4 ms·

The SaaS crunch continues. I don't have an objective datapoint but over the past few weeks have noticed many of the 'free' apps I use have made significant chan

The SaaS crunch continues. I don't have an objective datapoint but over the past few weeks have noticed many of the 'free' apps I use have made significant changes to the free tier and increased pricing.

danuker 4y ago
Due to inflation, the central banks slowed lending to the government, driving rates up. More expensive credit means less free offers attempting to lure customers in.
cxr 4y ago
One way to ameliorate the effects of the "SaaS crunch" (as a user, i.e. potential casualty) is to stop establishing path dependencies on services altogether when a document is sufficient for the problem at hand. In the case here, that isn't as difficult of a mental leap compared to other things, because of what they are from the very start: notebooks. These are documents; what we're talking about is something that you can prepare on your own machine and then ship off to somewhere else when it's time to share—whether that's by dumping it onto your own Web space, or attaching to an email. It should have never been the case that e.g. classrooms, etc. were standardizing on a single service provider to handle this problem in the first place.
- aliqot 4y ago
  also unhelpful is using VC funds to run unprofitable business plans. If the service requires a huge free tier to be viable, then its not a great plan.
dahfizz 4y ago
VC money is drying up, and many of these startups are going to fail because they don't have any sort of foundation as a business. They don't have a product people are willing to pay for.
- aliqot 4y ago
  > They don't have a product people are willing to pay for. this resonated with me deeply. use =/= pay for, and that distinction wasn't clear for me at first until I had my first taste of saas ownership.
- xani_ 4y ago
  Or they do but they have so many people invested in not developing the core product but "growth" that it is unsustainable
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  Part of the reason people don't want to pay is VCs kept funding new startups that give things away. As that stops happening, paid tiers should start to become normal again, and we can all live happily ever after. But it's bad timing for startups on free tiers who are starting to need money right now.
  - TillE 4y ago
    Even if VCs get frustrated, giant companies will still have little difficulty operating free services as a vague loss-leader strategy, like Microsoft with OneNote or whatever. That stuff will still exist as competition for any startup.
    - robertlagrant 4y ago
      True. Although having used OneNote quite a lot, I think free is still too high a price to pay for it.
      - GekkePrutser 4y ago
        Yes especially the web version is terrible. I have to refresh it every day and it can't even search across all notebooks. Of course there's no desktop version for Linux or BSD so I'm stuck with the web one. The only reason I use it is it comes for 'free' with Office 365. I wish there was something open source like it. Most open source notebook options are markdown and I don't like that (because it's not wysiwyg) and electron.
tomjen3 4y ago
Yeah, this seems dumb or at least short sighted. If you make it free for individuals, but limit collaboration, then you get those users arguing for their companies to buy the service, which is where the real money is.
Gigachad 4y ago
Let it happen. It’s time for all the unsustainable growth oriented models to stop burning unlimited money and actually charge users what it costs to provide.

danuker 4y ago

Due to inflation, the central banks slowed lending to the government, driving rates up. More expensive credit means less free offers attempting to lure customers in.

cxr 4y ago

One way to ameliorate the effects of the "SaaS crunch" (as a user, i.e. potential casualty) is to stop establishing path dependencies on services altogether when a document is sufficient for the problem at hand. In the case here, that isn't as difficult of a mental leap compared to other things, because of what they are from the very start: notebooks. These are documents; what we're talking about is something that you can prepare on your own machine and then ship off to somewhere else when it's time to share—whether that's by dumping it onto your own Web space, or attaching to an email. It should have never been the case that e.g. classrooms, etc. were standardizing on a single service provider to handle this problem in the first place.

aliqot 4y ago
also unhelpful is using VC funds to run unprofitable business plans. If the service requires a huge free tier to be viable, then its not a great plan.

dahfizz 4y ago

VC money is drying up, and many of these startups are going to fail because they don't have any sort of foundation as a business. They don't have a product people are willing to pay for.

aliqot 4y ago
> They don't have a product people are willing to pay for. this resonated with me deeply. use =/= pay for, and that distinction wasn't clear for me at first until I had my first taste of saas ownership.
xani_ 4y ago
Or they do but they have so many people invested in not developing the core product but "growth" that it is unsustainable
robertlagrant 4y ago
Part of the reason people don't want to pay is VCs kept funding new startups that give things away. As that stops happening, paid tiers should start to become normal again, and we can all live happily ever after. But it's bad timing for startups on free tiers who are starting to need money right now.
- TillE 4y ago
  Even if VCs get frustrated, giant companies will still have little difficulty operating free services as a vague loss-leader strategy, like Microsoft with OneNote or whatever. That stuff will still exist as competition for any startup.
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    True. Although having used OneNote quite a lot, I think free is still too high a price to pay for it.
    - GekkePrutser 4y ago
      Yes especially the web version is terrible. I have to refresh it every day and it can't even search across all notebooks. Of course there's no desktop version for Linux or BSD so I'm stuck with the web one. The only reason I use it is it comes for 'free' with Office 365. I wish there was something open source like it. Most open source notebook options are markdown and I don't like that (because it's not wysiwyg) and electron.

tomjen3 4y ago

Yeah, this seems dumb or at least short sighted. If you make it free for individuals, but limit collaboration, then you get those users arguing for their companies to buy the service, which is where the real money is.

Gigachad 4y ago

Let it happen. It’s time for all the unsustainable growth oriented models to stop burning unlimited money and actually charge users what it costs to provide.