7 Day Trial is too short

The 7 day trial is too short to properly evalute if wappler is a fit, for anyone. Especially when the documentation doesn’t match the app we downloaded.

That’s also a concern, that the documentation wasn’t updated when the app was updated.

While it seems like a great concept, our ceo won’t approve the monthly with our feedback. So we’re continuing our search for a low code/no code platform. We thought wappler did some cool things that would certainly speed up our dev time but to evaluate in 7 days isn’t realistic.

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If your company is big enough to have a CEO, I am sure it can afford a single month subscription investment. :wink:

And as always, ask lots of questions in this forum.

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totally agree with @brad the monthly fee is not much.
We use it for our companies and we would not look back to any other system.
Like everything else, documentation does not always up to date instantly, however the guys come up with some awesome upgrades and I would prefer they do that, rather than spend time on documentation.
With each new feature they always give a how to video with steps. What more do you want?
The advantages far outweigh the disadvantages and as stated a lot of problems are solved on this forum very quickly.

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Disagree, the ceo works besides us and approves all purchases. Maybe some small companies rake in the cash :man_shrugging:

This reply sounds like someone who’s familiar with the progam. If we had been, sure the lack of updated documentation is fine.

Our primary php developer couldn’t follow the docs nor figure out the hash/salting a password on a login page.

It’s not just the fee. It’s the investment in time to incorporate it into our stack and project use. That’s time spent, where… updated docs would help :wink: That’s why he won’t approve the purchase to continue evaluating it. If it were just $50… he would have signed off on it.

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I will answer that from a business owners perspective (bit long but you will see where I am coming from)

When we made the change from Dreamweaver, yes there was a transition period of learning Wappler, which can be a little frustrating sometimes.
In the first instance it was myself who learnt it and it took me about a week to get used to it (and I’m still learning).
Time learning vs income…simple our productivity has increased by around 78% since using Wappler and the quality and complexity of our work is far higher than what it was previously.

I will use one of my other companies websites as an example: https://thegunnery.com.au
This site took approx 56 hours to produce from a blank page to launch. Now equate that into GP, hourly running costs vs sale price there is around a 85% profit margin in it.
If we had done that site in Dreamweaver then I can assure you that it would have taken more than 4 times longer to do.

My experience with php & java is very limited and I have always worked with DMX Extensions in Dreamweaver.
As DMX are Wappler then it was a no brainer to swap over to them and get rid of Dreamweaver (by the way cancelling Dreamweaver subscription and having Wappler is cheaper just on its own)

With regards to the hash/salting of the password a common mistake (which is the one I made) is not doing it correctly:
Remember

  1. Password when it is first put in the DB needs to have the hash/salt added.
  2. On the login the $_POST.password does NOT have the hash/salt
  3. In the server connect when running the login the $_POST.password gets the hash/salt applied to it then.

Trust me I scratched my head for a while when I first did that, but if you think about it logically if you hash/salt the password on the login page, then when it gets to the action of login it would be re hash/salted again giving a different value.

The one bit of advice I will give you which will help you with Wappler is think logically about the steps.

At the moment we are working on our new site for the Gunnery which also includes an integrated POS system, we are building it in Nodejs, which has been a simple thing to get used to.
Our first Nodejs site was: https://sulunarms.com.au which was around 5 hours to build (including graphics)

So as you can see, I am a massive fan of Wappler both personally and from a business point of view it is #1 out of all the systems I have used. Just another point for some reason as well all my sites done with Wappler organically work well with Google SEO as long as you structure it right.
Sometimes you just need to take a leap of faith.

Now if you decide to join the community we would welcome you and help you, if you don’t then your missing out.

This is a good place to start:

Although the video is based on NodeJS as the server model, it does not change when using PHP.

That’s a good response, a passionate community is important!

For the record the two of us that were tasked with evaluating it, really like it. However, with the limited trial, I can’t tell my boss, yes this will work and we start the process of incorporating it only to find there is a limitation we can’t work around. I was simply providing feedback that the trial should be a bit longer.

Right now it’s vscode and some pre built libraries we can re-use. Everything is else is written line by line in laravel or vanilla php. So the idea of wappler was very appealing as we can deploy to almost any server and it appears to follow true MVC, which is nice. It would also speed our development. Even if we just create the front end with it.

I think he got stuck in the docs and the app not matching. His trial is still working until tomorrow sometime, i’ll show him this video.

Hey,

I came from Laravel. I used to miss ORM functionality (a.k.a. Models) but the latest Wappler update brings subtables/nested queries which sounds that would solve the problem! The permission handling system is not as advanced as Laravel’s (e.g.: you might have trouble with: can user edit this blog post?; the permission system is more like “can user edit blog posts” and not “can user edit this specific blog post”), so you’d probably have to build your own checks on top of that.

That being said, I don’t regret moving away from Laravel. The convenience of having front-end integration with the back-end with just one tool and not having to manually create migrations is awesome - you have a visual DB manager where you can create/rename/delete tables and columns and it writes a migration for you.

