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Directus Cloud — A modern data stack in 90 seconds, no-code app & data API
A backend for your data projects in 90 seconds. Includes a SQL database, authentication, asset storage, the Directus no-code admin app, and an instant REST+GraphQL API, all wrapped with a global CDN. All on our new free tier, with no limits or paywalls.
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@tobiasurff Appreciate it, Toby — with so much history in the content category, it's a difficult transition to make, but we're not looking back. We've recently found ourselves aligning with the backend-as-a-service category, where we can offer a strong foundational data layer (especially with the upcoming Data Flows). Of course, our no-code data collaboration app pushes us way beyond BaaS, so it's still interesting trying to succinctly describe all the things Directus does.
A good problem to have! 🙌
Any more data-specific features or capabilities you've been wishing for?
Looks solid. When I see such complex/work horse projects I always think about the alternatives. What competitors are doing and why should I choose Directus Cloud over others? Congrats on the launch, good luck!
@milkers Hey Mustafa, great question.
As always there are competitors, especially as we continue to rapidly add features and expand our supported use cases. Some key differentiators:
- No data modeling restrictions
- Never intermingle our application data with customer content
- Community collaboration
- Security first approach
- Features, Design, Insights, ..., more features faster, ...
- High Value, Fair Price, Options for any Project
Hope that helps! Check it out for your self with a free community project :)
@techshaman I agree, security should never be gated. That said, 2FA/MFA is still available on Standard and the native auth is very secure (with customizable password-policy config)... so SSO could be seen as a convenience feature. Also, we need to start exposing ENV variables on standard to allow for this (or other config) so that needs to be in place first.
I came across Directus awhile back and was genuinely surprised. It was a please to use!
@hunterbecton We get that a lot! We're super proud of our product and this new cloud service... our goal now is just to broaden awareness so we can continue to surprise more devs like yourself! 🥳
@deiucanta Thanks! We do provide the ability to include custom extensions for Enterprise Cloud, but not for other tiers, at least for now since user created custom extensions would require careful review for security and stability reasons. One major stepping stone towards potentially realizing that would be to have the marketplace down to a T first 👍
On that note, we will also very soon release a huge feature — Data Flows which may very well remove the need for quite a number uses cases which used to require custom extensions! It opens the door to trigger custom data workflows with built-in operations for webhooks, data transformations, app alerts, emails, and more. Stay tuned!
@deiucanta Yes! Data Flows is a core feature within Directus itself, so it is not limited to Directus Cloud only. We will never paywall or artificially limit any core features in Directus 👍
Cloud exclusive extensions are more so nice-to-haves or cool enhancements like the Kanban Layout. There's also the possibility that cloud-exclusives (more coming soon!) may eventually be open-sourced.
@azrikahar @deiucanta Absolutely! It will be replacing the current Webhooks feature in Core with the far more robust and flexible Data Flows. All triggers and key actions will be shipped as open-source... then we'll probably layer on some more proprietary icing on the cake actions (eg: Slack/Discord integrations, etc) for cloud.
It's such a hard balance to achieve. If it were up to us as OSS maintainers we'd ship everything to Core... but, of course, as we grow into a larger business, it's important to differentiate our cloud service a bit. Better Cloud = More Revenue = Bigger Team = Better Product.
In any event, we're always listening to the community to ensure we never stray too far from that ideal balance. To that end, that's why we have a truly unlimited free Community Cloud tier now. 💸
@deiucanta As Azri pointed out, the Marketplace will be the big milestone that enables custom extensions for all of Cloud, which we're aiming to get released in the second half of this year.
I think that will be an enormous launching pad for Directus, as our platform was built from the ground up with modular extensibility for every aspect of the codebase. We already have devs building extensions, but giving them a central in-app platform to discover those (and profit sharing) will be huge for expanding the community.
Also, you can get a sneak peek of Data Flows over here. Endless potential... we keep coming up with more ideas that it can handle! 💦
https://github.com/directus/dire...
@benhaynes big fan of Directus 9! It has streamlined our stack a lot. Will definitely check the cloud version, congrats on the PH launch!
@yassersultan Thanks! Looking forward to your feedback, especially on how we can further improve it!
@yassersultan Thank you! So glad to hear about the streamlining — what type of use-cases are you typically using Directus for?
@benhaynes As a headless CMS. The fact that it just wraps up our MySQL DB, made it so easy to setup and also the GraphQL API out of the box. Recently we were trying to setup on Directus Cloud and had few queries:
1) How to easily deploy on different stages: Dev, staging, prod? It seems that the data model changes have to be manually repeated on all the environments, unlike the on premise version where we can just run SQL DDL + DML (if any)
2) How to deploy custom extension?
@yassersultan Great questions. We have Schema Migrations, but they are currently in the CLI. We're adding it to the API/App so they will work on Cloud too. We're also getting direct database access support, which will enable a lot fo new workflows.
