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I love these kinds of tools and this looks very useful indeed, but something about your page triggers my spidey sense. A pricing page or at least a hint at a bu

I love these kinds of tools and this looks very useful indeed, but something about your page triggers my spidey sense. A pricing page or at least a hint at a business model would make that go away. Right now it feels like you’re just trying to get me to run a binary on my computer. Edit: not saying you’re shady, just that it has a vibe of being shady :)

hermitcrab 7y ago
It is free while we are in beta. Because I hope that is going to result in more feedback. Also I don't feel comfortable charging for something that isn't quite production quality yet. But the plan is to charge an annual sub after it comes out of beta (price undecided). I can see that might trigger some people to think it is of dubious provenance. Maybe I should put the above on a 'Buy' page? BTW the software is digitally signed (and notarized on Mac) and we've been selling software online since 2005. http://oryxdigital.com/ http://oryxdigital.com/
- hermitcrab 7y ago
  I have added a 'buy' page that hopefully makes things a bit clearer. No decision has been made on the price yet. Perhaps $99 per year?
  - brushfoot 7y ago
    Strongly suggest perpetual licensing unless this is truly a service, i.e., you're offloading processing to the cloud (which frankly would be a deal-breaker for me if I were evaluating this for a client). If this is a standalone binary, what I'd want to see as a user would be a one-time purchase and an optional annual support plan.
    - hermitcrab 7y ago
      My other two products are perpetual licences with optional paid major upgrades and include support. But the world is changing and a yearly sub is attractive for vendors. Simple and with a more predictable cash flow. It also incentivizes the vendor to keep existing customers happy, rather than always chasing new customers.
      - brushfoot 7y ago
        "Everything-as-a-service" is definitely attractive to us the vendors, but I'm talking about the user experience. With a recurring license, I'd expect: - Cloud computing - Cloud storage - Real-time collaboration - Hosting Vendors rarely deliver on the promise of continuous improvement quickly enough that I could justify the recurring cost from that standpoint alone. Or I'm already happy with the features, so I'm just paying for feature bloat at that point. (That's definitely been the case for most of the consumer cloud apps I pay for ... which is why I'm slowly migrating back to the desktop in many areas.) If there are no service features like real-time collaboration, then a recurring revenue model makes even less sense. I mean, I get it—I've written software that I sell with annual licenses myself. But it depends on cloud services to work, so there are costs to me too. That's I think where it's maybe the place to step back and look at the architecture and whether it's better suited to a web app if recurring revenue is important. Just my two cents....
        certera 7y ago
        I agree. I'm developing something, and while a subscription is attractive to me, I feel it's not correctly aligned to what users deserve. I'm burned out by all of these subscriptions and trying to go back to my "roots".
        hermitcrab 7y ago
        I pay a sub for some desktop software I use. I don't have a problem with it. If you estimate that the average user will use the product for N years, you can charge a one-time fee of X or a yearly sub of X/N and make the same amount either way (assuming you got N right and forgetting inflation). A yearly sub is very simple to explain. And people who use the product for longer pay more, which seems fair. The sub also helps to finance the ongoing costs of development and support.
        whyleyc 7y ago
        I disagree - as a vendor I think you should charge based on the value you provide to users, not the costs to run your service. That is to say I don’t think desktop software needs to have a “cloud” piece to it to make it valuable enough to users to justify an annual charge. Users don’t usually care where your app or service runs, just that it solves their pain points quickly and easily. The question then becomes how you justify that charge, but I think you can legitimately say support and/or new feature development (especially if you allow customers to have some kind of input into that). Having guaranteed support from a company with the technical chops that Andy has would be worth it alone for me in this instance. Jetbrains have an interesting model with their IDE’s whereby you can fallback to a perpetual desktop license for their products if you don’t want support or updates. Perhaps that’s a nice compromise option.

hermitcrab 7y ago

It is free while we are in beta. Because I hope that is going to result in more feedback. Also I don't feel comfortable charging for something that isn't quite production quality yet. But the plan is to charge an annual sub after it comes out of beta (price undecided). I can see that might trigger some people to think it is of dubious provenance. Maybe I should put the above on a 'Buy' page? BTW the software is digitally signed (and notarized on Mac) and we've been selling software online since 2005. http://oryxdigital.com/ http://oryxdigital.com/

hermitcrab 7y ago
I have added a 'buy' page that hopefully makes things a bit clearer. No decision has been made on the price yet. Perhaps $99 per year?
- brushfoot 7y ago
  Strongly suggest perpetual licensing unless this is truly a service, i.e., you're offloading processing to the cloud (which frankly would be a deal-breaker for me if I were evaluating this for a client). If this is a standalone binary, what I'd want to see as a user would be a one-time purchase and an optional annual support plan.
  - hermitcrab 7y ago
    My other two products are perpetual licences with optional paid major upgrades and include support. But the world is changing and a yearly sub is attractive for vendors. Simple and with a more predictable cash flow. It also incentivizes the vendor to keep existing customers happy, rather than always chasing new customers.
    - brushfoot 7y ago
      "Everything-as-a-service" is definitely attractive to us the vendors, but I'm talking about the user experience. With a recurring license, I'd expect: - Cloud computing - Cloud storage - Real-time collaboration - Hosting Vendors rarely deliver on the promise of continuous improvement quickly enough that I could justify the recurring cost from that standpoint alone. Or I'm already happy with the features, so I'm just paying for feature bloat at that point. (That's definitely been the case for most of the consumer cloud apps I pay for ... which is why I'm slowly migrating back to the desktop in many areas.) If there are no service features like real-time collaboration, then a recurring revenue model makes even less sense. I mean, I get it—I've written software that I sell with annual licenses myself. But it depends on cloud services to work, so there are costs to me too. That's I think where it's maybe the place to step back and look at the architecture and whether it's better suited to a web app if recurring revenue is important. Just my two cents....
      - certera 7y ago
        I agree. I'm developing something, and while a subscription is attractive to me, I feel it's not correctly aligned to what users deserve. I'm burned out by all of these subscriptions and trying to go back to my "roots".
        hermitcrab 7y ago
        I pay a sub for some desktop software I use. I don't have a problem with it. If you estimate that the average user will use the product for N years, you can charge a one-time fee of X or a yearly sub of X/N and make the same amount either way (assuming you got N right and forgetting inflation). A yearly sub is very simple to explain. And people who use the product for longer pay more, which seems fair. The sub also helps to finance the ongoing costs of development and support.
      - whyleyc 7y ago
        I disagree - as a vendor I think you should charge based on the value you provide to users, not the costs to run your service. That is to say I don’t think desktop software needs to have a “cloud” piece to it to make it valuable enough to users to justify an annual charge. Users don’t usually care where your app or service runs, just that it solves their pain points quickly and easily. The question then becomes how you justify that charge, but I think you can legitimately say support and/or new feature development (especially if you allow customers to have some kind of input into that). Having guaranteed support from a company with the technical chops that Andy has would be worth it alone for me in this instance. Jetbrains have an interesting model with their IDE’s whereby you can fallback to a perpetual desktop license for their products if you don’t want support or updates. Perhaps that’s a nice compromise option.