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You should remember that the existence of open source or home-brew solutions is not in itself going to prevent me (as a person who makes purchasing decisions) l

by m0nty 15y ago

You should remember that the existence of open source or home-brew solutions is not in itself going to prevent me (as a person who makes purchasing decisions) looking at a paid-for version. For example, I use Dans Guardian at the moment but am looking at Smoothwall to do much the same thing. I use Amazon S3 + s3ql for backups, but also use Nasuni for the same thing. I can make forms quickly and fairly easily with Django but prefer Wufoo for all sorts of reasons. I've been told by my manager to favour off-the-shelf solutions - he feels it will allow us to hire more easily if I decide to leave. I prefer not to have the hassle of writing software myself, or downloading and configuring often very complex software which might not be that polished. Sometimes, I just want a support person to call who can fix stuff quickly so I can get on with my work rather than dealing with support issues. The people I work with are not very tech-literate so I need software which even they can use easily (otherwise I just end up doing their work for them). There are many products I would never consider buying, and many top-rate open source products I cannot live without. But if you can encapsulate your expertise and knowledge in software and sell that to me and make my life easier, I will cheerfully part with money.

JonLim 15y ago
Going to echo this sentiment, however unpopular it may be. Free solutions are great and make business a lot easier and/or cheaper to conduct. However, you get what you pay for. Your mileage may vary, but I have found that many free solutions offer some of the worst support in the world. Even worse if you are trying to use their software in a way that they hadn't intended.
- beagle3 15y ago
  > However, you get what you pay for. No. You get what you reward for. While payment is one form of reward, many customers reward a vendor with unconditional-repeat-business, in which case they usually get much less than what they paid for, even though they paid dearly. They just didn't reward for quality. A lot of expensive products are pure garbage, and in those cases, you certainly DON'T get what you pay for. The simplest example I can think of is HDMI cable. They cost $30/6ft at RadioShack when on sale, and $1/6ft at Amazon or MonoPrice. Customers pay RadioShack for it; what do they get? How is this different than the general case, and how is this different than the specific case of software?
  - JonLim 15y ago
    In context, I was referring to "getting what you pay for" from free services, not so much the paid ones. With paid services and products, you're aiming to get the best bang for your buck, so obviously you would evaluate cost vs. output or some other measure. As such, I would say "Hey, why is this HDMI cable from Radio Shack so expensive compared to Monoprice?" And blam, I've made the best decision in terms of value. I think.

by m0nty 15y ago

JonLim 15y ago

Going to echo this sentiment, however unpopular it may be. Free solutions are great and make business a lot easier and/or cheaper to conduct. However, you get what you pay for. Your mileage may vary, but I have found that many free solutions offer some of the worst support in the world. Even worse if you are trying to use their software in a way that they hadn't intended.

beagle3 15y ago
> However, you get what you pay for. No. You get what you reward for. While payment is one form of reward, many customers reward a vendor with unconditional-repeat-business, in which case they usually get much less than what they paid for, even though they paid dearly. They just didn't reward for quality. A lot of expensive products are pure garbage, and in those cases, you certainly DON'T get what you pay for. The simplest example I can think of is HDMI cable. They cost $30/6ft at RadioShack when on sale, and $1/6ft at Amazon or MonoPrice. Customers pay RadioShack for it; what do they get? How is this different than the general case, and how is this different than the specific case of software?
- JonLim 15y ago
  In context, I was referring to "getting what you pay for" from free services, not so much the paid ones. With paid services and products, you're aiming to get the best bang for your buck, so obviously you would evaluate cost vs. output or some other measure. As such, I would say "Hey, why is this HDMI cable from Radio Shack so expensive compared to Monoprice?" And blam, I've made the best decision in terms of value. I think.