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Ask HN: Who is the target audience for ~$1000 software?
I see a lot of software that's priced at about $1000. Stuff like photoshop (formerly at least), hex-rays[1], ICC[2]. Who is the target audience for these products? Individuals/enthusiasts will be hard-pressed to come up with the money, while large companies will be able to afford it and could even buy 10 or 20 without a second thought. So who is expected to buy it?
1: https://www.hex-rays.com/
2: https://softwarestore.intel.com/SuiteSelection/ParallelStudio
- djsumdog 9y agoArcGIS is another one (although the OSS qgis alternative is picking up steam). Adobe now chargers a much more affordable per year subscription. Honestly I'd rather pay the $300 ~ $600 for a version that doesn't expire, but that's just me. To answer your question: mid-level enterprise customers that need a very niche product.
- toomuchtodo 9y agoHow close is qgis to parity with ArcGIS? And can qgis interpret openstreetmap data?
- voltagex_ 9y agoI haven't used ArcGIS but I can answer - it's nowhere near MapInfo or even FME, but it's still very very useful in its own right. QGIS really needs more development effort, especially to work within corporate firewalls - I think I can still crash certain versions if they get a 407 back from the update check.
- toomuchtodo 9y agoThank you!
- vetinari 9y agoFME and QGIS are not directly comparable. FME is an ETL tool, using it just for the Data Inspector part would be a waste. In this scenario, QGIS would be also more comfortable and user friendly. On the other hand, QGIS cannot do what is FME's primary use - transform data.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 9y ago1. Pretty close in terms of functionality when it comes to rendering, computation. Not close when it comes to out of the box user friendliness (Arc comes packaged with everything and with QGIS you have to tap into a not-as-well-defined plugin ecosystem that is thousands strong to get the functionality). This is either a pro or a con depending on how you look at it. Also ArcGIS out of the box cartography is completely unrivaled compared to QGIS. Similar results can be achieved to ArcGIS when exporting QGIS data to something specializing in vector graphics such as Adobe Illustrator, which is the workflow a lot of people using QGIS do (render vectors/map in QGIS and then take it out to other program). 2. QGIS is actually “better” at interpreting OSM than Arc, simply because people who work on free software like free data and there are many more plugins and tutorials that are based around OSM for QGIS. So it’s not “better” in the sense you might be implying, more like it’s just a much more typical dataset for the QGIS community than Arc and you reap the side benefits of that. As other poster noted as well, the commercial options for QGIS sat the moment are not very good. I think Desktop GIS is an area that is ripe for Gitlab-esque disruption.
- toomuchtodo 9y agoThank you!
- CyberFonic 9y agoIn my experience government departments will buy $1000 + software packages when sold by slick salespersons, especially near the end of their annual budget cycle, when they chose to spend remaining funds so as to not have their budget cut. I have seen dozens of unopened boxes in many IT department offices.
- onion2k 9y agoI have seen dozens of unopened boxes in many IT department offices. Most enterprise software is installed over a network and managed with a license manager. An unopened box is not a sign that the software hasn't been used.
- xapata 9y agoNot in the old days.
- giancarlostoro 9y agoThis happens in colleges too, although they were buying Raspberry Pi's and other cool things that students could use for classes, including an Oculut Rift. It sucks how accounting sort of forces you to buy crazy things to make sure they don't take funds away from you, but it's also kind of cool the kind of stuff you can get away with buying if you word it just right.
- zxcmx 9y agoPeople who use the software professionally to make money. There is a market segment between enthusiast and enterprise where people pay real money for software which supports their freelancing and consulting. Hex-rays and (and formerly photoshop) fit in this category. Similar things might be wireless site survey software, antenna/ EM modelling, CAD, all kinds of engineering software really. "Pro versions" of security software, landscaping software, you name it.
- giancarlostoro 9y agoThis right here. This is why I bought all the JetBrains IDE's as a personal license, aside from my student graduation discount, all these IDE's allow me to be seriously productive at work. I do not regret buying JetBrains at all, had it been a thousand dollars I would of probably have thought twice, but the value it returns to me is worth it honestly. I'm definitely more productive with the JetBrains toolset.
- diamondo25 9y agoExactly the same for me. Although I do not use all tools at the same time, I still feel the money was worth it. I have thought to do the same with Visual Studio, but VS Community Edition + ReSharper is basically VS Ultimate. For HexRays... Its a really high price, and its software I don't make full use of, so i just keep working on the older, leaked versions instead.
- giancarlostoro 9y agoI don't use every tool, but I still find it worth it. I mostly use PyCharm, WebStorm, DataGrip (if you do any SQL work give it a try!) and of course ReSharper. I don't see Rider as "ready" yet, seems to not support opening up some of my .NET Core solutions still. Hoping it becomes stable and usable like regular VS.
- hkmurakami 9y agoMatlab/Mathematica and its ecosystem of plugins as well.
- melolife 9y agoIndividuals in roles with $1000 of purchasing authority, thereby avoiding procurement processes for larger purchases.
- sideshowb 9y agoThis. Many companies have a cut off around $1000 and purchases above that need more authorization.
- ChuckMcM 9y agoPeople for whom $1,000 for a tool is a reasonable amount of money, sometimes even a bargain. People designing things will buy a CAD package which can cost anywhere from $1,000 up to $50,000. Complex solvers like antenna simulation or computational fluid dynamics can command big prices. FPGA design software. Simulators. The are lots of things $1,000 should get you when you pay that for software. It should get you a phone number that someone will answer during working hours. A support ticking system where a bug report will always be resolved to either a fix or a workaround. Think of it this way, if you buy a piece of software that costs $1,000 and using it you can do work for a company that generates $100,000 in revenue? Then that is a not a bad investment.
