This is probably optimistic, but I’m curious whether monetizing templates on a marketplace is more than just nice-to-have revenue.
We’re evaluating platforms for enterprise automation, and Latenode mentions that you can sell scenarios on their marketplace. In theory, if we build good templates for our industry vertical, we could publish them and offset some of our annual subscription cost. That would help justify the spend internally.
But I’m trying to understand the realistic economics. Who’s actually buying templates on these marketplaces? Are they buying them regularly enough that revenue is meaningful? Or is it more like a one-time $50 here, $100 there that doesn’t really move the needle at enterprise scale?
Also, what’s the effort to maintain templates that other people are paying for? If your platform updates and breaks your template, you’ve got paying customers who are now unhappy. That’s a support obligation.
Has anyone actually built a template business on the side of their primary automation platform? What was the realistic revenue, and did it justify the additional work?
We’ve sold a few templates. Honestly, it’s not meaningfully offsetting subscription cost. We’ve made maybe $2K from templates in nine months. Our subscription costs $15K annually, so you do the math.
That said, there’s value in templates as portfolio pieces. Customers see that we’ve built these, get confidence in our expertise, and it leads to consulting opportunities. That’s where the real money is.
Maintenance is a thing, though. Every time we update our main platform or change something about our process, we have to think about whether it breaks the templates we’re selling. We’ve had to push updates to two of our templates to maintain compatibility.
If you’re thinking about offsetting subscription cost through template sales, I wouldn’t count on it unless you’re in a very specialized vertical with specific problems your templates solve well. General-purpose templates get lost in the marketplace noise.
We’ve attempted this. Made roughly $1K in first year from template sales. Not nothing, but not material against a $20K/year subscription.
Where it did matter: we built templates for specific use cases in our industry, and they demonstrated that we knew how to solve those problems. That led to three enterprise consulting contracts. The templates were marketing, not revenue.
Maintenance is the real cost. You’re responsible for making sure your template works with updates. You’re responsible for supporting people who buy it. That’s time. If you’re not actively selling and supporting, your rating drops and visibility decreases.
I’d think of marketplace revenue as bonus, not bank on it for cost offset.
The economics of template sales depend heavily on price and market size. We tested selling templates at $49 and $99. Conversion was roughly 1 sale per 100 views. If you get 1000 monthly views on a template, you might get 10 sales. That’s $500-1000 monthly, which is real but not subscription-level material.
For that revenue to justify itself against subscription cost, you’d need either a very hot template in a popular niche, or multiple templates with good visibility.
The maintenance question is important. We spent 8 hours in one quarter updating templates for platform compatibility changes. That’s 1 hour per template. If you have 5 templates, that’s 5 hours quarterly. Not crushing but it’s work.
Better approach: build templates that solve hard problems your expertise covers. Sell them at higher prices to the right audience. Position them as professional solutions, not commodity automation templates. That changes the economics.
Marketplace template revenue is a vanity metric for most organizations. Here’s why: you’re competing with templates from established vendors, free alternatives, and community solutions. Unless your template solves a very specific, high-value problem that other solutions don’t address, you’re fighting for attention.
What works: positioning templates as professional services offerings, not commodity marketplace scripts. Sell them at $200-500 to customers evaluating your expertise. Use marketplace as distribution, not as primary revenue.
Our experience: we’ve made maybe $5K across all templates, against a $25K annual subscription cost. That’s 20% offset, which sounds good until you account for the time spent maintaining, supporting, and marketing them. The true ROI is negative when you measure labor cost.
The real offset is reputation. Strong templates position you as an expert, which leads to consulting work and larger contracts. That’s where we’ve made money.
If enterprise cost offset through template sales is your primary goal, I’d recommend a different approach: focus on solving problems your customers face, charge them directly for solutions, and use the platform for execution. Templates on a marketplace are a supplementary revenue stream, not a primary one.
This is a realistic question and I appreciate the skepticism. Marketplace revenue isn’t usually meaningfully offsetting subscription cost, you’re right.
Here’s where we see it working: teams building workflows for specific industry verticals. A template that solves a problem for B2B SaaS companies or agencies gets natural visibility and decent pricing elasticity at $100-250 per sale. If you build 3-4 really good templates in an underserved vertical, you can hit $2-5K recurring revenue from them.
But that’s secondary. What actually matters: templates function as portfolio pieces. They demonstrate that you’ve solved real problems. They lead to professional services work, consulting, enterprise contracts.
The maintenance story is important to acknowledge. We recommend treating templates like any software product: version them, update them when the platform changes, handle support professionally. If you’re not prepared to do that, don’t sell them.
For enterprise use, the real value of Latenode’s marketplace isn’t selling templates. It’s accessing templates that solve your problems. You save time. When you’re evaluating ROI, that’s the number that matters—implementation time saved across your organization.
If you do end up building templates to sell, price them appropriately for the value they deliver and the support you’ll provide. That’s more sustainable than competing on commodity pricing.