8 April 2022

JPA Buddy goes Freemium

Up till the 2022.2 version, all JPA Buddy features were free. In September 2021 we announced that a few of them will become available only under the commercial subscription. However, most of the plugin features will remain free. In this article, we would like to share our understanding and the logic of choosing between the free and the paid part.

Motivation

Since we started the plugin, we established a clear list of values that we should deliver to JPA Buddy users:

  • Make it easier to start with Jakarta Persistence API and surrounding frameworks and libraries.
  • Ensure the right use of the mentioned frameworks and libraries. To achieve this JPA Buddy strongly follows best practices and documentation while code generation and provides smart inspections to examine the existing code.
  • Accelerate the development process itself.

We decided that the features supporting the first two goals should stay free. Here we speak about the visual designers for entities, Spring Data JPA repositories, Liquibase changelogs, SQL statements, DTOs, etc. We also keep coding assistance on the free side. All features of JPA Buddy remain free for academic use (teachers, students, classroom assistance) as well as training courses, coding schools and bootcamps.

The third target is about making developers more efficient. This brings direct business value, and we can measure this value in money.

Features that become available only for subscribers are:

  • Liquibase diff changelog and Flyway versioned migrations generation.
  • JPA entities generation from the existing database (after it gets out of the incubator phase, presumably in June-July 2022).

Pricing

A few words about the price. We try to keep it as low as possible: $1,9 per month or $19 per year for the individual plan and $3.9 monthly and $39 annually for corporate subscribers. Also, we offer a 50% discount for non-profit organizations as well as universities and educational institutions.

According to multiple reports from different sources, the hourly rate of a Java developer varies within bounds of $15 and $60. So, JPA Buddy pays off if it saves between 2 and 10 minutes of an average Java developer per month. We believe that JPA Buddy saves way more time and brings a lot of joy, freeing you from boring routine work.

How to Buy

To make it more convenient for you, we decided not to choose any third-party platform to register subscriptions. The purchase process is entirely managed by JetBrains Marketplace, including payment processing, invoicing, and licensing.

For new users who haven't tried all the features of JPA Buddy yet, and for those who want to get one month for free, there is a 30-day trial period. You can see how to get it in the following video:

For those who have already used the trial period and want to continue using JPA Buddy paid features, two types of subscriptions are available: monthly and annual. To pay for a subscription JetBrains Marketplace provides two possible options:

  • Pay via Credit Card
  • Pay via PayPal

We will show you in the following video how to buy a subscription via a credit card. All the steps to get and activate a subscription will remain the same if you decide to pay via PayPal.

As we mentioned earlier, for some users we provide free subscriptions or with 50% discount. To get it, you need to confirm the special status of your JetBrains account. To do this, scroll through the Pricing page and follow the "Learn more..." link.

When the status of your account is confirmed, a new "Discount available" field will appear. Choose your status in this field and enjoy the new subscription options:

Older (Free) Versions Support

Each JPA Buddy release gets issued for the two latest stable versions of IntelliJ IDEA. Since EAP releases of the IDE become more or less stable, we issue another version that supports it as well. Effectively, this means that getting stuck with some specific version of IntelliJ IDEA, you will not be able to get more than 2 feature updates of JPA Buddy. In other words, to update to the latest version of JPA Buddy you must keep your IntelliJ IDEA up-to-date, or at least one step away from the latest. So, the last free versions of JPA Buddy are 2022.1.*-212, 2022.1.*-213, 2022.1.*-221, 2022.2.*-213, and they are compatible with 2021.2.*, 2021.3.* and 2022.1.* versions of the IntelliJ IDEA. Since you update your IDE to the 2022.1 version you will be prompted to update JPA Buddy to the latest version, which will already require a subscription to use its premium features.

Another important thing is that all versions of JPA Buddy before 2022.2 have a deadline for premium features use. If you are the one who never installs plugin updates until it is really required, you have probably seen the following window:

Since you saw that message, it was no longer possible to use the paid functionality unless you update JPA Buddy to the latest version. Starting from the 2022.2 version JPA Buddy you will need to purchase the subscription. As for the last free JPA Buddy versions, we will set the deadline for January 1, 2023 for JPA Buddy 2022.2.*-213 and October 1, 2022 for 2021.2.*, 2021.3.*, 2022.1.* versions of the plugin.

Let me provide this information in a spreadsheet to make it easier to observe:

JPA Buddy versionIntelliJ IDEA compatible versionsPremium features availability
2022.1.*-2122021.2.*Free until October 1, 2022
2022.1.*-2132021.3.*Free until October 1, 2022
2022.1.*-2212022.1.*Free until October 1, 2022
2022.2.*-2132021.3.*Free until January 1, 2023
2022.2.*-2212022.1.*Requires subscription
All newer versions of JPA Buddy2022.1+Requires subscription

As you see, staying with IntelliJ IDEA 2021.3 you will have more than 8 months of free JPA Buddy use.

Using Spring Data JPA, Hibernate or EclipseLink and code in IntelliJ IDEA? Make sure you are ultimately productive with the JPA Buddy plugin!

It will always give you a valuable hint and even generate the desired piece of code for you: JPA entities and Spring Data repositories, Liquibase changelogs and Flyway migrations, DTOs and MapStruct mappers and even more!

Promos

We are going to give away little gifts to our active community members.

Still don't follow us on Twitter? Subscribe, send a private message to us and we will grant you one month free!

Has more than 500 subscribers on Twitter and share our tweets 3-4 times per month? Let us know via the contact form on our website, because you definitely deserve the next month of free use!

Reported a severe bug? Shared great ideas that become a part of our roadmap? We will not leave you without a present!

Published an article about JPA Buddy or recorded a Youtube video? Be sure, our big thank is going to find you!

Finally, by the end of the year, we will reward the most engaged community members!