Create: 2025-07-13, Update: 2025-07-13
Background
Sometime ago, I was really interested in htmx. I have even built some tools in Emacs for myself to write htmx. But htmx is sometime a pain in the butt, especially for some big form. Therefore, I looked for an alternative.
In some random reddit post, I came across datastar, which is another hypermedia library, but uses SSE and signals. It claims to have both of the good thing from htmx and alpine.js. The author has a stand that he thought using form in htmx to communicate with server is a mistake, json should be used instead.
Con…
Create: 2025-07-13, Update: 2025-07-13
Background
Sometime ago, I was really interested in htmx. I have even built some tools in Emacs for myself to write htmx. But htmx is sometime a pain in the butt, especially for some big form. Therefore, I looked for an alternative.
In some random reddit post, I came across datastar, which is another hypermedia library, but uses SSE and signals. It claims to have both of the good thing from htmx and alpine.js. The author has a stand that he thought using form in htmx to communicate with server is a mistake, json should be used instead.
Conversion
I had a running service written in htmx for some time. It is a clinic opening hour service to inform my patients when I will be available in which clinic. (Yes, I am not a programmer, but a healthcare professional.)
I decided to swap my whole service from htmx to datastar. And I have been working on it for a couple of weeks.
Shocking news
Today, as usual, I open the datastar official site for reference. The site is changed. And the visual is now stunning. I thought it was a great thing, it means the developer is now rapidly working on this good project.
But shockingly, a weird word of datastar pro is out. I was at beta v1 before. It is now finally released.
I then look at what pro version gives us. I thought it was just some quality of life add-on like what tailwind components.
But no, the datastar dev somehow move a portion of the freely available features behind a paywall. What the fuck.
Things like replace-url, scroll-into-view which were free, is now NOT free.
With my mouth wide opened, I continue to check out what the price is. A shocking $299 for solo dev.
It is not like $299 is much for me, but I am just a hobbist. I enjoy using the cutting edge technology and framework just for fun. Now the fun is going to cost me money.
I do not make any money with my service. And I don’t see a reason to pay features that were free before.
My decision
I understand open source dev needs money to sponsor their work. However, the way that datastar dev do is utter disgrace.
Just as Reddit user Extreme-Ad-3920 concluded what I feel.
Fuck you datastar. I am going back to htmx.