29 ms·

Increased Subscription Pricing for IDEs, .NET Tools, and the All Products Pack

144 points by gmemstr 4y ago

Semaphor 4y ago
That’s actually not that bad. The All-products pack goes is only getting 24€ (pre-tax) more expensive per year for me.
- heelix 4y ago
  On the corp side, the bump is enough that this becomes problematic. Going from $650 to $780 for that first year is going to cause all sorts of "but what about free" conversations next week. Argh.
  - heartbreak 4y ago
    I have yet to meet a company that cares about $130 (or even $1,300) in expenses for a productivity tool like this. Maybe that’s because I wouldn’t work for one that did.
ospzfmbbzr 4y ago
Too much. I get the ultimate pack but won't be renewing. It's isn't THAT good and I'm very effective with vi. Maybe I will still get one but not the whole pack. It was a good deal so I just went for it all but now no way.
adingus 4y ago
Pycharm's debugger is great but I cancelled my sub after trying out emacs & neovim for a while. I realized I didn't miss the rest of the IDE at all.
lioeters 4y ago
> Prepay at the current price for more than one year Great idea, I bet many will take advantage of the deal.
davidgrenier 4y ago
- chii 4y ago
  i dunno about vim or emacs, but they surely don't compare to intellij IDEA for java support.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  James Gosling, which knows a thing or two about Emacs, thinks otherwise.
- meibo 4y ago
  That's incredibly dismissive, and if you think that about any of JetBrain's software, I'm unsure about your qualifications to judge anyone's productivity.
- michaelanckaert 4y ago
  I’m a big user of both Vim and Emacs and agree that they offer huge productivity boosts as editors. The speed that modal editing (Vim) gives you or the extensibility of Emacs is unparalleled. But at the same time I believe it’s naive to underestimate the productivity offered by IDEs such as IntelliJ or Pycharm. While news tools such as LSP are wonderful additions to Vil/Emacs, the experience doesn’t come close to what dedicated IDEs offer. My personal flow is to use Vim for true editing, which gives me the power of modal editing, and switch to a full IDE when I need to do extensive refactoring or need code insights or need powerful debugging offered by an IDE.
  - annowiki 4y ago
    IdeaVim works fine. I can't use vim sandwich and that's about my only complaint. I was firmly resistant to IDEs like OP and quite in love with neovim for years. Tried PyCharm because of work, never looking back. I could never find just a simple debugger for vim that was easy and intuitive to set up. Always had trouble. And now, the in-IDE Jupyter Notebooks that allow me to use vim keybindings (albeit with an annoying bug that at least has a workaround https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/VIM-2504 https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/VIM-2504) has completely changed the way I work. Are there occasionally show stopper bugs? Yes. Is it worth it for amazing debugger integration? Absolutely.
Aeolun 4y ago
What the hell is up with prices? Everything I pay in dollars became 20% more expensive. My cereal became 20% more expensive. Jetbrains becomes 20% more expensive. This is the first time in my life (34 yo) that price changes have been so large that they’re apparent to me. And even with a dev salary the combined amount is high enough that it has an impact on my behavior.
- vfclists 4y ago
  - Aeolun 4y ago
    Not quite sure why your response is so energetic. Jetbrains products were always cheap, and now they are more expensive. I never said it’s now a bad deal. I’ve just never seen prices rise so fast. Even during the whole pandemic when China shipping basically stopped, rising prices were unnoticable. Now prices rise more, and it surprises me, that’s all.
    - vfclists 4y ago
      Well I get upset when IT guys complain about stuff being not free and price hikes. It is a pet peeve with the software developers whingeing about the cost of tools. I guess I overreacted to your statement. I remember spending over $300 in todays money for Delphi when it first come out in 1995, and in my view it was well spent. It wasn't even in employment related then. I considered the tool useful for my personal desires. So seeing professional people complain about the prices of tools which are extremely low-priced when adjusted for inflation kind of bugs me. As the guys said their prices haven't gone up for seven years. If you consider JetBrains subscriptions expensive, try Delphi, or the commercial versions of Lisp and Smalltalk.
      - MockObject 4y ago
        He could switch to Delphi, but that wouldn't stop him from considering JetBrains' prices expensive.
pyprism 4y ago
With 10 USD, I can buy 1 weeks worth of food in my country. I wish SASS, software providers like Jetbrains adjusts their price based on country per capita.
- IshKebab 4y ago
  People in rich countries hate it when companies do that. There's also the additional hassle of verifying addresses. All so you can get a little extra money from some poor countries. I can see why they wouldn't bother.
  - konkordat 4y ago
    JetBrains are from a low income country themselves.
- 323 4y ago
  Is your developer salary also adjusted based on country per capita? Or are you getting a mostly Western salary?
  - billfruit 4y ago
    Steam does it very well for games, pricing games differentially such that they are much cheaper in 3rd world countries. JetBrains could do something similar too. Developer wages too vary from country to country.
    - ymolodtsov 4y ago
      Steam basically turned it on for every developer until a lot of them noticed how little are they getting from some countries. If iPhones and TV cost the same I'm not sure why software products should.
      - billfruit 4y ago
        If its a question of a little vs nothing, it is better to have atleast a little IMHO.
oxfordmale 4y ago
Most JetBrains products are super slow, and resource hogs. I get red mist in front of my eyes whenever I see a DataGrip icon as it tends to consume all your CPU and memory for complex databases regardless of your machine spec. These days I am mostly using VsCode for development and TablePlus/Postico for database development.
