Thoughts on using streamlit to monetize tools

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I’ve been thinking about the ways I could use streamlit to build tools for users in a way that can be monetized.

What if I could deploy a tool using streamlit with built in buy/subscribe buttons and a custom domain?

Something like download output (report/forecast/predictions/whatever) for $X or subscribe with $Y/month to use this fancy ML tool.

This probably sounds shopify-ish and may be in a different direction than the original vision but I think this could be an opportunity for developers as well as an additional revenue stream for streamlit.

Right now streamlit is probably the best way to prototype such tools and maybe a service like this would be out of scope. I don’t know. But as a user, I would like to be able to do something like this.

Anyway, just my two cents :smiley: and I’m curious if anyone else has been thinking about this.

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Hey @batman.

That’s a super cool idea! What kind of for-pay apps did you have in mind, more concretely? And what features are missing for you to get a basic version of this out there?

Happy Streamlit-ing!
Marisa

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Any kind of pay per use machine learning app would be a good candidate. Could have a business model around purchasing credits which allow X number of inferences of a computer vision model for example. VS free/self hosted, streamlit could manage user auth and billing, provide SLA on concurrent users, as well as making available more advanced hardware, e.g. with GPU or larger RAM. Streamlit would curate the apps available to ensure quality, and index and organise them, e.g. under vision, NLP, time-series apps etc

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Really like this idea too, exactly what I need

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Thanks! I have indeed been happy Streamlit-ing! :laughing:

Could be anything really. An example would be when clicking on the download link to the generated rules in this app, it will take you to a BTCpay or Square invoice page and continue to the download once the invoice has been paid :smiley:

I think something like this might be a good place to start since there wouldn’t have to be auth and tracking user accounts. So a basic version would just be a “pay to do this” button that generates an invoice.

And this could be used in creative ways I’m sure. Like different sections of apps which you get to with different buttons with different prices. Or even something like a buy button under images (though I imagine most will not use streamlit to buy/sell art, just an example xD).

And of course a subscription for tools will be very useful too and a perhaps a natural progression to the “pay to do this” button from the first example. I could imagine @jrieke’s app having a subscription for generating advanced templates with more granular settings.

Beyond this, depending on how things go, tiered pricing for hosting on better hardware could be useful as @robmarkcole mentioned.

Btw, speaking of auth. A little off topic but I think Telegram would be a great (and maybe simpler? :thinking: ) way to login to apps using a Streamlit bot :smiley:

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The frontend application would basically be a session/subscription manager that routes to a dockerized streamlit applications.

You’d have a list of tools that are searchable the same way you would search for something in an app store. Each tool, prior to launch, would have a public profile page with descriptions, cost per month, a comments section, as well as release notes.

Pay per month makes sense from an “ensuring operationalization” sense. There’s probably going to be a baseline cost to host the tool on the cloud. A tool creator would choose what commission they’d like on top of it.

Though… you could just have these run… on spot instances and take a while to fire up before someone uses it. That’s ONE way to do pay per download.

Imagine someone paying 30$ a month for like 4 streamlit tools. Then having the option to downgrade. I like this idea.

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Has anyone had success implementing what the op was describing? Very interesting!

Have a small budget to implement something like this, if anyone interested

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Would love to see this functionality added!
Huge potential here for both users and streamlit.

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I am also working on a project using Streamlit that I want to launch as a subscription-based MVP. I think Streamlit is much more than a platform for enterprise teams to run data apps. It can literally empower data people to launch and test quick MVPs and charge for it. If st adds some features envisioning this, I’m sure it’d be a game changer!

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Hey @Marisa_Smith, been a while, I hope you’ve been well! :smiley:

An update on what this could look like: subscription based auth; users who subscribed can use the app

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Hey Conic, I think you’ve outlined a pretty solid model here, would love to talk more about it with you. Do you think a javascript front end would be best for scaffolding this session/subscription runtime, and do you know of any frameworks which could facilitate between the UI/Uauth and the docker instances? I would actually pay you to formalize such an architecture to a project management specificity if you’re interested. My email is jblickjr@gmail.com.

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Has anyone had any success with this? I’m very interested in monetization as well!

Are there any alternative websites that might do this? A friend had recommended mecsimcalc (App Monetization | MecSimCalc Docs) to me, has anyone used that before?

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Hi @John_Walker,

Have a look at this video: ( Build a SaaS with Streamlit - YouTube)

Cheers

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Oh perfect, thanks @Shawn_Pereira!

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Cool library, thanks for sharing