- derefr 9y agoThe question is not why there are any software products priced at more than $1000; it's why the centre of the pricing distribution for many types of software is exactly $1000. Why does a CAD program cost $1000 instead of $800, or $2000, or even $10000? (CAD workstations certainly can cost $10000, so I don't think that's a stupid question.) If this is "freelancer-tier" pricing, and freelancers don't have to worry about a price-point beyond which they must fill out requisition forms, then software priced for them should just cost however much they're willing to pay (i.e. some percentage of how much money it makes them), which should vary with their revenue, rather than always ending up at a similar global price-point. And if it's not "freelancer-tier" pricing; if it's something else—then what is it?
- khedoros1 9y ago> it's why the centre of the pricing distribution for many types of software is exactly $1000 The original question says "~$1000" in the title, and "about $1000" in the explanatory text.
- jdietrich 9y ago$1000 is the purchasing limit in most large enterprises - anything over $1000 needs specific authorization. Buying a product at $999 is completely frictionless, while buying a product for $1001 involves multiple meetings and reams of paperwork. In enterprise purchasing logic, $999 is indistinguishable from free and $1001 might as well be $50,000. Clever software marketers have realized that a $999/mo SaaS product fits under that limit just as well as a $999 boxed product.
- joshvm 9y agoIt comes down to how much time you save using the software. If software A costs $100 but takes 20 hours to do the same thing that B (costing $1000) can do in 2, then it's a no brainer. It's a interesting price point, because for my work, $1000 is expensive, but reasonable if it's necessary software. $5k isn't an option unless it can provide serious value, and above that is pie in the sky. (Until they work for a company, most people don't value their labour). Typically $1000 doesn't get you fantastic support, you might get a year of email/phone, but don't expect much. A one off payment of $1000 is nothing compared to some SaaS's that advertise hundreds of dollars a month for premium tiers, or tens/hundreds of dollars per user per month.
- webreac 9y agoWhen an individual pays that much, he will not admit he has lost his money on a shitty software. He will spend all the efforts of learning how to get all the benefits of the software, then he will pretend (sometimes to himself) that the software gives valuable features that justified all this money and time. The same phenomen occurs for cars. People are always less critic when they have payed a lot.
- IvanK_net 9y agoAnother example, wich is quite popular yet expensive, is MatLab (the licence costs over 2000 USD). https://www.mathworks.com/pricing-licensing.html https://www.mathworks.com/pricing-licensing.html
- gesman 9y agoTarget easy buyer. Many corp has $500 approval-required-threshold. So if your software cost $499 - then you may make more sales that if it would cost $1000 a pop.
- jk2323 9y agoLinux OCR is priced like this. Unfortunately. http://www.ocr4linux.com/en:pricing:start http://www.ocr4linux.com/en:pricing:start This pricing is prohibitive expensive for most private users.
- avighnay 9y agoIt should be quantified whether we are talking about $1000 one time or $1000 per month or $1000 per year and for how many users; $1000 one time (multiple users) - this is an investment quite affordable by small scale enterprise ($2M-$5M annual revenue) even in developing countries $1000 one time (per user) - this is usually for the medium and large scale enterprises. But actually really affordable if the expected ROI is large, typically will apply to any software that deals with direct revenue generation e.g. Sales enablement $1000 per year (per user)- this falls under the radar of even professional individuals if the software delivers something really critical for them. E.g. Adobe CC single user license $1000 per month (per user) - this falls under the reach of medium and large scale enterprises depending on how many users need the software $1000 custom built software - if you get yourself a custom built software for $1000 by paying a freelancer or a really low profile dev shop, then it is jackpot especially for an Enterpise. I assume/hope this is not what you had in mind. All this is typically is for enterprises and I firmly believe the enterprise demand for software is why the software industry is as large and as sustainable as is today. We should all thank software that are priced $1000 and above, they are in a way the reason for our existence (as software professionals/companies) Strive to build such software and don't hesitate to price it as such.
- muzani 9y agoI'm working with someone making software in that range. They target retailers, saving them easily hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. The idea behind the pricing was to make it seem like they are naive for charging so little.
- p0nce 9y agoHex Rays and ICC are unmatched. Once you have worked with ICC backend you'll miss it a lot when using say, LLVM. Same story for IDA, I don't think any competitor does something at this level. Photoshop is being displaced by nimbler competitors.
- edanm 9y agoWho do you see displacing Photoshop? I think Photoshop is still the standard for most things, although I've seen some movement in specific segments (e.g. UX and graphic design).
- earenndil 9y agoThe one time I used icc (I got it for free, and wanted to play with it, and I had an application for which perf was relevant), it had significantly worse performance than clang, which trailed just behind gcc. In what way is it unmatched?
- p0nce 9y agoI used it for years. The auto-vectorizer is unmatched imho. It has a very systematic way to turn loops into incredibly tight code. I use LLVM 4.x and this is very far from ICC.
- Feniks 9y agoEnterprise and professionals. And then there's the large group that pirates the software, but those are potential future customers.
- twobyfour 9y agoIf you make $50k/yr (as a freelance headshot photographer in a small town) using Photoshop, a $1000 license plus a $500 upgrade every two years is worth your while. (I'm not up to date on the current subscription pricing but assume it's analagous.) Many people make much more than that per year using such software. In my current job at a small business, there are things we spend $10k/mo on to make $1M/mo in revenue. Even if we were only making $100k/mo, those costs would not be prohibitive (though we might be looking at reducing them further). Basically, you have to spend money to make money. If what you spend will allow you to make more than you're spending (and more than you'd make without it), it's worth it. The term many use for that sort of spending is "investment".
- vram22 9y agoGreat realistic comment. To reinforce it, there's that saying that some people know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
- helen842000 9y agoEven small companies use software that costs multiple thousands of dollars a year.