I need to start a project for a mobile app and I need to understand all the related costs.
I see that Ionic is “completely free”, then if I look at http://ionicframework.com/products/#pricing I learn that there are 2 versions: “Community” and “Professional”.
Comparing the two columns I see a “Deploy limit” set to 5 devices for the community version.
What does this mean? That I will be able to give my app only to 5 people?
Generally speaking, what do I have to expect about costs if I decide to use Ionic 2 to develop paid apps for customers? Is there any published info explaining the business model?
Ionic is a free framework. The company that does most of the development of it also offers Ionic Services (formerly called Ionic Cloud) that can optionally be used to do some things: Ionic Package / Native Builds to build the apps in the cloud (instead your local PC and Mac), Ionic Deploy / Live Updates to update the app content without going through the app store(s), Ionic Auth for building simple authentication services, Ionic Push for push notifications services. (Some of these services are pretty nice)
So: You can use Ionic framework in any way you want, for free. No limitations, everything works as it should, no missing features - you can build complete an awesome apps. If you use Ionic Services, it can cost you money. How much exactly is not that easy to find out right now as there are lots of different pricing pages online - best send an email to the people working there, they are not really answering all questions here all the time.