“You should really consider getting rid of the free version” I was told by a business advisor in 2024. I needed to decide, he said - do I want a fun open source side project, or do I want a real business?
The advice from him (and others) was clear: A real business would “take things seriously” and get rid of this open source nonsense.
Money isn’t everything, if it were I certainly wouldn’t start open source projects or work at small businesses, I’d work for big tech and min-max my performance reviews, or become an investment banker.
Believe in what you do
I started Beekeeper Studio in 2019 because I wanted an easy to use database app for Linux.
Beekeeper grew beyond this initial dream and became something more - initially an active and exciting open source project, and eventually a business.
Beekeeper isn’t an ordinary business, we’re community driven, sustainably focused, and user centric. We’re not looking to profit-maximize above all else, and I think that’s why we’ve been successful, and why I’m still excited to be working on Beekeeper after 7 years.
Community is not an afterthought
Competitors see their free version as an on-ramp, a free trial, an extended preview. The free version was forced upon them by market forces, by competitor matrixes. It exists to push users onto enterprise plans and sales calls. It’s not central to what they do, it’s something they resent.
For Beekeeper Studio, our community, and thus our community edition, are central to the whole organization. They are the foundation upon which the rest of the organization stands, and a central part of what we do.
Our community edition is designed so that you can use it productively for 8 hours a day and never pay us a cent. We’ve never taken away a free feature, and any feature contributed by a community member is free, even if we don’t want it to be (cough redis support cough).
This isn’t a weakness, it’s why the app is so good, why so many bugs get fixed, why it stays user-centric, why you can use it productively without paying us, and why people literally email us to tell us how much they love Beekeeper Studio.
Thanks for keeping us in business
For the many thousands of you who have upgraded to paid editions of Beekeeper Studio - thank you. You help to keep us in business.
If you’re reading this and love Beekeeper Studio and our way of doing things, but haven’t yet bought a license, well maybe now is a good time :-).
Thanks for using my our app,
Matthew & the whole Beekeeper Studio team
PS I just published a new community edition page to tell people how amazing our community edition is.
