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I recently set up a pihole at home with the whole Covid situation and as soon as I noticed the donate link threw them £5 thinking "the least I can do is buy a L

I recently set up a pihole at home with the whole Covid situation and as soon as I noticed the donate link threw them £5 thinking "the least I can do is buy a London priced pub pint - I'm not exactly spending it elsewhere". I don't know why it's so different with software - I should really know better but even to this day my gut reaction is to, initially, balk at an app charging £5 - yet I'll walk into a pub (well, used to) and have no problem spending that and more on one beverage... I've since managed to snap out of that and will, if I think I'm going to enjoy it, spend the £1, £5, £20 or whatever it is within reason. This may be partly due to seeing in my day job customer feedback which in answer to "what would stop you using <essentially their business account + invoicing + tax reporting>?" - "if you charged me money". We basically run for businesses and even that cohort to a non-trivial proportion isn't prepared to spend (<£10 monthly) on software. We have other avenues and mechanisms to work work around that but it's a little demoralising when you see it so black and white. Makes me feel like I personally should at least be less inactive in my supporting of projects I like or just buying an app or subscriptions. I think the whole industry needs a reality check on how much "free" really costs.

WalterBright 6y ago
I know a successful CEO who started a business making business software. He gives it away for free. But he also sells support contracts for it. He says 90% of the users just take the free version. The rest buy support contracts. Enough to have made him a wealthy man. The business model is essentially give away the razors, sell the blades. The only unhappy people are the ones who use the product but expect free support :-)
allenu 6y ago
I wonder how much of the software pricing side is people not seeing the person working on the software? Maybe we assume all this good software we use is built by some large corporation and so are more likely to not toss them some coin, whereas with buying a coffee or a beer, we actually interact with a human being. (That said, obviously they may themselves work for a big multi-national like Starbucks.) I wonder if we could ever get to the model where when you pay for an app or service, it's somehow clear that you're funding a individual or small team, to make it more personal.

WalterBright 6y ago

I know a successful CEO who started a business making business software. He gives it away for free. But he also sells support contracts for it. He says 90% of the users just take the free version. The rest buy support contracts. Enough to have made him a wealthy man. The business model is essentially give away the razors, sell the blades. The only unhappy people are the ones who use the product but expect free support :-)

allenu 6y ago

I wonder how much of the software pricing side is people not seeing the person working on the software? Maybe we assume all this good software we use is built by some large corporation and so are more likely to not toss them some coin, whereas with buying a coffee or a beer, we actually interact with a human being. (That said, obviously they may themselves work for a big multi-national like Starbucks.) I wonder if we could ever get to the model where when you pay for an app or service, it's somehow clear that you're funding a individual or small team, to make it more personal.