Any limitations you might feel are purely due to design choices, you always have access to source-code so you’re free to do more exotic stuff.

P.S.: Regarding the 7 day trial, yes, I agree with you, but it’s unlikely the Wappler team will make any changes given a past discussion by other users.

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Thats correct.
This has been discussed before, and Wappler team does not have any plans to make it a 30 day trial, which is realistic.

So, only option is to believe with what you read here in the community about how great this app is and make an investment of a 1 month payment. Or, evaluate others.

Its been more than 3 years, we haven’t found anything else that compares - features and pricing both. Let me know if you do.

I think that a 7 day trial is enough to get a first impression of the product and to get an idea if it would be helpful. To learn the program and make full use of it you will need a lot more time, but that is not where the trial is for. When your first impression of the product is good and you want to try it out more then you can use an individual license for a month to learn more about the program. If then it looks like this is the program you really need you buy the company license for your developers.

PS. If you need some extra time for the trial then you can contact us with the reason and we could give you a bit extra time. If you are stuck with something then just ask here in the community and in most cases you get an answer really fast. Also check out our YouTube channel.

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Just to add a bit more, I paid into the Indiegogo campaign where I effectively paid for a year’s license without the product even existing. I saw the potential and had to support it and get hold of it as quickly as I could. And I’ve never looked back.

I genuinely think just looking through this forum is enough to decide if it’s the right product for you and then, to confirm, just a few hours with the trial.

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€399 is a very good price. For a full year. Even for smallest of peoples.

We were microscopic once but still could afford to pay this price (now we’re small and can afford to pay for 5 x €599 company licenses) and test out over a few months. It was a massive leap of faith.

It’s going to take a while to figure out for sure. And its far from perfect. But there is nothing that comes close at this price point or not.

If you/ceo is not willing, it’s not really worth it.

And while I say this, I’d love 30 days trial. It’s more desirable. We got it back in 2018 when we started.

But the product and company is bootstrapped. I can understand if they want to users to pay. They’ve got a highly engaged community to show for the value of the product. I’d do the same.

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I would disagree. For a solo developer, maybe. For a team to understand if it’s a good fit to add to or change out your code stack, no. That requires an investment of time that is costly to a business, and investing that time only to find there are limitations not found during the 7 days is a very expensive lesson. Especially when there’s 6 of us with existing workloads. That requires a dedication to it for 7 days and not handling customers and other obligations, ie patches and updates for existing managed projects, support, etc.

If we could get another 7 days that would be helpful. The feedback of current customers is definitely a bonus! Our final test was to build a small crud app with a small set of user permissions, read, edit, admin. We were hoping to do that after finishing the video series.

But cost of time is independent of the lenght of the trial, right? It doesn’t matter if your trial lasts 7 or 14 days. You are not getting that time back either way. So the actual cost for your business is to invest 59€ in a single license and test it out for a month.

Anyway, I wish you good luck and I hope to see you around.

I’m the ceo, it’s my account that I had Josh use. Seeing all these responses hit my email I’m jumping in.

It’s not that I’m unwilling. Since you’re a shop too you understand it’s more than the software cost. There’s an investment in switching code environments and we’re setup well with VScode and laravel or plain php.
I’m all for speeding our development which increases margins, which is every business owners goal. Which is why wappler was very appealing.

I think josh’s initial post was really to say, 7 days isn’t really enough time, and other developers have chimed in and agreed. I’m not in the habit of throwing money away, so initially I told him no I won’t buy a license. I’ve already paid him for about 30+ hours to invest in wappler and he didn’t understand the interface well enough to make a simple crud app.

We’ll talk as a team and decide if want to move forward. We’re also looking at appy pie, skyve, and appgyver. I do appreciate the feedback, an activity community is certainly important and this one seems very active! It’s also nice that team members from wappler jumped in, and I appreciate their opinion and feedback as well.

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You’re correct, won’t get that time back. The actual cost is more than that and we’re small. I could sign up for 7 different eco systems and spend a lot of labor and licensing costs too. I’m not going to do that.

the initial post by josh on my team was just that 7 days is a little short. that’s all.

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I know it’s not ideal, but it’s one of the caveats when the software is providing the source code that you can run anywhere. Imagine if they gave 30 days trials. If I put in the hours I could perfectly build fully functional complex websites and pay zilch for it.
Morally unfair and very bad business for Wappler.

totally understand that switching is massive undertaking. all the more reason to invest EUR39 to take more 30 day to eval - with the community behind it.

start with uniqueideas.com tutorials (paid, i think) and wappler’s youtube channel to get a grip - it is certainly not very easy to grasp but well worth it to develop once its is understood.

it’ll take time for sure. 7 is definitely not enough. 30 might be. investment in dev > wappler cost. if made mind to make your dev invest another 30 days or even 14! $ to wappler is minuscule in comparison.

the other three you name, do not bother with them imho. the deployment and hosting flexibility along with data ownership you get here is non existent at this price level with them or other afaik.