Do you have to pay to make an app?

Wyatt Mosteller

Due to previous interactions regarding my company making an app in the past, it is believed that they had to pay in order to utilize and share the app? Does this still hold true? I was recently assigned with making an app designed for internal use, but we realized it would be great as a SKY Add-in for ease of use. We were thinking about making it so it can be added to different RE instances our team has access to in order to simplify our use cases.

From all that I can find, the only way we would need to pay is if we go over our API calls limit on the attached subscription key, but I would like a more definite answer to report back to my manager with.

TLDR: Purely from looking at the Blackbaud side of things, does it cost money to create an app and attach it to different RE NXT instances?

Alex Wong

@Wyatt Mosteller
I have made app and attach to my org's RE NXT instance, no need to pay BB extra for that.

I have shared my app on Community that people can use, and no need to pay BB extra for that.

However, I don't know if there's out of pocket cost if you want to become a partner of BB that creates App that is then post on BB marketplace for free or with a charge to make money.

Ben Wong

@Wyatt Mosteller for customers, there is no cost to creating and sharing an app across different RENXT environments. As you noted, there is a standard 25k/day quota limit on API requests, but the vast majority of customers don't exceed that. We have paid increase options for developers who need to exceed the standard limit.

If you are an organization that is intending to create an app that can scale and reach multiple customers via the Blackbaud Marketplace, then you should consider becoming a Blackbaud Partner. There is no upfront cost to joining but there is a revenue sharing model that you can learn about in the partner agreement. One of the benefits of being a partner is a more scalable API subscription so each customer doesn't share the API quota.

I hope that helps!