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The cost of supporting a customer is typically fixed for a vendor regardless of what price the software is sold at. Supporting customers who paid less relative
by pknight 11y ago
The cost of supporting a customer is typically fixed for a vendor regardless of what price the software is sold at. Supporting customers who paid less relative to the costs can be hard to justify. It could even lead to a net loss, so it's understandable that we don't see that much differentiation in the price for different countries.
- sprafa 11y agoAre software profit margins really that slim? How big is customer support in the final bill per consumer ?
- pknight 11y agoDepends on the software but its easy to overlook. I'm just a solo dev, so every hour I spend on customer support is an hour I'm not doing product development, marketing or generally something that is a leveraged use of my time. For customers who pay less, that time is even less leveraged. Also, for customers who don't have a strong command of english there's translation work, misunderstandings in customer service communications that are more likely to happen, pressure to provide documentation in multiple languages...all very time consuming and thus disproportionately more costly if you are doing that work with less margin flowing back.