- 0des 4y ago
  I thought I was the only one. For me it was GoLand, not to mention the constant feeling that im being watched. VSCode without telemetry is what I moved to.
  - yole 4y ago
    JetBrains IDEs ask you whether you want to submit usage data on the first startup, and honor your choice. You are not watched if you don't give an explicit, opt-in permission for that.
  - konkordat 4y ago
    Lol. VSCode with telemetry and autoupdates turned off still keeps pinging MS servers. There is your privacy.
    - 0des 4y ago
      I use the VSCodium variant, which is why I specified no telemetry.
- CoffeeOnWrite 4y ago
  > Most JetBrains products are super slow, and resource hogs > These days I am mostly using VsCode for development Please qualify the difference in speed between JetBrains and VS Code. From my perspective, they are both “super slow” and “resource hogs”.
  - oxfordmale 4y ago
    I have a MacBook Pro with 16GB of memory and i5 processor. It is sufficient for VsCode, however for some more complex Jetbrains products I sometimes struggle to copy and paste from one file to the other. On an 8GB machine VsCode is likely struggling as well, so a resource hog as well, just less so than some JetBrains products.
devonallie 4y ago
I don’t have much to add but what I do have is a question. What happens when people are priced out of economic activity. Most recent memory of this much economic turbulence is ‘08 but the conditions between then and now are incomparable.
- weberer 4y ago
  Well for digital products, the answer is usually piracy.
qwerty456127 4y ago
Well in advance. Thanks. By the way I think it would be nice to also have a hobbyist license option for those who barely use it and don't earn any money this way. The actual price seems almost free in terms of how much a full-time developer would earn using it yet slightly expensive for something [awesome] I only launch on some occasions a year.
- mgkimsal 4y ago
  They do offer EAP versions that work for 30 days at a time at no cost. They're arguably sometimes 'unstable'.
- weberer 4y ago
  They do if you contribute to an open source project. There's also Pycharm Community edition which is available through the package manager of most Linux distros. https://www.jetbrains.com/community/opensource/#support https://www.jetbrains.com/community/opensource/#support
  - daveoc64 4y ago
    JetBrains offers free versions of several of their IDEs (e.g. IntelliJ IDEA Community), but nothing for .NET
    - weberer 4y ago
      I guess that's a good incentive to get people to switch to Kotlin and the JVM :P
  - 202206241203 4y ago
    > They do if you contribute to an open source project. Are you sure you don't mean substantial contributions to a very popular open source project?
    - hhariri 4y ago
      We support OSS independently of their popularity. If you have had issues with your project being supported (due to maybe some automated checks we've put in place to help us), please feel free to reach out to me with the details. My email is hadi at jetbrains dot com. Thanks.
midenginedcoupe 4y ago
Yeah, I saw this coming when they sent around a survey a couple of months back asking what people thought of their current pricing and what price increases they would stomach before ditching it. An extra £16 per year for IntelliJ seems OK as rises go.
mgkimsal 4y ago
@jetbrains: Please add support for your JetBrains 'space' as a task server in your IDEs. Yes, there's already YouTrack tickets for this, from months ago.
JustFinishedBSG 4y ago
In general I think a price increase is reasonable but Jetbrains also had to fire most of its staff because of the war and development has slowed to a crawl. I still pay because I want to support them and their stance but paying more for less leaves a bad aftertaste.
- moonocle 4y ago
  They didn't fire most of their staff. They closed the Russian offices and offered relocation to everyone in Russia (and many took it). I mean they were practically forced to close their Russian offices with the current political situation and war going on. The relocation process is very expensive as well as opening new offices in Europe and rehiring there as CoL and salaries in Europe are much higher.
  - JustFinishedBSG 4y ago
    I know they were forced. I know they did it the most humane way possible. This is precisely why I support them financially. Doesn't change the fact that they had to let go of a huge portion of their staff. Call it firing, or special unemployment operation, the result is still the same; and I can't help but notice that updates are now very, very sparse and pretty minor ( maybe its a pure coincidence because they are busy with Fleet and the Java update who knows ). All in all it’s understandable and not a big deal but when faced, like right now, with whether I should prepay 3 years or not it's hard not to think about the future of the company.
    - monkey_monkey 4y ago
      Then don't prepay. The cost difference (for the all products pack) is around £50 over 3 years.
    - hhariri 4y ago
      I apologise for intervening, but I believe it's necessary as this statement is not correct. We did not layoff a huge portion of our staff.
_benj 4y ago
I get so much value out of JetBrains products that if a price increase is what is needed or them to stay on business I can accept that. (The products are paid by my employer so this only affects indirectly) It might be an unpopular opinion but I appreciate the transparency of the post. There are other companies which products I use that I’m afraid are not financially sustainable and thus I’m afraid for an email saying that the products has been discontinued. There’s always the possibility of open source, home brewed or whatever, but when it comes to getting stuff done sometimes paying is cheaper than the time/effort of an alternative. Best of luck jetbrains!
- a4a4a4a4 4y ago
  Agreed. I also get a license from my employer, but continue to pay for the all products pack separately because they make such nice stuff, and I'm happy to support them in this small, mostly symbolic way.
