I am intrigued by OutSystems and am considering investing serious time to learn the platform and to tinker with an experimental software tool for my personal business analysis usage (= 1 user) I am developing. However, I am hesitant to really go the OutSystems way because of the pricing scheme:
"OutSystems has three levels of configurable pricing that deliver predictability and control. Our editions allow you to get started for free, scale with growth"
https://www.outsystems.com/pricing-and-editions/
I am only a one person research consultancy company. If I were to develop my experimental tool and cross the threshold from free to paid version, I suddenly would have to fork out at least U$ 25,000 a year when only just crossing the (still experimental) threshold. This is hardly "scaling with growth". Rather, OutSystems seems unnecessarily dry up a large pool of SME innovators who could become its best ambassadors and ultimately "normally" paying customers.
It would be so helpful if there were more - realistically priced - levels that would really allow one to scale with growth instead of hitting a brick wall. For example, why not continue to offer space on the public cloud with increasing levels of storage, say 5 Gb, and users. Another option would be to allow larger storage space with only a single user for free, so that it can't be used to run real business in, but would allow users to develop serious demonstrator applications that might then be used to attract say venture capital that would allow one to buy enterprise editions.