Why are Forge apps unavailable for Jira Premium/Enterprise SANDBOX installations? Doesn’t this place Forge apps at a competitive disadvantage to Connect apps in the Atlassian Marketplace?
(I’m asking this question as both a customer and an app developer.)
Jira Premium/Enterprise has a sandbox feature. A feature of sandboxes is that you can add apps for free if those apps are paid-for in your production site. (i.e. You only need to pay for an app once between sandbox and production.)
Atlassian Marketplace apps with a paid subscription on a linked production environment can be added to a sandbox for free.
However, I discovered that some of my paid productions apps cannot be added to my sandbox for free. Instead, the Atlassian Marketplace wants me to pay for a second app subscription.
Here’s what is supposed to be displayed when adding an already-subscribed app to a sandbox:
Notice the button says “Add to sandbox” and the caption indicates the app is already purchased.
And this is the information bubble:
But for some apps that are already purchased, you see the normal trial/subscription feature:
Expecting it to be a Marketplace bug, I submitted a support ticket. This was the response:
[App name] is a forge app which means that Atlassian does not provide free apps for the “forge” category of apps.
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Forge is a platform for building Atlassian Jira/Confluence apps just like connect : About Forge
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In this case, you can reach out to the app vendor and ask them for approval to extend the app on the sandbox.
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Once you have this approval please provide me with a screenshot of it and I would be happy to extend the evaluation of the app for you.
From a customer perspective, this feels bad for a few reasons:
- It’s confusing: As a customer, how do I know which apps are Forge apps and which are Connect apps? (And how many customers even aware of Forge vs. Connect?)
- It’s inconvenient: It either costs me more money, or I have to contact individual app vendors and either get a promo code for my sandbox or send approval to Atlassian support.
- It violates the advertised functionality for Premium sandboxes.
From a developer perspective, it’s even worse (IMO): Atlassian is strongly encouraging us to adopt Forge, but it seems that doing so could put us at a competitive disadvantage, right?
Jira Premium/Enterprise users will be motivated to select a Connect app over a Forge app if they’re using the sandbox feature. I realize that sandboxes typically have fewer users than prod sites, so the extra sandbox subscription should be less than the prod subscription. But still, I would expect most people to opt for a free sandbox installation (Connect) than a paid sandbox installation (Forge). (Obviously, this is assuming the Forge app doesn’t have enough of a differentiation to outweigh the sandbox fees.)
I guess this is a question that turned into a rant. 
So back to the question…why is it this way? Am I wrong about the competitive disadvantage? Or is it actually a bug and not expected as Atlassian Support claimed?
Thanks!
