Well Claris has now released their “Platform Bundle” - but it is a bit confusing.
Previously they stated that their offering would be free for a single user. I do not see that option here.
The new price for the entire suite is $1125 per year for a minimum of 5 users for a regular license or $675 per year for a minimum of 5 users for a non-commercial/educational license.
That is a notable price reduction compared with their prior Filemaker Server offering and frankly very reasonable for business use.
But that said, for this to really take off with lots of users there needs to be a generous free tier. Even if I buy it for use in my business, I would much prefer that the free tier exists because that is likely to notably increase the overall user base and availability of developers to help when needed. Maybe I am not looking in the right place but at present I cannot find any mention of such a free tier.
I’ll keep looking, but “free” is not to be found. Neither is pricing. I’m invited to click on a “Get Offer” button and fill in my contact info. Does not sound friendly to solo practitioners. Important news about your Claris licensing
Beginning September 24, 2022, new pricing becomes effective for all Claris new and renewal customers. Licensing costs will increase by 10 percent* on all Claris products.
The thing is, all of the pricing info on the site is for Claris Filemaker Pro/Go and/or a bundle which includes those clients. However, Claris Studio is described as a new cloud based product. While you can (presumably) use the clients to connect, the marketing makes it sound like you can work from the website directly (no client needed). All this makes me think that maybe you can create a new account (here) without paying and use it from the site indefinitely. However, you would not be able to connect a client and/or share your stuff with others without paying for something. That would jive with their previous announcement. However, it is annoying that it is not explained anywhere, which makes me think I may be wrong in my assumptions.
I will also note that their pricing page makes no mention of Studio at all (neither does their free trial page. That makes me think those prices are not related to their new Studio product. The only place we see any pricing which actually mentions Studio is the Claris Platform Bundle, which gives you everything they offer for US$1,125.00 annually. Ouch!
I agree it’s a mess at the moment. It does not make sense to me. What happened to consultant Marc Larochelle of Productive Computing, Inc, who made the inspirational video about the FREE single-user versions of FileMaker (Claris) Pro and how it would be a game changer for adoption!
I asked on the Claris forums about the freemium and one of the admins did not answer the question but gave me this link instead. I haven’t watched yet.
Thanks for posting the link but I couldn’t watch more than the first seven minutes without getting frustrated. If I was sure the answer to my question (Is there a free tier?) was buried somewhere in the 58 minutes of corporate talking heads, I might force myself to watch more.
I skipped through the video. At about 52:09 mark, it was stated that they have the intention in the not too far distant future to offer freemium access. So set you calendar for then.
You’re a better man than me. I, too, skipped through the video, but only made it seven minutes in before giving up.
And I did try to set myself a reminder for “Claris freemium access” but even the new version of Apple Reminders does not have a preset time period called “not too far distant future.”
Well, it looks the freemium edition is not yet here so we’ll just have to wait. For my own personal single user database usage, this would be perfect for making my own “apps” or databases because I don’t always need a web server or multi-user platform. I do miss the days of HyperCard and being able to cobble up a quick app without learning Javascript or C++.
Unfortunately it is looking to me more and more like leopards do not change their spots. Claris is not interested in solo or small-group developers after all - despite what the early publicity suggested.
Claris has now clarified details about “Claris Problem Solvers Circle” (meant for enterprises with many users) vs the “Platform bundle” (meant for smaller companies or individuals).
It turns out that “Unrestricted anonymous users” are only available with the Problem Solvers Circle and not with the Platform bundle.
So for individuals or small companies, Claris Studio still has the same problem FIlemaker Go always had; you can share data over the web with others in your organization, but you cannot use it in any practical sense to create a public data-driven website.
Therefore Airtable,Notion, Google Sheets, and many options remain superior to Claris studio.
