4 ms·

But they're trying to run a business, so why ask the question as if it's surprising?

by PKop 8y ago

egeozcan 8y ago
Why would running a business prevent them from offering a self-hosted solution? Look at Confluence, if you need examples.
- geekamongus 8y ago
  Or MS Office :-B
  - tonyedgecombe 8y ago
    Or every software product before about 2005.
frgtpsswrdlame 8y ago
Business is not synonymous with 'subscription model.' It's good for people to express their desire for on-prem, one-time payment products. Maybe the market can find a middle rather than the utter domination of subscription services.
Spivak 8y ago
It's surprising that I (for personal use) and my company (commercial use) would be willing to pay good money for the ability to run this app on-prem? Personal data notwithstanding we have data we put in our company wiki that is simply not allowed to be hosted on cloud services without lots of red tape and compliance certifications. Offering a on-prem option, at least for us, pushes all that responsibility onto our ops team, and Notion gets paid about the same but without the hosting costs.
- kjksf 8y ago
  The problem is that what you consider "good money" is probably not even close to making such a product a viable business. Their personal plan is $4/month. Maybe one in a few hundred people (let's say 500 for easy math) would want self-hosted version. Are you willing to pay $2000/month for a note-taking application? I doubt it. Not to mention the support burden of trying to figure out why something doesn't work on your self-hosted installation. That economic reality is why on-prem, self-hosted software is almost exclusively a very expensive, enterprise software. Companies can justify paying a few thousand a year for installation and a salary of an in-house employee to manage and maintain it. Individuals can't.
  - Spivak 8y ago
    I'm not sure I understand your math. The support burden is very real but why would the pricing be anything other than $premium/user/month with tiers based on support requirements? Self-hosting nerds like myself would be able to get by on a no-support 'community edition' for like $10-15/mo.
  - Aeolun 8y ago
    But that’s fine. My company can easily afford a few tens of thousands per month for the on-prem version. If the on-prem version does not exist, I’ll never even try to convince them to switch, since we aren’t going to store anything sensitive on someone elses infrastructure. So we stick with Confluence. Which everyone hates, but is still the best solution around.

But they're trying to run a business, so why ask the question as if it's surprising?

by PKop 8y ago

But they're trying to run a business, so why ask the question as if it's surprising?

Why would running a business prevent them from offering a self-hosted solution? Look at Confluence, if you need examples.

geekamongus 8y ago
Or MS Office :-B
- tonyedgecombe 8y ago
  Or every software product before about 2005.

frgtpsswrdlame 8y ago

Business is not synonymous with 'subscription model.' It's good for people to express their desire for on-prem, one-time payment products. Maybe the market can find a middle rather than the utter domination of subscription services.

Spivak 8y ago

It's surprising that I (for personal use) and my company (commercial use) would be willing to pay good money for the ability to run this app on-prem? Personal data notwithstanding we have data we put in our company wiki that is simply not allowed to be hosted on cloud services without lots of red tape and compliance certifications. Offering a on-prem option, at least for us, pushes all that responsibility onto our ops team, and Notion gets paid about the same but without the hosting costs.

kjksf 8y ago
The problem is that what you consider "good money" is probably not even close to making such a product a viable business. Their personal plan is $4/month. Maybe one in a few hundred people (let's say 500 for easy math) would want self-hosted version. Are you willing to pay $2000/month for a note-taking application? I doubt it. Not to mention the support burden of trying to figure out why something doesn't work on your self-hosted installation. That economic reality is why on-prem, self-hosted software is almost exclusively a very expensive, enterprise software. Companies can justify paying a few thousand a year for installation and a salary of an in-house employee to manage and maintain it. Individuals can't.
- Spivak 8y ago
  I'm not sure I understand your math. The support burden is very real but why would the pricing be anything other than $premium/user/month with tiers based on support requirements? Self-hosting nerds like myself would be able to get by on a no-support 'community edition' for like $10-15/mo.
- Aeolun 8y ago
  But that’s fine. My company can easily afford a few tens of thousands per month for the on-prem version. If the on-prem version does not exist, I’ll never even try to convince them to switch, since we aren’t going to store anything sensitive on someone elses infrastructure. So we stick with Confluence. Which everyone hates, but is still the best solution around.