Does anyone know if there is an existing feature or tool for allowing paid access to a Replit app project? I don’t mean adding Stripe to an app (made in Replit) and having paid users. I mean “Here is an app I made and other developers can pay for template access.” and its a Repl.
Sorry if this was brought up before. I feel it might have been, but couldn’t find. Thanks.
I haven’t seen that before, but it is an interesting idea
Yeah you almost make me want to knock up a marketplace and plug in Stripe - could be an easy app to build.
If it was a 3rd party platform (so not integrated by Replit themselves), then you’d probably make it so it could push the code into people’s Github as a new repo. And then they simply go to Replit and Import from GitHub.
The more I think about it, this feels like a really exciting idea. I might even get involved if someone wants help with it.
But, putting my feet back on the ground for a moment, I have to ask, how big is the potential market for a marketplace of Replit apps? It feels big, but I wonder…
Thanks for the feedback guys. Going to work on something and bring it back to the group.
Oooh, very excited to see what it is 
Sometimes, you’ve just got to do it and see what it looks like!
Making a lot of progress and will post to the showcase soon. My working concept is to have a storefront toolkit/template that allows developers to sell their template by charging customers to be added to a private repo. After paying for access, a customer can add their GitHub username and will be emailed an invitation for read/fork access on the repo. Those customers can then copy the template and import through Replit’s import from Github feature, and setup their own code template storefront.
The checkout experience for a developer’s customers would mimic that of someone buying this template, but would be selling access to a repo they made (Replit template or otherwise). So the repo they are selling access to doesn’t necessarily have to be a Replit app.
Currently, the app I have is designed for developers to deploy their store on Replit, but I would also make a Next.js (Vercel) or other storefront template down the line. Right now, I have this working but still need to do more testing as well as build out documentation/walkthrough for the Replit template which mostly involves configuring API keys and customizing for a developers store product.
I told @realfunnyeric we should build this a few months back but he’s too busy (or so he says!) - looking forward to trying it out.
I’m gonna snap!
Making a lot of progress. For Replit version, developers will be able to configure Stripe/GitHub on the Secrets tab and Replit Auth.
Instead of having a marketplace, I am going to have a showcase tab featuring different developers products. Might rethink this, but seems more practical than marketplace.
If anyone is interested in testing earlier please let me know. Would give you access to storefront template and add your store to eventual showcase. Repo will not have to be Replit necessarily, but your storefront will be able host on Replit (or Vercel depending on preference). Replit version will be available first. My hope is this can be another way a developer can monetize a software product beyond having a paid access Saas product or paid usage product. So for example, if you had like a non-Replit tool, let’s say some kind of MS Excel tool in VBA, you could host repo on GitHub and use this to sell access to the code.
Happy to help test
How’s the marketplace coming on?
Thanks for asking Steve. I actually finished a walkthrough doc yesterday and will be ready to begin testing with a few users soon. I’ll message you details.
I built an entire marketplace on this idea and it worked but it was difficult, i need more aps in order to market it successfully.
I had Replit spin up an e-commerce website, and when a product was purchased (one of my apps that I would market), it would create a GitHub repo and provide that specific GitHub repo to the customer after checkout when they created an account linking their GitHub using GitHub OAuth. Then they could download it, link it to the Replit, and effectively take the app and modify it for their use cases. It was a way and a workaround around the Remix.
I think there’s a much simpler way to do it. If Replit built a way for you to remix an app and charge for the remixing of it, you could monetize it easily that way and keep it all within Replit. I tried the workaround, and it works, but I lack the number of apps to properly sell them. When I actually went out to the market, the people who really wanted it were end-user customers who had no idea how to work within the Replit environment to take these applications that I’ve built and improve them and modify them for their use cases. They just wanted to hire me for it instead. So that’s what I ended up doing, and I just charge a monthly price now to manage their versions of the apps in my account.
Interesting Allen. I’ve been using GitHub API as well for what I’m cooking on. The future iteration is that builders/makers will manage their own stores after connecting Stripe/GitHub and have a store page on the site. Initially, I had a downloadable template that could be deployed as its own Replit app by a builder, but the setup was impractical with all the API keys that someone would have to input to use it. Very cool you found customers though, good for you!
Just to update on this the marketplace is now operational. After getting feedback, the site now works more like a “Shopify for GitHub repos” where developers can have a store and sell read-only access to to private repos (Collaborators can fork/create template with read-only access). Integrated with Stripe Connect and GitHub Oauth to automate permissions sending. There is a paywall to open a store, but if anyone here wants a code to try out without inputting card details just let me know.
Right around the time of your first post i have been thinking about creating this idea but with a little different spin, I think we could help each other
