent way with users
I do feel Thunkable is suffering from some of those aspects although they are much better than the community I left. I think there’s huge potential for this product – I’m also a teacher – but I’m not sure where the breakdown is. These people are talented and good communicators 1-on-1 but there is not currently enough communication or evidence of customer care on the forums and on GitHub. Would I recommend Thunkable? Yes… with caveats.
[Side note:] The company/community I left for Thunkable at one point realized #3 was an issue and hired someone whose sole responsibility was to respond to customers on the forums. It was a huge improvement in terms of how customers felt about the product and the company. That person lasted about a year and after they left the company, the community went back to being nearly silent and customers’ complaints increased steadily after that. A lot of veteran users started leaving. There’s a lesson to be learned there!
Thank you so much for your in-depth response. It’s really appreciated.
After dealing with this a handful of times with other companies, it’s gotten pretty tough to take the leap to something new when arbitrary things like fonts are being held behind a paywall, and the cost to unlock them isn’t transparent.
Also, paying nearly $500 a year to advertise their platform on my splash screen seems wild. The reasonable assumption that I won’t have built-in advertising in a paid-for-forever app is not the same as the premium of white labeling the entire platform.
Thanks again for your insight and for sharing your previous post as well.
this post was super helpful. I was looking to start with thuntable to make an app. I use already Unity for 14 years, and indeed paying for a pro version and still having their splash screen don’t make sense.
This is literally the argument. “Well, Unity does it too so…”
I wouldn’t care if it could be a watermark, that would be 100x better than it is currently re: splash screens.
Support is there to provide you workarounds for the bugs…… or to point you to documentation you should’ve read. Or to forum posts that are buried deep.
You’re better off posting to the community as they (Thunkable CS) are here but so is the vibrant and experienced community.
Hi @cjb and @carlcallewaertperson - appreciate you raising these questions here in the Community and sharing your feedback on Thunkable’s plans. And thanks @tatiang and @jared for weighing in as well.
Business plan pricing currently starts at $200/mo and our Team pricing starts at $500/mo, and I confirmed that we’ll be including this information on our pricing page very soon for better transparency. We are also always consider how we can improve our pricing and packaging, so seeing feedback like this is very helpful. Please feel free to dm me if anyone would like to arrange a call to discuss which plan may be most ideal for your needs.