Custom extensions are only on Enterprise Cloud for security reasons (for now). Though, this will change with the Marketplace. 👍
Hello again, Everyone! 👋
I’m Ben from the Directus Team. After years of design and development, we’re super excited to share with you our new Cloud service (and free Community tier) — the fastest, easiest way to get started with the Directus data platform!
Directus Cloud is a modern data stack (as-a-service) for powering projects at any scale. Our new cloud dashboard creates projects in just 90 seconds, each including an API builder for both REST and GraphQL, a no-code data collaboration app, and a robust serverless infrastructure to power it all.
✨ CORE FEATURES
• SQL Database, File Storage, & Global CDN
• The Directus REST & GraphQL API Builder
• The Directus No-Code Data Collaboration App
• All Our Cloud-Exclusive Extensions
• Built-In Authentication & Access Control
• Automatic Software Updates
• Community Support & 24/7 Monitoring
• Our Self-Service Cloud Dashboard
We offer all this within three flexible tiers...
Our brand new Community Cloud includes everything above and is completely free. There are no artificial limitations or hidden paywalls, so it’s great for hobby projects, demos, and proof-of-concepts.
When you’re ready to move into production, our Standard Cloud adds configurable auto-scaling, backups, region selection, and custom URLS. Again, no pricing per seat or API request, just simple pass-through infrastructure pricing starting at $0.03/hour ($25 per month).
For larger, more demanding projects, Enterprise Cloud pulls out all the stops. Our enterprise team completely tailors your single-tenant hardware, SLAs, support, SSO/LDAP, extension syncing, remote database access, custom caching/rate-limiting, and more.
We’re bringing the spirit of our open-source project to the cloud, with robust end-to-end infrastructure, all the unrivaled capabilities of Directus, and the most transparent pricing out there. 🚀
Whether you’re building an app, SaaS, game, website, business tools, or any other data-driven project, Directus Cloud gives you all the tools you need. More importantly, it can grow alongside your project, no matter how much you scale.
We hope you’ll give our cloud platform a try, and truly can’t wait to hear your thoughts and feedback. A huge thanks to our dedicated team, passionate contributors, growing community, and millions of open-source users. We have lots of big things planned for over the next few months... so stay tuned. ❤️
Thank you! 🙌
@benhaynes This is definitely worth looking into. The dashboard looks great. Simple yet so powerful.
Good luck and congratulations on the launch!
@alcaan I appreciate the kind words! Simple yet powerful... haha, that might have to go on our website! 🥰
It's a hard balance, too simple and you lose the devs and power users, too advanced, and the UX/UI can become muddle or intimidating. Glad to hear we're on the right track! ⚖️
@batuhanbilginn That's awesome to hear!! I should connect you with out Marketing Manger for a case study! 📢
Assuming you're on-prem, are there any big capabilities that you are missing on Cloud? Or pricing targets? We're always looking for ways we can improve our Cloud offering! 👍
Awesome, I started with the Directus Cloud to show the CMS and now I have one client! One project on virtual machine Linux server. This is the first of many. Great work @benhaynes
@aiddigitaly Nice! We're big believers in Cloud+On-Prem+Hybrid, so it's always exciting to hear users taking advantage of that. Can't wait to hear about your future projects! 🤙
@arrowcircle Thank you very much, there are definitely some parallels here! From what I understand, while Retool offers to write queries with SQL, the Directus App is built with non-technical users in mind so there won't be any need to learn SQL to navigate and use the app. Another more apparent overlap is while we can use both Directus and Retool to build internal tools, Directus is currently used by many developers/users to fit a wider variety of use cases such as Backend-as-a-Service, Headless CMS as well as Data Management & Analytics.
Granted I don't have substantial personal experience with Retool's cloud offering to draw a complete differentiation, but I believe one of the main advantage with Directus Cloud is all of our tiers (even the free Community Cloud tier) allows you to create an unlimited number of users! On top of that, you can also utilize our granular Role Based Access Control feature even starting from the free tier to have fine-tuned permissions from per-role-basis down to per-user-basis, whereas Retool currently only offers the full permissions capability to their Business and Enterprise plans.
With that said, we'd love it if you have a chance to take our Directus Cloud for a spin so that we can have your perspective as well 🙌 Also do feel free to check out our newly polished Directus Cloud docs: https://docs.directus.io/cloud/o...
@arrowcircle Yeah! Retool is a great way to build dashboards and simple apps, which Directus does within its included Insights Module. However, there are several other big pillars of Directus that differentiate us...
As @azrikahar mentioned, we have a full backend-as-a-service behind the scenes, which means you get a pure SQL database (as you pointed out), but also an instant REST+GraphQL API for connecting all that data you create/ingest/aggregate. That lets you power SaaS, digital experiences, apps, games, or just integrate data with other API services. The BaaS also means asset storage, a global CDN, automation, alerting, and granular rule-based permissions for the user roles.
