The wall between a working app and a sustainable one

[Noorman]

Hi everyone
I’ve finally reached the point where my LiveCode app is stable and doing exactly what I designed it to do for my users. However, I’ve hit a bit of a reality check: while the software is ready, my personal budget for server costs and API fees is dwindling much faster than I anticipated. I’ve tried a few "buy me a coffee" links and basic license tiers, but the uptake hasn't been enough to cover the monthly overhead. It seems that being a good developer doesn't automatically mean I know how to keep the lights on long-term. I’m honestly a bit stuck on how to bridge this gap without price-gouging the few loyal users I have. How are you all handling the transition from a passion project to something that actually pays for its own existence?

[richmond62]

I have had one passion project out in the wild for 16 years, and so far have received 2 x 500 dollar donations and nothing else . . .

[FourthWorld]

Hi Norman. What are you paying monthly for hosting, and what are you LC system's requirements?

Both VPS and shared hosting are cheap these days, so unless you need the expensive elasticity of public cloud services like Amazon you should be able to host many types of apps for under $10/mo.

[richmond62]

Dropbox costs nothing.

[stam]

DigitalOcean droplets (virtual machines) start at $6/month. I beefed up mine a bit (more storage, more CPUs) and pay something like $15/month. This is basically a linux (virtual) machine I ssh into, and installed nginx web server, LiveCode server (with Claude AI's help, because installing server remains a dark art) and MariaDB (MySQL) for free. Wrote my own API in LiveCode server and job done. Rock solid database access for any app that implements the API, written in any platform.

I guess it comes down to what the OP is paying for with "server and API costs" - unless it's a specialised service, it may well be possible to apply some elbow grease and migrate to a low-cost VPS like the above, and probably enjoy higher performance to boot...