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The SaaS pricing of these tools is getting out of hand. €108/year for this. Another hundred for retool, another hundred for Postman, mmhmm / camera apps, Notion

The SaaS pricing of these tools is getting out of hand. €108/year for this. Another hundred for retool, another hundred for Postman, mmhmm / camera apps, Notion, Gmail, Trello/Jira, Github/Gitlab, Slack, an image resizing service, some load testing tool, Figma.. now every developer has a $1000+ monthly burn rate (!). Can we go back to buying plain software licenses?

theamk 5y ago
Why on earth would you pay monthly for image resizing tool? Also, not quite sure what load testing tool you mean, but there is a chance local version would be enough. You can go to buying plain software licenses, but I most people don't bother.
jeroenhd 5y ago
Most of the tools you listed are hosted services, not products you buy once. Gmail, Trello, Slack, Figma, and Jira are all closed source components on a hosted platform. Their core features are that you can use them and collaborate on them without taking care of running the actual software itself. You can switch to alternative you host yourself. RocketChat or Element instead of Slack, Gitlab instead of Github, you name it. There are tons of open source and closed source alternative to all the cool hosted platforms if you dare look outside what everyone else is using. This strategy incurs the cost of maintenance and management, which is why in many cases the hosted services are usually cheaper. Getting Gitlab on a $10 VPS isn't a problem, but getting regular backups, failovers, etc. is incredible difficult. My personal developer burn rate is less than $50 per month. The company I work for doesn't even need pay for Docker's fancy account with higher limits because there's no need to, even if you run containers all day. You don't have to use all these expensive online services if you're willing to run some software in-house, but don't underestimate the cost of paying someone to set up all those cost-saving services.
- horsawlarway 5y ago
  I've mostly switched to the self-hosted side. Yes - there is some initial ramp up time and some hurdles to face (and I actually ended up going the self-hosted K8s route, which is definitely a lot of additional ramp up time, but IMO - worth it.) That said... I save a LOT of money. Currently hosting - Bookstack - Seafile - Jellyfin - Grocy - Drone.io - Gitlab - Youtrack - Keycloak - OpenHab ~$50/year for dynamic dns. ~$15/year for hostnames. ~$5/year for backup and long term storage (this varies, but is often within the free tier on backblaze unless I have to restore a service). Or about $5/month (not including the internet, which I already pay for anyways, and the hardware, which is literally my old/outdated machines running micro-k8s, and a NAS). The maintenance can be annoying every now and then - but it's also the kind of work I don't really mind, and it's a nice exercise to stay up-to-date on tech I end up interacting with in the office anyways.
ricardobeat 5y ago
s/monthly/yearly

theamk 5y ago

Why on earth would you pay monthly for image resizing tool? Also, not quite sure what load testing tool you mean, but there is a chance local version would be enough. You can go to buying plain software licenses, but I most people don't bother.

jeroenhd 5y ago

Most of the tools you listed are hosted services, not products you buy once. Gmail, Trello, Slack, Figma, and Jira are all closed source components on a hosted platform. Their core features are that you can use them and collaborate on them without taking care of running the actual software itself. You can switch to alternative you host yourself. RocketChat or Element instead of Slack, Gitlab instead of Github, you name it. There are tons of open source and closed source alternative to all the cool hosted platforms if you dare look outside what everyone else is using. This strategy incurs the cost of maintenance and management, which is why in many cases the hosted services are usually cheaper. Getting Gitlab on a $10 VPS isn't a problem, but getting regular backups, failovers, etc. is incredible difficult. My personal developer burn rate is less than $50 per month. The company I work for doesn't even need pay for Docker's fancy account with higher limits because there's no need to, even if you run containers all day. You don't have to use all these expensive online services if you're willing to run some software in-house, but don't underestimate the cost of paying someone to set up all those cost-saving services.

horsawlarway 5y ago
I've mostly switched to the self-hosted side. Yes - there is some initial ramp up time and some hurdles to face (and I actually ended up going the self-hosted K8s route, which is definitely a lot of additional ramp up time, but IMO - worth it.) That said... I save a LOT of money. Currently hosting - Bookstack - Seafile - Jellyfin - Grocy - Drone.io - Gitlab - Youtrack - Keycloak - OpenHab ~$50/year for dynamic dns. ~$15/year for hostnames. ~$5/year for backup and long term storage (this varies, but is often within the free tier on backblaze unless I have to restore a service). Or about $5/month (not including the internet, which I already pay for anyways, and the hardware, which is literally my old/outdated machines running micro-k8s, and a NAS). The maintenance can be annoying every now and then - but it's also the kind of work I don't really mind, and it's a nice exercise to stay up-to-date on tech I end up interacting with in the office anyways.

ricardobeat 5y ago

s/monthly/yearly