In terms of the no-code data collaboration app, beyond the dashboards, we have full data management capabilities. So you can browse and manage all your data... it's like a "CMS" but for anything in your database. There's also a full digital asset management system so you can organize and transform your files and media.
Haha, so Retool is one of many different use-cases of Directus. 😄
@colin_barry Exciting times! Thank you, we have some super exciting new Cloud features in the works... can't wait to share. We're just getting warmed up... 🔥
I'm a huge fan and frequent advocate for Directus 9 and now Directus Cloud as a web/tech consultant.
I started exploring Directus as a Headless CMS candidate back in 2018, but didn't really go into production with it until Directus 8 was released. My primary use-cases revolve around external news, event, marketing, and corporation-centric websites, as well as internal data-centric web applications.
Watching the growth of this platform over the years has been incredibly inspiring, and I've never felt more confident to recommend it as a data platform. I support a few different industries, including Government where self-hosting is often crucial. That being said, I really cannot quantify how much peace of mind I have with Directus Cloud. Huge thanks to the Directus Team for all that they are doing!
@ashcon always great to hear from a seasoned user of Directus! Giving peace of mind to users without the need of maintaining the infrastructure themselves is no doubt one of the major goals of Directus Cloud 👍 Thank you very much!
@ashcon First off, thank you so much for being a part of our community for so many years! In the crowded and fast-changing world of developer tooling, it's amazing to hear that our open-source platform has stayed modern and stood the test of time.
It's so exciting for our team to know we're helping devs in so many categories build meaningful data-driven projects. I'm glad you've been along for the ride so far, and can't wait to see where we (core team and our entire community) can take things from here! 🥰
As an aside, I'd love to hear your thoughts on how we can better support our Government users (happy to take the conversation private). We've seen more and more of this (due to our OSS/on-prem offering), but without visibility/telemetry into those private use-cases, it's difficult for us to know what could be improved. 🙌
@sami_hamine thank you! Our community is amazing and pushes us to create a simple yet powerful platform. Let us know how we can help :)
@sami_hamine It's interesting, our biggest "competitor" is our own open-source version... so we needed to create Cloud tiers that could compete with the flexibility and low-cost of self-hosting!
Our Standard tier does this by only charging for usage-based infrastructure... which users have to pay for when self-hosting anyway. But that means not charging for seats, API requests, bandwidth, features, etc... which is a very different pricing model than other vendors.
The free tier was even more of a challenge. How do you put free software on free hardware for tens-of-thousands of projects and not have it break the bank? We wanted the Community Cloud experience to be powerful enough for users to see the value of Directus, but obviously we had to make sure the per-tenant cost was super low. Luckily, we figured that one out.
As for being "generous" on our cloud, we're big believers in product-led growth, and you can't gate or paywall all the features that make your product special... otherwise no one will see them when they give the free service a whirl! 😄
@benhaynes Open source in cloud sounds quite innovative. I think there's a lot of potential here, would love to see where this project goes in the future.
@ml_online Feel free to give it a try when you have the chance and share your thoughts on it :)
@ml_online You can either send it via the chat widget in https://directus.cloud/, or in the #cloud channel on our community Discord server via https://directus.chat/. 👍
@ml_online You know it! Bringing the spirit of OSS to the cloud... no easy task! 🤯
@azrikahar @ml_online In addition to the great places Azri mentioned, you can also post any feedback here (the good and the bad)... we're all about public/community discussion! The exception (as always) is anything security related. 🔒
@basharath Thanks! If you're building a cool product per month, I know a good data service you can use to power things. 😉
@cem_ozcelik Thanks! It's been a long time coming, but we're excited to finally hit GA and share this service with the community! ☁️
@zhitao_yan Thanks, Tony! We haven't tested those... but any database that follows a major SQL spec should work out of the box, or be relatively trivial to gain support for.
Directus just keeps getting better and better! Thanks to the team for making an amazing product.
Simply great, I'm not a developer, but at least I was able to create something close to an application to keep track of a database for students of the institute where I work, I still haven't finished the project completely but I like the progress I have made so far, I've done it using the admin app which has directus by default, but I've seen people on the Discord channel doing great things with Directus.
Congratulations on the launch of Directus Cloud and continue your success.
@uebmaster Thank you for the kind words! Our team and community are committed to making the power of a SQL database accessible for technical and non-technical users. Keep us posted on your progress! Cheers!
@uebmaster Thanks, Yan — that's super exciting! While we're certainly focused on building great "developer tooling", we're all about democratizing data access. It's great to hear that you were able to build something meaningful without any engineering experience. 👏
We'll certainly be focusing more on enabling non-technical users as we grow, as there's a big no-code data market out there (eg: AirTable) that needs more robust solutions. In the meantime, I'd love to hear more about any technical hurdles you came across while building!
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