6 ms·

Not directly related but anecdata. We migrated for chart.js to plotly.js to finally bite the bullet and plonk down the $$$ for highcharts. Highcharts is no pan

by tnolet 4y ago

Not directly related but anecdata. We migrated for chart.js to plotly.js to finally bite the bullet and plonk down the $$$ for highcharts. Highcharts is no panacea, but at we just hit performance and capability issues really quickly with all the free stuff out there.

dmkirwan 4y ago
Similar here, except we had d3.js mixed in there also. We went back and forth on the decision to buy highchart (we were a small startup with limited $$$) but honestly it paid for itself immediately and the built in accessibility helped us meet our legal requirements there with zero effort. My main complaint is that their pricing is a little odd. Charging per developer doesn't work well for us when we sometimes have 5 devs working on the data vis and other times there are none.
- capableweb 4y ago
  > My main complaint is that their pricing is a little odd. Charging per developer doesn't work well for us when we sometimes have 5 devs working on the data vis and other times there are none. Never seen their licensing before and yeah, that's a messy license for sure. The way they put it, it sounds like you can just pay for one seat as long as no developers work simultaneously with the highcharts API/source code, so you could have just a note somewhere who currently "owns" the API/source code license in your team, as the cheapest license seems to be 150 USD/seat which is way higher than I would expect from a JS library. > How do I count Developer seats? > A developer shall mean any person who will be simultaneously working with the API and/or source code of our software in any capacity.
  - ognarb 4y ago
    This is also the buisness model of Qt and I agree this is messy.
    - johannes1234321 4y ago
      Qt however is a framework touching large parts of the codebase. So most developers will touch Qt-rwlated code somewhat regularly. Charting code is for many applications a small part which in addition is often somewhat abstracted away.
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    On the flipside, that seems enormously generous to smaller organizations, who could use 1 license, with the ability to dynamically reallocate in hit-by-bus scenarios. And affords them maximum organizational flexibility vs locking into a per-machine / per-login model. Would be nice to see more companies offer licensing like this on the lower-end. "Does what it says on the tin" + "Pay us some amount of money roughly corresponding to your usage" = "Make it easy for a user to pay you money for your product"
jellyksong 4y ago
Our team is in a similar position right now — I’m curious how you decided on Highcharts as opposed to other options like Plotly.
vgeek 4y ago
Is Highcharts that much better than Apache eCharts? EC keeps getting larger, so you need to do custom builds and don't init the charts until they reach the viewport, but there are so many options.
- tnolet 4y ago
  yes
cout 4y ago
Fifteen years ago we were using flot to plot data updated in real time. It seems strange to me if the newer frameworks wouldn't be able to handle that on newer hardware. Are svg/css just less performant than canvas?
- thangngoc89 4y ago
  > Are svg/css just less performant than canvas? Yes. And you lose accessibility with canvas so that why there highcharts is mentioned here
- tnolet 4y ago
  yes
cush 4y ago
Highcharts is an insanely good value
jonahx 4y ago
I'd love to hear more details. What specifically was the performance bottleneck? Just pure amount of data? Keeping up with a stream of data? Other?

by tnolet 4y ago

dmkirwan 4y ago

Similar here, except we had d3.js mixed in there also. We went back and forth on the decision to buy highchart (we were a small startup with limited $$$) but honestly it paid for itself immediately and the built in accessibility helped us meet our legal requirements there with zero effort. My main complaint is that their pricing is a little odd. Charging per developer doesn't work well for us when we sometimes have 5 devs working on the data vis and other times there are none.

capableweb 4y ago
> My main complaint is that their pricing is a little odd. Charging per developer doesn't work well for us when we sometimes have 5 devs working on the data vis and other times there are none. Never seen their licensing before and yeah, that's a messy license for sure. The way they put it, it sounds like you can just pay for one seat as long as no developers work simultaneously with the highcharts API/source code, so you could have just a note somewhere who currently "owns" the API/source code license in your team, as the cheapest license seems to be 150 USD/seat which is way higher than I would expect from a JS library. > How do I count Developer seats? > A developer shall mean any person who will be simultaneously working with the API and/or source code of our software in any capacity.
- ognarb 4y ago
  This is also the buisness model of Qt and I agree this is messy.
  - johannes1234321 4y ago
    Qt however is a framework touching large parts of the codebase. So most developers will touch Qt-rwlated code somewhat regularly. Charting code is for many applications a small part which in addition is often somewhat abstracted away.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  On the flipside, that seems enormously generous to smaller organizations, who could use 1 license, with the ability to dynamically reallocate in hit-by-bus scenarios. And affords them maximum organizational flexibility vs locking into a per-machine / per-login model. Would be nice to see more companies offer licensing like this on the lower-end. "Does what it says on the tin" + "Pay us some amount of money roughly corresponding to your usage" = "Make it easy for a user to pay you money for your product"

jellyksong 4y ago

Our team is in a similar position right now — I’m curious how you decided on Highcharts as opposed to other options like Plotly.

vgeek 4y ago

Is Highcharts that much better than Apache eCharts? EC keeps getting larger, so you need to do custom builds and don't init the charts until they reach the viewport, but there are so many options.

tnolet 4y ago
yes

cout 4y ago

Fifteen years ago we were using flot to plot data updated in real time. It seems strange to me if the newer frameworks wouldn't be able to handle that on newer hardware. Are svg/css just less performant than canvas?

thangngoc89 4y ago
> Are svg/css just less performant than canvas? Yes. And you lose accessibility with canvas so that why there highcharts is mentioned here
tnolet 4y ago
yes

cush 4y ago

Highcharts is an insanely good value

jonahx 4y ago

I'd love to hear more details. What specifically was the performance bottleneck? Just pure amount of data? Keeping up with a stream of data? Other?