  - dc-programmer 4y ago
    Same. For me, it’s the JavaScript development experience that really sets Jetbrains apart. I’m sure other IDEs can offer parity with the compiled languages, but if I’m using an IDE in the first place, I’m probably working on a web app, and getting first class support for both the frontend and backend in the same window is huge for productivity.
mike 4y ago
Nicely communicated. Everything that JetBrains does around their pricing and subscription model always feels really fair and classy to me. (perpetual fallback licensing, continuity discounts). In this case, being completely upfront in the post title that this is a price increase, no "Updated pricing" or "Revised pricing" etc. Reasonable notice period with an option to renew for multiple years at the current pricing before the change comes into effect.
- ochronus 4y ago
  This, so much! I wish more companies/products would do it like this (sure, we can debate the actual prices, etc.)
- Aeolun 4y ago
  To be fair, if a huge number of people renew at the current rate for 3 years that’s a nice war-chest for Jetbrains in the coming years.
  - mrunkel 4y ago
    I just logged into my account, I can't see a way to renew for three years. The only option I have is to switch from annual to monthly billing.
    - mike 4y ago
      On https://account.jetbrains.com/licenses https://account.jetbrains.com/licenses if you click "Renew" for the appropriate product then on the next page, under the Subscription dropdown there should also be a "Purchase Period" dropdown. It's probably set to "Default" rather than "1 year", but can be changed to "2 years" or "3 years". Does that option not appear for you?
      - mrunkel 4y ago
        Thanks, I found it…
    - 4y ago
mmastrac 4y ago
The heavier IDEs are in real trouble given the impressive state of VS Code lately. I haven't found the need to reach for a bigger IDE than Code in a while and I've been perfectly productive in JS, C, Rust and Python projects lately. Do yourself a favour and try out Code for your next project.
- spacemanmatt 4y ago
  I tried it and I think it sucks. JetBrains FTW.
- dragonelite 4y ago
  The language server protocol standard has really given some IDE like features to expendable text editors like Nvim and Emacs.
  - mayama 4y ago
    After using vscode for years, I've tried nvim with lunarvim starter pack and am using it more. Using vscode without mouse is always a problem even with vim plugin. On the other hand, mouse is almost useless in nvim.
    - Lio 4y ago
      Not sure why you'd say a mouse in Neovim is useless. A mouse can be very useful in both Vim and Neovim when set up correctly, it will even work across SSH. Even just using two fingered trackpad scrolling to move the view port is something I do almost everyday without thinking about it. If you wanted to you could also highlight text, show balloon help, select windows and tab and interact with file explorers. Of course you can do all that very quickly with keyboard shortcuts, which is what I mostly do, but they option of the mouse is still there.
- valcron1000 4y ago
  There's no comparison between using VSCode and IntelliJ for Java development
202206241203 4y ago
Big problem for me is that they are using proceeds from well-selling products like ReSharper to fund their strategic but under-performing products like Rider, all while neglecting the former. Over last few years there were no big features added in ReSharper whatsoever and it became slower.
- silon42 4y ago
  Rider is not bad... better for me than VS and VS Code from what I've tried. Basically the equivalent of IDEA.
- lolinder 4y ago
  Where do you get information about JetBrains's sales and engineering expenses to draw this conclusion? One reason Rider will pull ahead of Resharper is because Rider builds on the same base IDE as most of their products, so it benefits to a large extent from investment in any of those IDEs. I'm assuming that Resharper can only benefit from direct investment.
- cyral 4y ago
  I use Rider ever day instead of Visual Studio and it certainly isn’t under performing
rvz 4y ago
This comes as no surprise and was in fact expected by Jetbrains. Each time they increase prices, VSCode becomes more attractive to developers. On top of that, Microsoft is doing a very clever pricing scam as I said before [0]; by making their base tools free and charging for exquisite features in VSCode like Copilot. On other editors, either you use a barebones editor and pay for Copilot or you pay for both copilot and the editor subscriptions. Microsoft wins both ways and as evidently shown here, JetBrains conceded to make a subscription price rise. Microsoft knows you can't beat free. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31826190 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31826190
- calcifer 4y ago
  > Each time they increase prices They have never increased subscription prices. They still charge the same amount they did 7 years ago, when subscriptions were introduced.
- duckmysick 4y ago
  > Microsoft knows you can't beat free. That doesn't explain why Windows and Office (both paid products) have edge over desktop Linux and LibreOffice (free).
bogwog 4y ago
Jetbrains doesn’t get my money because of how much of a confusing mess their product lineup is. They have a bunch of different IDEs sold separately that ultimately seem to be identical except for language support. Why isn’t language support implemented as plugins if all the IDEs share a common framework? Last I checked, it seemed like they do have an “ultimate” version with multiple language support… except that one doesn’t support C/C++. I was interested in buying CLion, but also needed to be able to work with Python in the same project. I couldn’t tell if that means I have to also buy the PyCharm IDE and deal with two different IDEs running at once. It also doesn’t help that they have a subscription licensing plan. Even though they do have perpetual fallback, it doesn’t seem like a giant bloated IDE like this will hold up very long without updates. So in the end, I just use Sublime Text. It’s far from perfect, but I can make it do nearly everything I need it to without having to strain my brain at the checkout screen.
