Why is Katalon Studio is free and how long does it stay free?

Why is Katalon Studio is free and how long does it stay free?

Please have a look at this section: https://www.katalon.com/#why-katalon-free. It has all the information you need.

Link provided does not answer how long Katalon Studio going to remain free.

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Agree with Raghavendra. How long does Katalon plan to keep Katalon studio free for? Will future updates and functionality always remain free?

Tester need to take note this tool is free NOT open source, it may become licensing tool after gaining a huge list of users… I am also wondering how katalon going to answer this.

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Yes sur Paul_Fong, i am also wondering how such a tool like katalon that works just like other licensing tools will stay free !!!

This topic is quite old but I want to confirm that we will not go down that road.

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Does this mean Katalon Studio is going to be freeware forever?

Katalon staff saying Katalon Studio is staying free forever isn’t 100% true. For example JIRA integration is originally included in the base Katalon Studio. But is being deprecated in the next major release. And now you have to pay for a plugin to get JIRA integration.

When I asked about this Katalon responded to this basically saying:

It requires considerable investment from us to support the compatibility with different JIRA versions and deployment models.
You can also find new features developed with the plugin to make it one of the best automated test integration with JIRA available today to justify the price.
They also are offering a 50% discount

While that may justify the price and a discount is nice, that doesn’t take away the fact they removed a feature and now charge for it. So it is not always staying 100% free forever.

Another user complained about this in the Katalon store section saying:

Hi,

If I understand, the goal of this payable plugin is to replace a free feature of Katalon Studio.
I chose Katalon Studio because the features I needed were free. If I have to pay for something free, I will find an other solution.
50% discount can’t replace something free.

What will be the next payable plugin ? Object library ? Git integration ? Katalon reports ? Create test case ? Record web ?

I’m not saying this is right or wrong for them to do as it’s their product and it is not Open Source. So just keep that in mind to determine if you want to use the product and it truly remaining 100% free is important to you.

No matter what they keep saying they could start charging for Katalon Studio and you will have to re-do your work using something else. And maybe your company will not be happy with you for selecting Katalon Studio.

Even the Katalon CEO VU Lam says on this site: So be confident that you can use Katalon Studio now and into the foreseeable future—for free.

Foreseeable future does not mean forever!

If they truly want to remove this fear, they should make Katalon Studio Open Source. Or at the least, they could add a built in feature or a plugin to export your Katalon Studio test cases out to generic frameworks such as Java, JUnit and WebDriver and C#, NUnit and WebDriver.

This was brought up as a feature request in a post starting back in Nov 2017. and has many +1’s for this feature to be added.

If they added this feature, that would remove most of the fear this question brings up about Katalon Studio remaining (or not remaining) free.

Hopefully they will add this feature soon, but it has already been over a year.

Just some food for thought that we need to think about when weighing the risks of using this excellent tool or not.

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We also open source Katalon Recorder, one of our best piece of technology, which powers the same function in Katalon Studio.

Hello @devalex88,

I did mention it provides a different set of features. That doesn’t change that you are removing a free feature, replaced by a paid plugin. You could have improved the current included free feature and kept it free instead of removing it and making those of us using the current JIRA feature pay for the feature going forward even with a discount.

My and other users concern is where does this stop. Who’s to say you won’t decide to remove GIT integration and make it a paid plugin in the future for example. Or other features. It is a slippery slope you are treading on at the moment. If you are making money on creating your own paid plugins, who is to say the emphasis doesn’t become more on creating paid plugins instead of adding core features to Katalon Studio or fixing bugs.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you are going to do this (and I am certain at this point you will say you won’t), but you have started down that slope and it’s a valid concern to your users. Also, I am not saying plugins in general are bad, I am looking forward to awesome plugins in the future.

Anyways, my two cents. Thanks for listening.

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This link is no More available

Looks like our fears are justified. More and more going down the slippery slope and off the edge of the cliff with limited “free” Katalon (with new license and quota) and Enterprise version. Time for me to look for a new tool.

I want to say thanks for all the help the community has given me during my time using this tool.

Read about the license here: Legal Terms | Katalon

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Thank you for letting us know your concerns. This quota is applicable for new users.

Can you please explain what you mean by ‘new user’? Who is considered a new user and how does this affect organizations that use Katalon Studio?

After a POC, we were on the verge of starting development on Katalon, until today, we found out about this. Just to confirm, when was the change announced?

How long will the current stable version (6.3.x) stay available without limitations?

There will be a period for every user to claim a license to use KS without quota limitations.

Current stable versions will be deprecated one month after we release KS 7.0.

So applying for this license would ensure that we can continue running our existing tests… Otherwise we would have to move forward creating our own test automation framework

@qsbetatest or you can freeze for a while your existing test pipeline to last known to work version until the team decide how to move forward.
Hint: build a custom docker image :wink: