A community lead gets asked whether the community can have its own app. Whoever is asking usually means a phone icon on a home screen, not the group or feed the community already runs on, and the number that comes back from a vendor quote often does not match the tool already being paid for.
The request that does not match the tool already being paid for
A community platform, the kind that runs a group, a feed, or a discussion board, prices itself around a member count. There is a ceiling on how many people can join before the plan has to change. That is a real pricing conversation, and it is not this one. Which community platform to use, and what its member caps actually do at the edges, is a separate topic this site has already scoped and, once that piece is live, is the place to send that question.
A branded app is a different product category: a no code app builder. It does not meter membership in a group. It meters the app itself, as a published object, or the people who log into it. Those are not the same number, and a community lead who takes a community platform’s member cap into a conversation about app builder pricing is bringing the wrong unit to the table.
Three ways a no-code app builder actually charges for one app
Three vendors, three different things get metered for the same request: one branded app, published, for one community. The table below reflects each vendor’s own pricing page, fetched directly.
| Vendor | What is metered | Entry tier that allows publishing | Price | What that tier includes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Adalo | Published app count | Starter | $36 per month, billed annually | 1 published app, 1 app editor, publish to web, custom domain, and automated App Store and Google Play publishing |
| Glide | Published app count, plus team member seats and per-member credits | Basic | $25 per month | 2 published apps, 2 team members, 100 credits per month |
| Softr | Active app users (people who log into the built app) | Basic | $19 per month | Unlimited apps, databases and workflows, with 5 team app users and 5 client app users included; additional builder seats cost $5 per month each |
Adalo’s free plan does not allow publishing at all. On Adalo’s own pricing page, the Free tier shows a published app count of 0, and the Starter tier is the first to show 1. Glide’s free tier likewise lists 0 published apps; its Basic tier at $25 a month is the first that unlocks 2. Softr is the odd one out in this table: every paid tier, including its cheapest, already permits publishing an app, because Softr does not gate publishing behind app count at all. It gates on how many people can log into what gets published.
What ‘per published app’ actually means for a community rollout
On Adalo’s pricing page, fetched directly, the Starter plan is priced at $36 a month when billed annually and lists “1 Published App” along with “Automated App Store Publishing” as included features. That is the cheapest tier at which a community’s app is actually allowed to reach the App Store or Google Play. The next tier up, Professional, is $52 a month and raises the published app allowance to 2 with 5 app editors, which is not what a single community app needs unless the same account will also be used to publish a second, unrelated app.
Glide’s structure asks a similar question in a different shape. A community does not need Glide’s Pro tier, which is the first to include unlimited published apps at $125 a month. It needs whichever tier includes at least 1 published app and enough team seats for whoever is actually going to manage it. Glide’s own pricing page shows the Basic tier, at $25 a month, already covering 2 published apps and 2 team members, which is enough seats for a small community team to build and maintain one app without paying for headroom nobody will use.
What ‘per active app user’ actually means once the community logs in
Softr’s pricing page, fetched directly, ties its plans to a count of app users rather than a count of published apps. The Basic plan at $19 a month includes 5 team app users and 5 client app users. Team app users are people who share an email domain with someone already in the workspace; client app users are everyone else, which for most communities is nearly the whole membership. The Pro plan at $99 a month raises that to 10 team and 50 client app users, and the Business plan at $329 a month raises it again to 30 team and 100 client app users.
Softr’s own FAQ states that additional app users beyond a tier’s included allowance are only purchasable “on the Pro plan and above,” and that the cost of those extra users is worked out through a calculator linked from the pricing page rather than a single flat number printed for every tier. [EVIDENCE NEEDED: the specific per-user overage rate that calculator returns for a given tier and user count, which was not fetched in this session]. What is confirmed directly from the page is the shape of the risk: picture a community app that launches to a pilot group of forty members and stays comfortably inside Softr’s Basic allowance, then gets promoted at the group’s annual meetup and the next 200 members ask for a login in the same week. That growth is what a per-user model prices, and it is exactly what Adalo’s and Glide’s flat, published-app-count pricing does not. Neither Adalo nor Glide’s page shows any charge tied to how many people open the app once it is published; the bill only moves if a second app gets published or a seat gets added.
Questions to ask the vendor before the quote becomes a number in a budget doc
- Does the published app count reset if the app is unpublished and republished, or does the account still show it as one of the tier’s allotted apps. This determines whether testing a rebuild costs a tier upgrade.
- Is a paid seat required for every person who opens the editor to make a small copy change, or only for whoever holds publishing rights. Adalo’s Starter tier includes exactly 1 app editor; a second person who needs edit access is a different conversation than a second published app.
- For a per-user priced tool, is a person counted once for the life of the account or is there a rolling window that could count the same returning member twice in different periods. Softr’s own materials describe unique user emails being counted once across a workspace’s published apps, which is a different model than a rolling monthly active count, and the distinction changes what a growth spike actually costs.
- What happens contractually if the community’s membership shrinks after a spike. A published app count does not go down on its own; an app user count might, depending on how the vendor defines an active user.
For a longer look at how vendors in adjacent categories hide or disclose the unit behind a headline price, see what the meter counts, and for tools that skip publishing a number entirely, see who hides the number, and what is actually behind the wall.
FAQ
Is a no-code app builder the same category as a community platform?
No. A community platform runs a group, a feed, or a forum and prices itself around a member count ceiling. A no-code app builder publishes a standalone branded app and prices itself by published app count or by active app user, a different product with a different bill. Confusing the two in a budget conversation means bringing the wrong number to whoever approves the spend.
What is the cheapest way to publish one branded app with a no-code builder?
Among the vendors checked directly for this piece, Adalo’s Starter plan, at $36 a month billed annually, is the first tier that includes both a published app allowance and the App Store and Google Play publishing needed to actually ship it. Vendor pricing pages change, so this figure should be re-checked against adalo.com/pricing before it goes into a budget document.
Sources
- Adalo, Plans & Pricing, fetched 2026-09-09
- Glide, Pricing, fetched 2026-09-09
- Softr, Plans and pricing, fetched 2026-09-09