- 1123581321 4y ago
  Sublime is great. Clion supports Python (and you can edit any file from any of their products.) The easiest way to figure out if you like their apps before purchase is to just run the EAP version of one if your evaluation period expired.
- eropple 4y ago
  > It also doesn’t help that they have a subscription licensing plan. Even though they do have perpetual fallback, it doesn’t seem like a giant bloated IDE like this will hold up very long without updates. FWIW, I stopped updating paying for IDEA in 2019 and it hasn't bothered me. I don't do JVM stuff every day anymore, that's why I stopped, but when I have to go hack on something, it's just fine. Agreed on the multiple IDEs thing. I don't write C++ regularly but that'd make me tear my hair out.
- babelfish 4y ago
  IIRC IntelliJ is a superset of all their products
  - gazby 4y ago
mistrial9 4y ago
I do not want my product checked constantly -- I want to pay for a year and then leave me alone ! The trend is towards constant monitoring and associated disconnect immediately with a monthly payment. I object to that model. I pay for a large jetBrains product right now. Not a problem to raise the price a bit. Excellent company and products in my experience.
dancemethis 4y ago
If only it was Free Software, I would pay gladly.
- sideeffffect 4y ago
  IntelliJ Community Edition is indeed Free Software! Apache 2.0 license, to be specific. It's an awesome product, I recommend everybody to use it. I personally use it with its amazing Scala plug-in, also friendly licensed.
kypro 4y ago
Before I clicked the link I assumed this was a sensationalised headline. It's interesting how direct the communication is here. Normally companies will try to justify their price increases in a lengthy blog post focusing on the "awesome new features" they've been working on, but not here. Just a few paragraphs summarised by, "we are at the point where we need to increase our subscription prices". Fair enough. As a user obviously price increases are never welcome, but within reason I think we have to be understanding. JetBrains offers a huge amount of value to many companies and individuals. It might not be worth the price to everyone, but their pricing doesn't seem unreasonable to me and quality software is never going to be cheap.
throwaway1092 4y ago
I've been a paying customer since 2006. It's worth every penny and more and while I don't love paying more, I'm content to pay the cost for great dev tools.
KingOfCoders 4y ago
I have a license for 21 years (on/off) now. They were always very helpful on upgrades.
mark_l_watson 4y ago
I almost always have at least one subscription with Jetbrains. This all sounds reasonable, especially with competition from VSCode ecosystem as well as LSP support improving.
- 202206241203 4y ago
  > reasonable, especially with competition from VSCode ecosystem Competing with a free product by raising prices? Might work with corporate accounts.
  - mark_l_watson 4y ago
    I see you point. Some people will buy their products without too much regards to cost. I am sure they work hard to optimize profit vs. product pricing.
joshstrange 4y ago
Immediately paid for 3 more years without a second thought though the pricing is completely reasonable and I wouldn't have had an issue paying the new price. Also I give JetBrains massive respect for including the old/new pricing on their pricing page versus what so many companies do which is "our prices have changed" without making it clear and leaving people to using the Wayback Machine to figure it out. Also allowing people to renew up to 3 years at the old price is a move that inspries a lot of loyalty (as shown by my immediate purchase/extension). I understand if you don't program enough to make it worth paying for a tool but if you develop professionally then the JetBrains products are a steal. I really only use IDEA (PHP, TS, Java) and DataGrip (databases) but I pay for the full product pack in case I ever need another tool. I recently used AppCode and was very pleasantly surprised by it as I quite dislike Xcode for actual coding.
jamespo 4y ago
Seems to be a 15% increase for a personal account, which is reasonable
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
desireco42 4y ago
Jetbrains as a company is wonderful, they treat their customers well and would be a joy to be their subscriber. The only issue is, I tried few times to use their products, they are good, but I prefer vim or visual studio code that are free and give me more. Thoughtworks use them as they empower their consultants with standard toolset. I paired with those guys and it is interesting what they get from the tools, but in the end, I am more comfortable with VS and Vim and command line. Increase font size for example is not simple :). The whole idea that you can pay a company roughly $250/yr and they take care of your development tooling needs is wonderful. I wish things change and I would be happy to pay 3yrs in advance. To clarify, I use javascript/typescript, ruby, elixir, sometimes elm, go etc. So no Java.
swat535 4y ago
I think this entirely fair and from all the tools that I pay for , Jetbrains is the one that delivers the most value. Not to mention that their licensing model is very well made and you are not even forced to upgrade if you don't want to. I do, however wish they would focus more on performance and code intellisense than constantly trying to add bells and whistles to their IDE. Don't give me more Github integrations, give me better code analysis, improve inspection with regards to common bugs and security vulnerabilities. Give me better code quality tools and suggest potential ways that I could write a certain code block to improve performance.. these are the features that are most useful for me and since IDEs can index and deeplink everything, they should be able to leverage that to better understand code context for analytics and reporting.

