Launching CSML Studio v2.0 🎉

CSML is an open-source project that helps you build extremely powerful chatbots very easily. You can download the full source code on Github, propose your own changes or features, install it on your own computer, and run it anywhere in the world, on any machine, for free.

We also recently launched CSML Playground, a no-login, no-installation playground to try CSML online very easily. The launch has been a huge success thanks to you: you supported us on our launch day on Product Hunt and we were one of the top projects that day!

CSML Studio on the other hand is a true chatbot workhorse: it's a virtually infinitely scalable development and deployment environment for all your chatbots, complete with custom and managed connectors to your favorite apps, APIs, services; and with new features every week it is now a very, very solid alternative to all other chatbot platforms out there, with a different, more developer-friendly approach to building powerful chatbots.

We are infinitely grateful for all your feedback that helped us get to where we are today! We are definitely not stopping there and have many plans for the future. Keep the good ideas coming!

For almost 2 years, CSML Studio has been entirely free to use, as we always wanted to let all of you have an easy access to the best technology for creating chatbots. There are now over 3000 chatbot developers using CSML Studio, building chatbots that can handle millions of conversations every month, and we couldn't be prouder!

To celebrate this milestone, we are launching a brand new version of CSML Studio today!

Introducing CSML Studio v2

As we have been adding new features every single week on CSML and CSML Studio, we noticed that the interface was starting to become a bit bloated. We decided it was time for a big rework of our favorite chatbot building tool.

We knew we needed something sleek, fast, and that could still provide a great deal of flexibility for our power-users. So we went and reworked the whole interface of CSML Studio, starting with a new logo and much simpler layout:

The new design gives you more space to focus on just your code:

We also added a brand new activity page that lets you better analyze your daily usage by messages, users or apps:

Finally, to better differentiate the Studio from the other CSML projects, we are also introducing a new logo:

We hope you like the new design as much as we do! We are going to continue improving the interface to help you create the best chatbots in the world. We appreciate your feedback and ideas, so please reach out on the CSML Slack Community to let us know how you feel!

CSML Studio Price Plans

Many Studio users are now using CSML Studio in large-scale projects of their own or for their customers. These users also have stronger requirements about security, support, team management, on-premise hosting, large volumes of conversations, all of which we can't provide for free and with the same level of quality indefinitely.

This is why we have decided to introduce 2 new price plans which we tried to make as fair and affordable as possible, while still maintaining a free-for-life option.

We designed our plans to accommodate the needs of specific categories of users:

• The Free plan should meet the needs of 99% of our current users who are mostly open-source tech enthusiasts or indie developers working on small to medium-sized projects. It is limited to 2.000 conversation requests per month (excluding those made on the test channel), which is the case for a vast majority of the bots currently running on CSML Studio.
• The Pro plan is for agencies and chatbot developers working on larger projects, either their own or for their customers, who require additional features like team management, deployment on several and/or otherwise paying channels, and direct support by email. It includes up to 10.000 conversation requests for $20/month, with each new pack of 10.000 conversation requests costing an extra $20.
• Finally, the new Enterprise plan is for large companies with very specific needs. This is basically the "unlimited usage" plan, with custom development services, custom analytics, dedicated support, dedicated SLA, on-premise installation, etc., and it starts at $500/month. If you are using a ton of messages or have very strict security requirements and need custom hosting or need very custom integrations with some specific APIs, this plan is just for you.

In short: we expect most users will continue using the free plan for most of their chatbots. If you are making money with your chatbot and use a lot of messages, the Pro plan might be for you. As for Enterprise customers, you probably already know who you are...

To put this in perspective, this new pricing is orders of magnitude cheaper than other popular alternatives around such as Chatfuel, ManyChat, or Landbot, with many more features, channels, integrations, etc. and ultimately, simply much more control over the final experience. And you get to support an open-source project! 🤗

You can find all the details about the new pricing plans here on the pricing page: https://csml.dev/studio/pricing. Feel free to ask any question on Slack!
Over the next few weeks, many new features will be added to help you decide what plan is right for you, starting with the new activity stack that was released earlier today.

One last thing: to thank you for supporting us and choosing CSML to build your chatbot, we decided to offer a Pro plan with unlimited conversations for 6 months to all chatbots created before June 1st 2021. If you already have a chatbot running on CSML Studio, you won't have to pay anything at all until at least the end of 2021!

We hope you will enjoy all the great content and features we are continuing to add to CSML and CSML Studio every day and once again, from everyone in the CSML team, we want to thank you for your great support from Day 1!