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I love Sublime. Tried Atom, but too slow on my 2012 Macbook Air. One question: How is sublime sustainable economically? I mean alternatives like Atom is free &

I love Sublime. Tried Atom, but too slow on my 2012 Macbook Air. One question: How is sublime sustainable economically? I mean alternatives like Atom is free & open source, supported by a big company. With a infinite free trial model, how can sublime survive?

nkkollaw 9y ago
Many people buy it. It's expensive, too...
- sleepyhead 9y ago
  It's cheap. I use it ten hours every day. It costs less than I would charge for an hour of consulting. Ok so I do live in one of the most expensive countries in the world but even in a developing country a developer don't have to work long to pay for this license for a tool they would use a lot every day.
  - nkkollaw 9y ago
    It's not cheap compared to other software, and not cheap compared to most text editors and even most IDEs. I didn't say it's not worth it, I said it's not cheap. It's not.
    - sleepyhead 9y ago
      Less than one hour working time for the core software used when developing is cheap. A lot of software is very under priced in terms of value. The App Store and SaaS copycats pricing doesn't reflect the value or the cost of software - you need big volumes and many go bust due to no profits. I paid for ST2 in 2012. Five years later the upgrade price is only $30. Should have been more.
JohnBooty 9y ago
The "infinite free trial" model surely helps them indirectly. It expands the user base, which expands the plugin ecosystem, which sells licenses... because when you choose a text editor, you're choosing it for the ecosystem as much as for the editor itself. There are AFAIK only two full-time employees (Jon Skinner and Will Bond) so they don't need to sell a ton of licenses. If they sell 6,000 licenses a year that nets them nearly $500K/year in revenue. Please note that the "6,000" there was totally invented by me. I just estimated how many licenses they need to sell to reach half a mil. I don't know if they sell 1,000 a year or 100,000 a year... I'd be really curious to know how many they sell.

nkkollaw 9y ago

Many people buy it. It's expensive, too...

sleepyhead 9y ago
It's cheap. I use it ten hours every day. It costs less than I would charge for an hour of consulting. Ok so I do live in one of the most expensive countries in the world but even in a developing country a developer don't have to work long to pay for this license for a tool they would use a lot every day.
- nkkollaw 9y ago
  It's not cheap compared to other software, and not cheap compared to most text editors and even most IDEs. I didn't say it's not worth it, I said it's not cheap. It's not.
  - sleepyhead 9y ago
    Less than one hour working time for the core software used when developing is cheap. A lot of software is very under priced in terms of value. The App Store and SaaS copycats pricing doesn't reflect the value or the cost of software - you need big volumes and many go bust due to no profits. I paid for ST2 in 2012. Five years later the upgrade price is only $30. Should have been more.

JohnBooty 9y ago

The "infinite free trial" model surely helps them indirectly. It expands the user base, which expands the plugin ecosystem, which sells licenses... because when you choose a text editor, you're choosing it for the ecosystem as much as for the editor itself. There are AFAIK only two full-time employees (Jon Skinner and Will Bond) so they don't need to sell a ton of licenses. If they sell 6,000 licenses a year that nets them nearly $500K/year in revenue. Please note that the "6,000" there was totally invented by me. I just estimated how many licenses they need to sell to reach half a mil. I don't know if they sell 1,000 a year or 100,000 a year... I'd be really curious to know how many they sell.