144 points by gmemstr 4y ago

Semaphor 4y ago

That’s actually not that bad. The All-products pack goes is only getting 24€ (pre-tax) more expensive per year for me.

heelix 4y ago
On the corp side, the bump is enough that this becomes problematic. Going from $650 to $780 for that first year is going to cause all sorts of "but what about free" conversations next week. Argh.
- heartbreak 4y ago
  I have yet to meet a company that cares about $130 (or even $1,300) in expenses for a productivity tool like this. Maybe that’s because I wouldn’t work for one that did.

ospzfmbbzr 4y ago

Too much. I get the ultimate pack but won't be renewing. It's isn't THAT good and I'm very effective with vi. Maybe I will still get one but not the whole pack. It was a good deal so I just went for it all but now no way.

adingus 4y ago

Pycharm's debugger is great but I cancelled my sub after trying out emacs & neovim for a while. I realized I didn't miss the rest of the IDE at all.

lioeters 4y ago

> Prepay at the current price for more than one year Great idea, I bet many will take advantage of the deal.

davidgrenier 4y ago

chii 4y ago
i dunno about vim or emacs, but they surely don't compare to intellij IDEA for java support.
pjmlp 4y ago
James Gosling, which knows a thing or two about Emacs, thinks otherwise.
meibo 4y ago
That's incredibly dismissive, and if you think that about any of JetBrain's software, I'm unsure about your qualifications to judge anyone's productivity.
michaelanckaert 4y ago
I’m a big user of both Vim and Emacs and agree that they offer huge productivity boosts as editors. The speed that modal editing (Vim) gives you or the extensibility of Emacs is unparalleled. But at the same time I believe it’s naive to underestimate the productivity offered by IDEs such as IntelliJ or Pycharm. While news tools such as LSP are wonderful additions to Vil/Emacs, the experience doesn’t come close to what dedicated IDEs offer. My personal flow is to use Vim for true editing, which gives me the power of modal editing, and switch to a full IDE when I need to do extensive refactoring or need code insights or need powerful debugging offered by an IDE.
- annowiki 4y ago
  IdeaVim works fine. I can't use vim sandwich and that's about my only complaint. I was firmly resistant to IDEs like OP and quite in love with neovim for years. Tried PyCharm because of work, never looking back. I could never find just a simple debugger for vim that was easy and intuitive to set up. Always had trouble. And now, the in-IDE Jupyter Notebooks that allow me to use vim keybindings (albeit with an annoying bug that at least has a workaround https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/VIM-2504 https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/VIM-2504) has completely changed the way I work. Are there occasionally show stopper bugs? Yes. Is it worth it for amazing debugger integration? Absolutely.

Aeolun 4y ago

What the hell is up with prices? Everything I pay in dollars became 20% more expensive. My cereal became 20% more expensive. Jetbrains becomes 20% more expensive. This is the first time in my life (34 yo) that price changes have been so large that they’re apparent to me. And even with a dev salary the combined amount is high enough that it has an impact on my behavior.

vfclists 4y ago
- Aeolun 4y ago
  Not quite sure why your response is so energetic. Jetbrains products were always cheap, and now they are more expensive. I never said it’s now a bad deal. I’ve just never seen prices rise so fast. Even during the whole pandemic when China shipping basically stopped, rising prices were unnoticable. Now prices rise more, and it surprises me, that’s all.
  - vfclists 4y ago
    Well I get upset when IT guys complain about stuff being not free and price hikes. It is a pet peeve with the software developers whingeing about the cost of tools. I guess I overreacted to your statement. I remember spending over $300 in todays money for Delphi when it first come out in 1995, and in my view it was well spent. It wasn't even in employment related then. I considered the tool useful for my personal desires. So seeing professional people complain about the prices of tools which are extremely low-priced when adjusted for inflation kind of bugs me. As the guys said their prices haven't gone up for seven years. If you consider JetBrains subscriptions expensive, try Delphi, or the commercial versions of Lisp and Smalltalk.
    - MockObject 4y ago
      He could switch to Delphi, but that wouldn't stop him from considering JetBrains' prices expensive.

pyprism 4y ago

With 10 USD, I can buy 1 weeks worth of food in my country. I wish SASS, software providers like Jetbrains adjusts their price based on country per capita.

IshKebab 4y ago
People in rich countries hate it when companies do that. There's also the additional hassle of verifying addresses. All so you can get a little extra money from some poor countries. I can see why they wouldn't bother.
- konkordat 4y ago
  JetBrains are from a low income country themselves.
323 4y ago
Is your developer salary also adjusted based on country per capita? Or are you getting a mostly Western salary?
- billfruit 4y ago
  Steam does it very well for games, pricing games differentially such that they are much cheaper in 3rd world countries. JetBrains could do something similar too. Developer wages too vary from country to country.
  - ymolodtsov 4y ago
    Steam basically turned it on for every developer until a lot of them noticed how little are they getting from some countries. If iPhones and TV cost the same I'm not sure why software products should.
    - billfruit 4y ago
      If its a question of a little vs nothing, it is better to have atleast a little IMHO.

oxfordmale 4y ago

Most JetBrains products are super slow, and resource hogs. I get red mist in front of my eyes whenever I see a DataGrip icon as it tends to consume all your CPU and memory for complex databases regardless of your machine spec. These days I am mostly using VsCode for development and TablePlus/Postico for database development.

