Voiceflow Launches Real-time Collaboration and Reduces Cost for Independent Voice App Developers
Voiceflow today announced new features around real-time collaboration and updated pricing for enterprise users while also reducing the cost for independent developers. This change will be a windfall for a number of independent developers that now have more than three projects on Voiceflow. The free plan previously was only available to developers with up to three projects active in the software. If they had more than three projects they paid $29 per month. Going forward these developers will have unlimited projects in Voiceflow for no cost. However, they will not have access to Voiceflow’s collaboration feature.
Braden Ream, CEO of Voiceflow, told Voicebot in an interview that he expects to take a “revenue hit” based on the move. However, he elaborated by saying, “For people just getting into the business that are not able to monetize, it doesn’t make sense to charge them.”
Continuing the Shift to Collaboration
Ream also indicated that the new features signify a continuation of Voiceflow’s “shift from individuals to teams. How do you streamline the workflow for teams? That is a very different problem than I want to build a voice app without coding.” This is where he highlighted the new real-time collaboration enabling multiple editors to work on the same voice app simultaneously. And, he indicated a new commenting feature will be launched soon along with user profiles that will control access by project and role. In addition, Voiceflow is planning to support agencies with multiple clients by offering new features about multiple workspaces.
These new features come with a higher price tag. While the individual developers that don’t need an extensive workflow and collaboration tools are seeing a price reduction, the collaboration features targeting agencies and larger organizations, will cost $49 per month per editor for up to three team members and $249 per month for larger teams. The latter figure is up from $99 per month previously. However, this comes with a new benefit as well. Voiceflow will not differentiate between editors and viewers. The former will be charged, but the license will come with unlimited viewers.
A blog post outlining the changes indicated, “Editors have full collaborative permissions and can make changes to the project, while viewers can “view” the project and eventually make comments (hint to upcoming features) but not make changes.” Ream says the new features are similar from a voice perspective to what many people are accustomed to for visual design in software such as Invision and similar design collaboration tools. However, he did point out that Voiceflow will remain different from tools such as Adobe XD because it goes beyond rapid prototyping and actually “ships production code in real-time” as users are designing the solution.
Enterprise Versus Independent Developers
There is a growing split in the market among the cross-platform voice app development SaaS solutions regarding whether they are serving enterprise or smaller, independent developers. Voiceflow’s shift to more collaboration and enterprise features will bring them more into competition with Adobe for prototyping and Voicify for the development and management of voice apps.
However, the continued intention to support independent developers along with enterprise may make Voiceflow unique going forward. That does offer the company a way to get new developers involved at a low cost who could eventually grow into enterprise users over time. With that said, the needs of these segments differ so new features may suffer for the free users as Voiceflow focuses its attention more on enterprise needs.
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