Underwhelmed and concerned with Replit

Feature Requests
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Whilst I enjoy watching Matt’s videos, I gained very little from last night’s “big announcement”. As so often when big new toys arrive on the market (like a new iPhone with 30 new features to play with), I will take time out to discover what the Replit improvements are for myself.

I have no doubt that overall it will be better at building, and I still remain a massive Replit fan.

Unfortunately though, I have already seen workspace changes which I do not believe provide an improved UX.

However, much more concerning is this: 1) the display of the running total cost for the current chat has been sneakily removed. 2) the huge excited push in the webinar that agent “runs for hours” felt like gas lighting, given how alarming it could be for potential cost implications. Not a single mention of costs was mentioned in the webinar.

Sadly I feel that with the present absence of an active Replit representative in this forum, I can no longer justify spending time here. I love offering advice to others, but continuing to post about issues and get Replit feedback seems like pushing against a locked door.

There are some great folks who contribute a lot in here - but let’s face it, we are all as in the dark as each other.

So unless someone like Matt or Francisco start engaging with us on a daily basis, then I’m going to call it a day, and will take my chances discussing Replit with my much larger following on Linkedin. I genuinely hope to be convinced otherwise, but let’s see…

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It would be a shame to see you here lee @Gipity-Steve , I always value and enjoy your contributions. I agree that it would be good to have more of a formal Replit presence here.

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I fully agree with Steve and others. An official Replit representative should be present to prioritize our needs as customers and enhance our satisfaction.

Coming from Bubble, I notice that its community is much more active in forums. Replit also lacks an official Discord channel, indicating clear room for improvement.

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I’ve been using Replit for around 4 months now and have spent over $10,000 in that time developing my app.

My big issue with Replit at the moment is a lack of authenticity and unreasonably high costs.

The whole narrative around “Anyone can build anything” is, I guess fundamentally true, but what they don’t tell you in their marketing material is how much it’s going to cost.

I personally estimate that with the current Agent 3 pricing, to build an app / website that is production ready with moderately complex functionality would cost at least $10,000. In reality, it would probably cost a lot more than $10,000, I am being conservative with that pricing estimate.

I understand that it would cost a lot more if paying a developer… But you guys NEVER mention price. In your marketing and podcast appearances, you make it sound like anyone can build anything for a $25 monthly subscription.

Replit has to be very careful not to behave in a way that will alienate loyal customers and leave us disillusioned.

Please don’t produce livestreams and marketing videos boasting about new features such as “Agent is able to now run for 200 minutes uninterrupted” when experienced users of Replit will know this means 2 things…

  1. If you leave the agent running for 200 minutes, it’s either going to completely destroy your existing app or build something that is buggy and totally broken.
  2. At the end of the 200 minute run time, you’re also going to have a bill that costs anywhere from $100 to $500 for that work. And you’ll probably have to either rollback the app to before you paid that amount to when things actually worked… Or spend another $100 to $500 fixing all the bugs that were created from letting the Agent run for that long.

It feels a bit disingenuous to showcase fully functional apps in Youtube livestreams that you say only took 1.5 hours to make with a “oneshotting” prompt. The reality is that leaving the Replit agent run for 200 minutes uninterrupted while you go do other things will do more harm than good 90%+ of the time.

This is based on my experience after spending hundreds of hours using Replit over the last 4 months.

You guys have got to start being more honest about how much Replit costs or you’re going to alienate a big percentage of your loyal userbase.

The comments section for your latest Youtube videos speak volumes. They are overwhelmingly negative.

I am saying this from a place of Love. I want you guys to win, but at the moment the massive increase in costs with every new Agent release is getting hard to stomach when it doesn’t feel like the Agent is improving to a level that justifies that cost.

The cost of Replit has increased by 5x to 10x since I started using it 4 months ago and whilst it has definitely got a lot better within that time, it is not 10x better!

You have to give people value for money. At the moment, the pricing feels extortionate.

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Appreciate the detailed comment on my post Chris - we are so on the same page!

Sadly I won’t be responding here until Replit show up and engage. Which is why the last 2 minutes of the big launch webinar angered me: Matt and Francisco saying how they want anyone to reach out because they love engaging with the community - yeah, right!

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I completely agree with your comments. The cost has really gone up.

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Hey Steve :waving_hand:

Happy to catch up and will send you a DM!

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