0des 4y ago
I thought I was the only one. For me it was GoLand, not to mention the constant feeling that im being watched. VSCode without telemetry is what I moved to.
- yole 4y ago
  JetBrains IDEs ask you whether you want to submit usage data on the first startup, and honor your choice. You are not watched if you don't give an explicit, opt-in permission for that.
- konkordat 4y ago
  Lol. VSCode with telemetry and autoupdates turned off still keeps pinging MS servers. There is your privacy.
  - 0des 4y ago
    I use the VSCodium variant, which is why I specified no telemetry.
CoffeeOnWrite 4y ago
> Most JetBrains products are super slow, and resource hogs > These days I am mostly using VsCode for development Please qualify the difference in speed between JetBrains and VS Code. From my perspective, they are both “super slow” and “resource hogs”.
- oxfordmale 4y ago
  I have a MacBook Pro with 16GB of memory and i5 processor. It is sufficient for VsCode, however for some more complex Jetbrains products I sometimes struggle to copy and paste from one file to the other. On an 8GB machine VsCode is likely struggling as well, so a resource hog as well, just less so than some JetBrains products.

devonallie 4y ago

I don’t have much to add but what I do have is a question. What happens when people are priced out of economic activity. Most recent memory of this much economic turbulence is ‘08 but the conditions between then and now are incomparable.

weberer 4y ago
Well for digital products, the answer is usually piracy.

qwerty456127 4y ago

Well in advance. Thanks. By the way I think it would be nice to also have a hobbyist license option for those who barely use it and don't earn any money this way. The actual price seems almost free in terms of how much a full-time developer would earn using it yet slightly expensive for something [awesome] I only launch on some occasions a year.

mgkimsal 4y ago
They do offer EAP versions that work for 30 days at a time at no cost. They're arguably sometimes 'unstable'.
weberer 4y ago
They do if you contribute to an open source project. There's also Pycharm Community edition which is available through the package manager of most Linux distros. https://www.jetbrains.com/community/opensource/#support https://www.jetbrains.com/community/opensource/#support
- daveoc64 4y ago
  JetBrains offers free versions of several of their IDEs (e.g. IntelliJ IDEA Community), but nothing for .NET
  - weberer 4y ago
    I guess that's a good incentive to get people to switch to Kotlin and the JVM :P
- 202206241203 4y ago
  > They do if you contribute to an open source project. Are you sure you don't mean substantial contributions to a very popular open source project?
  - hhariri 4y ago
    We support OSS independently of their popularity. If you have had issues with your project being supported (due to maybe some automated checks we've put in place to help us), please feel free to reach out to me with the details. My email is hadi at jetbrains dot com. Thanks.

midenginedcoupe 4y ago

Yeah, I saw this coming when they sent around a survey a couple of months back asking what people thought of their current pricing and what price increases they would stomach before ditching it. An extra £16 per year for IntelliJ seems OK as rises go.

mgkimsal 4y ago

@jetbrains: Please add support for your JetBrains 'space' as a task server in your IDEs. Yes, there's already YouTrack tickets for this, from months ago.

JustFinishedBSG 4y ago

In general I think a price increase is reasonable but Jetbrains also had to fire most of its staff because of the war and development has slowed to a crawl. I still pay because I want to support them and their stance but paying more for less leaves a bad aftertaste.

moonocle 4y ago
They didn't fire most of their staff. They closed the Russian offices and offered relocation to everyone in Russia (and many took it). I mean they were practically forced to close their Russian offices with the current political situation and war going on. The relocation process is very expensive as well as opening new offices in Europe and rehiring there as CoL and salaries in Europe are much higher.
- JustFinishedBSG 4y ago
  I know they were forced. I know they did it the most humane way possible. This is precisely why I support them financially. Doesn't change the fact that they had to let go of a huge portion of their staff. Call it firing, or special unemployment operation, the result is still the same; and I can't help but notice that updates are now very, very sparse and pretty minor ( maybe its a pure coincidence because they are busy with Fleet and the Java update who knows ). All in all it’s understandable and not a big deal but when faced, like right now, with whether I should prepay 3 years or not it's hard not to think about the future of the company.
  - monkey_monkey 4y ago
    Then don't prepay. The cost difference (for the all products pack) is around £50 over 3 years.
  - hhariri 4y ago
    I apologise for intervening, but I believe it's necessary as this statement is not correct. We did not layoff a huge portion of our staff.

