Today, we’re adding the Basic plan to our hosting lineup for groups, clubs, teams, and other small, private communities who need more than just a chat group to connect, keep in touch, collaborate, and create a shared long term memory.
Bringing this back from the dead 
I was looking at using the basic plan a while back and still considering it - since using Disourse hosting means I’d help support Discourse in a way.
As far as the Basic Plan features go, they match my requirements well. However, what put me off slightly is the fact that themes/components aren’t included in the plan. I’m just curious to hear the reasoning behind this choice.
I don’t mind so much the fact I cannot change the theme, but perhaps allow theme components or the limit the amount you can have eg. 5 theme components on the basic plan. For example, even a small community might want the Category Icons
Again, I’m just curious to see why its the way it is. I’m all ears 
Our goal with the basic plan is to make it as simple as possible to create and manage a community on Discourse.
While many communities want to further customize Discourse with things like themes and theme components, there is plenty of configurability already built into Discourse, and the basic plan also includes a number of plugins that we determined would be valuable for small, private communities.
Installing themes and theme components do require some additional understanding and risks as these extensions can be developed by anyone and have to maintain compatibility with Discourse, and there are not currently any limitations built into Discourse to prevent installing things which may not be fully supported.
That said, we are also exploring ways to provide better guidance to admins and theme developers mitigate these risks as we’d like to improve that experience for self hosters and on other plans.
As for the example of category icons, this is the kind of thing that is likely a candidate to become a core feature of Discourse at some point in the future.
Thanks for the prompt response Dave. I suppose that makes sense that the basic plan is simplified (if that’s the right word to use) to easily start a community. I can understand that side of the argument.
That is true and its what makes Discourse the best option out there by far 
. But by the same token, I’m keen to find out (since you mentioned it) about some components being added to core. For context, the components I swear by on communities I’ve been an admin on are
(I’m hoping that the experimental usercard design is added to core in the near future 
)
I assume that tag icons and some other popular TCs will follow suit based on what you said above? Its probably a bit naughty of me to ask but is this something on the roadmap that we could perhaps see in the next year or so?
I think tag icons and category icons are both high on our list to replace with something built in.
And yes, theme components that prove to be very popular are certainly candidates to consider adding directly to the product.
I can’t speak confidently about timelines for particular ones that we aren’t already working on at the moment, but thinking about how to communicate more openly about our roadmap is something that has come up again recently and is on my mind to think about more in the new year.