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I wish SaaS companies (not just DatoCMS) would learn that developers will not adopt their products if they don't have source access.

This product could have easily been FOSS with it's pricing model based exclusively on support/hosting.

If you want early-adopters - be hacker-friendly, not money/data-hungry.

It's a very interesting topic.. we're seriously considering open-sourcing it. Honestly, the fear of having negative economic returns from this operation is very high :( Is this your main reason for your lack of interest in the product btw?
Yes - and while I'm no Richard Stallman - I try to only use FOSS software but have made concessions for requirements at work (G Suite, Slack, etc).

Would have been an instant install otherwise.

The thing you offer is a fancy editor for statically generated websites, but for the prices you're asking, I would expect you to host the site as well. Also, looking at the videos/gifs on your website, it seems to me that the editor isn't even truly WYSIWYG. Sure, the text-areas are WYSIWYG, but you're not editing the content in the templates themselves, which would be way more useful.

I also want to second the suggestion to make this FOSS. I know you fear for the economic repercussions, but unless your product is unique and super game-changing (which IMHO it isn't), people will mostly pay for the service they get on top of the product. This can still be a differentiator, even when the software itself is also available as FOSS.

There are tons of totally free hosting solutions for static websites (Netlify, Surge.sh)... each has it's pros and cons.. why forcing our clients to host their sites on our service? Also, it's not our core business, so we prefer to focus on giving the best modelling/editing CMS experience, at least for now :)
I do somewhat agree with the opinion of making it open source. Imagine how much better the platform could be with constant developer input. But I understand that might not be an easy decision to make.

I've used DatoCMS and I actually really liked it. However the pricing model is quite steep for the service it provides. I feel that if open sourcing isn't in the horizon, at least consider expanding what the Free and Basic models provide.

It's quite interesting to hear that, as ie. Contentful charges 249$/month for similar set of features :) In which way you'd like our Free and Basic plans to expand?