_benj 4y ago

I get so much value out of JetBrains products that if a price increase is what is needed or them to stay on business I can accept that. (The products are paid by my employer so this only affects indirectly) It might be an unpopular opinion but I appreciate the transparency of the post. There are other companies which products I use that I’m afraid are not financially sustainable and thus I’m afraid for an email saying that the products has been discontinued. There’s always the possibility of open source, home brewed or whatever, but when it comes to getting stuff done sometimes paying is cheaper than the time/effort of an alternative. Best of luck jetbrains!

a4a4a4a4 4y ago
Agreed. I also get a license from my employer, but continue to pay for the all products pack separately because they make such nice stuff, and I'm happy to support them in this small, mostly symbolic way.
- dc-programmer 4y ago
  Same. For me, it’s the JavaScript development experience that really sets Jetbrains apart. I’m sure other IDEs can offer parity with the compiled languages, but if I’m using an IDE in the first place, I’m probably working on a web app, and getting first class support for both the frontend and backend in the same window is huge for productivity.

mike 4y ago

Nicely communicated. Everything that JetBrains does around their pricing and subscription model always feels really fair and classy to me. (perpetual fallback licensing, continuity discounts). In this case, being completely upfront in the post title that this is a price increase, no "Updated pricing" or "Revised pricing" etc. Reasonable notice period with an option to renew for multiple years at the current pricing before the change comes into effect.

ochronus 4y ago
This, so much! I wish more companies/products would do it like this (sure, we can debate the actual prices, etc.)
Aeolun 4y ago
To be fair, if a huge number of people renew at the current rate for 3 years that’s a nice war-chest for Jetbrains in the coming years.
- mrunkel 4y ago
  I just logged into my account, I can't see a way to renew for three years. The only option I have is to switch from annual to monthly billing.
  - mike 4y ago
    On https://account.jetbrains.com/licenses https://account.jetbrains.com/licenses if you click "Renew" for the appropriate product then on the next page, under the Subscription dropdown there should also be a "Purchase Period" dropdown. It's probably set to "Default" rather than "1 year", but can be changed to "2 years" or "3 years". Does that option not appear for you?
    - mrunkel 4y ago
      Thanks, I found it…
  - 4y ago

mmastrac 4y ago

The heavier IDEs are in real trouble given the impressive state of VS Code lately. I haven't found the need to reach for a bigger IDE than Code in a while and I've been perfectly productive in JS, C, Rust and Python projects lately. Do yourself a favour and try out Code for your next project.

spacemanmatt 4y ago
I tried it and I think it sucks. JetBrains FTW.
dragonelite 4y ago
The language server protocol standard has really given some IDE like features to expendable text editors like Nvim and Emacs.
- mayama 4y ago
  After using vscode for years, I've tried nvim with lunarvim starter pack and am using it more. Using vscode without mouse is always a problem even with vim plugin. On the other hand, mouse is almost useless in nvim.
  - Lio 4y ago
    Not sure why you'd say a mouse in Neovim is useless. A mouse can be very useful in both Vim and Neovim when set up correctly, it will even work across SSH. Even just using two fingered trackpad scrolling to move the view port is something I do almost everyday without thinking about it. If you wanted to you could also highlight text, show balloon help, select windows and tab and interact with file explorers. Of course you can do all that very quickly with keyboard shortcuts, which is what I mostly do, but they option of the mouse is still there.
valcron1000 4y ago
There's no comparison between using VSCode and IntelliJ for Java development

202206241203 4y ago

Big problem for me is that they are using proceeds from well-selling products like ReSharper to fund their strategic but under-performing products like Rider, all while neglecting the former. Over last few years there were no big features added in ReSharper whatsoever and it became slower.

silon42 4y ago
Rider is not bad... better for me than VS and VS Code from what I've tried. Basically the equivalent of IDEA.
lolinder 4y ago
Where do you get information about JetBrains's sales and engineering expenses to draw this conclusion? One reason Rider will pull ahead of Resharper is because Rider builds on the same base IDE as most of their products, so it benefits to a large extent from investment in any of those IDEs. I'm assuming that Resharper can only benefit from direct investment.
cyral 4y ago
I use Rider ever day instead of Visual Studio and it certainly isn’t under performing

rvz 4y ago

This comes as no surprise and was in fact expected by Jetbrains. Each time they increase prices, VSCode becomes more attractive to developers. On top of that, Microsoft is doing a very clever pricing scam as I said before [0]; by making their base tools free and charging for exquisite features in VSCode like Copilot. On other editors, either you use a barebones editor and pay for Copilot or you pay for both copilot and the editor subscriptions. Microsoft wins both ways and as evidently shown here, JetBrains conceded to make a subscription price rise. Microsoft knows you can't beat free. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31826190 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31826190

calcifer 4y ago
> Each time they increase prices They have never increased subscription prices. They still charge the same amount they did 7 years ago, when subscriptions were introduced.
duckmysick 4y ago
> Microsoft knows you can't beat free. That doesn't explain why Windows and Office (both paid products) have edge over desktop Linux and LibreOffice (free).

bogwog 4y ago

Jetbrains doesn’t get my money because of how much of a confusing mess their product lineup is. They have a bunch of different IDEs sold separately that ultimately seem to be identical except for language support. Why isn’t language support implemented as plugins if all the IDEs share a common framework? Last I checked, it seemed like they do have an “ultimate” version with multiple language support… except that one doesn’t support C/C++. I was interested in buying CLion, but also needed to be able to work with Python in the same project. I couldn’t tell if that means I have to also buy the PyCharm IDE and deal with two different IDEs running at once. It also doesn’t help that they have a subscription licensing plan. Even though they do have perpetual fallback, it doesn’t seem like a giant bloated IDE like this will hold up very long without updates. So in the end, I just use Sublime Text. It’s far from perfect, but I can make it do nearly everything I need it to without having to strain my brain at the checkout screen.

1123581321 4y ago
Sublime is great. Clion supports Python (and you can edit any file from any of their products.) The easiest way to figure out if you like their apps before purchase is to just run the EAP version of one if your evaluation period expired.
eropple 4y ago
> It also doesn’t help that they have a subscription licensing plan. Even though they do have perpetual fallback, it doesn’t seem like a giant bloated IDE like this will hold up very long without updates. FWIW, I stopped updating paying for IDEA in 2019 and it hasn't bothered me. I don't do JVM stuff every day anymore, that's why I stopped, but when I have to go hack on something, it's just fine. Agreed on the multiple IDEs thing. I don't write C++ regularly but that'd make me tear my hair out.
babelfish 4y ago
IIRC IntelliJ is a superset of all their products
- gazby 4y ago

mistrial9 4y ago

I do not want my product checked constantly -- I want to pay for a year and then leave me alone ! The trend is towards constant monitoring and associated disconnect immediately with a monthly payment. I object to that model. I pay for a large jetBrains product right now. Not a problem to raise the price a bit. Excellent company and products in my experience.

dancemethis 4y ago

If only it was Free Software, I would pay gladly.

sideeffffect 4y ago
IntelliJ Community Edition is indeed Free Software! Apache 2.0 license, to be specific. It's an awesome product, I recommend everybody to use it. I personally use it with its amazing Scala plug-in, also friendly licensed.

kypro 4y ago

Before I clicked the link I assumed this was a sensationalised headline. It's interesting how direct the communication is here. Normally companies will try to justify their price increases in a lengthy blog post focusing on the "awesome new features" they've been working on, but not here. Just a few paragraphs summarised by, "we are at the point where we need to increase our subscription prices". Fair enough. As a user obviously price increases are never welcome, but within reason I think we have to be understanding. JetBrains offers a huge amount of value to many companies and individuals. It might not be worth the price to everyone, but their pricing doesn't seem unreasonable to me and quality software is never going to be cheap.

throwaway1092 4y ago

I've been a paying customer since 2006. It's worth every penny and more and while I don't love paying more, I'm content to pay the cost for great dev tools.

KingOfCoders 4y ago

I have a license for 21 years (on/off) now. They were always very helpful on upgrades.

mark_l_watson 4y ago

I almost always have at least one subscription with Jetbrains. This all sounds reasonable, especially with competition from VSCode ecosystem as well as LSP support improving.

202206241203 4y ago
> reasonable, especially with competition from VSCode ecosystem Competing with a free product by raising prices? Might work with corporate accounts.
- mark_l_watson 4y ago
  I see you point. Some people will buy their products without too much regards to cost. I am sure they work hard to optimize profit vs. product pricing.

joshstrange 4y ago

Immediately paid for 3 more years without a second thought though the pricing is completely reasonable and I wouldn't have had an issue paying the new price. Also I give JetBrains massive respect for including the old/new pricing on their pricing page versus what so many companies do which is "our prices have changed" without making it clear and leaving people to using the Wayback Machine to figure it out. Also allowing people to renew up to 3 years at the old price is a move that inspries a lot of loyalty (as shown by my immediate purchase/extension). I understand if you don't program enough to make it worth paying for a tool but if you develop professionally then the JetBrains products are a steal. I really only use IDEA (PHP, TS, Java) and DataGrip (databases) but I pay for the full product pack in case I ever need another tool. I recently used AppCode and was very pleasantly surprised by it as I quite dislike Xcode for actual coding.

jamespo 4y ago

Seems to be a 15% increase for a personal account, which is reasonable

deleted 4y ago

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desireco42 4y ago

Jetbrains as a company is wonderful, they treat their customers well and would be a joy to be their subscriber. The only issue is, I tried few times to use their products, they are good, but I prefer vim or visual studio code that are free and give me more. Thoughtworks use them as they empower their consultants with standard toolset. I paired with those guys and it is interesting what they get from the tools, but in the end, I am more comfortable with VS and Vim and command line. Increase font size for example is not simple :). The whole idea that you can pay a company roughly $250/yr and they take care of your development tooling needs is wonderful. I wish things change and I would be happy to pay 3yrs in advance. To clarify, I use javascript/typescript, ruby, elixir, sometimes elm, go etc. So no Java.

swat535 4y ago

I think this entirely fair and from all the tools that I pay for , Jetbrains is the one that delivers the most value. Not to mention that their licensing model is very well made and you are not even forced to upgrade if you don't want to. I do, however wish they would focus more on performance and code intellisense than constantly trying to add bells and whistles to their IDE. Don't give me more Github integrations, give me better code analysis, improve inspection with regards to common bugs and security vulnerabilities. Give me better code quality tools and suggest potential ways that I could write a certain code block to improve performance.. these are the features that are most useful for me and since IDEs can index and deeplink everything, they should be able to leverage that to better understand code context for analytics and reporting.