3 ms·

You work for a billion dollar company, are you speaking from your perspective as a software engineer or... something else? Price sensitivity as an individual is

You work for a billion dollar company, are you speaking from your perspective as a software engineer or... something else? Price sensitivity as an individual is understandable but when you're talking about a team I struggle to understand why there's a meaningful difference between $5 and $50. For a business, if software is valuable enough to use, it's valuable enough to spend $50 on. Plus, $50 is below the threshold most businesses have for discretionary purchases. I'd implore the OP not to get distracted by this sort of feedback: any serious business user will be more than happy to spend $50/month on a service like this. Trying to cater to people who are this price sensitive is a recipe for an unprofitable nightmare.

TheRealPomax 4y ago
Maybe, and this might be confusing, folks didn't always work where they do today, and have experiences based on "I don't have money but I work on a project with 5 others that the world seems to use a ton, but no one's paying for". "A team" and "a business" are not the same. Running a business? Pay for team tier. Open source project that just has more than 2 people organized in a team? I'll let you think of that one. And of course, "it's open source, just install it on your own host" is a perfectly valid response, but "you have money, what are you complaining about" is maybe a little ridiculous given that people can voice concerns for an entire class of folks, not just themselves. $50 is a lot of money for a lot of folks in open source.
- phphphphp 4y ago
  The situation you’re describing is exceptionally niche and one in which you can simply reach out to the company and ask for accommodation: there’s thousands of open-source projects sponsored by for-profit companies by granting access to paid services for free (your employer is one of them, Fastly sponsor a bunch of projects by giving free CDN). Asking a company to sell their services to everyone at a huge loss because a minority of open-source projects can’t afford their service is more ridiculous.
  - TheRealPomax 4y ago
    It's literally the situation I was in before so: why are you trying so hard to gaslight what is a perfectly valid question? They probably have a good reasons for there not to be a middle tier: if so, cool, but it feels missing so hopefully they read HN comments and can explain why the first paid plan jumps straight to $50.
    - phphphphp 4y ago
      A challenge many startups face is undervaluing their service. You started out by saying that their service was too expensive — “that's a lot of money to the vast majority =(” — which is the sort of complaint that induces founders to think they need to lower their prices. They don’t. Most startups should be charging more. $50 is nothing to the customers that Trigger want to attract in order to succeed. I have no beef with your point about open-source developers having very limited budgets, but it’s very important to contextual your feedback. You specifically talked about teams of multiple people, it was unclear you intended to describe a very niche situation.
      - TheRealPomax 4y ago
        Thanks for the clarification. I took your comment as a personal assault from the phrasing, accusing me of being a hypocrite because I happen to draw a paycheque these days. Thank you for explaining that wasn't the intention.

TheRealPomax 4y ago

Maybe, and this might be confusing, folks didn't always work where they do today, and have experiences based on "I don't have money but I work on a project with 5 others that the world seems to use a ton, but no one's paying for". "A team" and "a business" are not the same. Running a business? Pay for team tier. Open source project that just has more than 2 people organized in a team? I'll let you think of that one. And of course, "it's open source, just install it on your own host" is a perfectly valid response, but "you have money, what are you complaining about" is maybe a little ridiculous given that people can voice concerns for an entire class of folks, not just themselves. $50 is a lot of money for a lot of folks in open source.

phphphphp 4y ago
The situation you’re describing is exceptionally niche and one in which you can simply reach out to the company and ask for accommodation: there’s thousands of open-source projects sponsored by for-profit companies by granting access to paid services for free (your employer is one of them, Fastly sponsor a bunch of projects by giving free CDN). Asking a company to sell their services to everyone at a huge loss because a minority of open-source projects can’t afford their service is more ridiculous.
- TheRealPomax 4y ago
  It's literally the situation I was in before so: why are you trying so hard to gaslight what is a perfectly valid question? They probably have a good reasons for there not to be a middle tier: if so, cool, but it feels missing so hopefully they read HN comments and can explain why the first paid plan jumps straight to $50.
  - phphphphp 4y ago
    A challenge many startups face is undervaluing their service. You started out by saying that their service was too expensive — “that's a lot of money to the vast majority =(” — which is the sort of complaint that induces founders to think they need to lower their prices. They don’t. Most startups should be charging more. $50 is nothing to the customers that Trigger want to attract in order to succeed. I have no beef with your point about open-source developers having very limited budgets, but it’s very important to contextual your feedback. You specifically talked about teams of multiple people, it was unclear you intended to describe a very niche situation.
    - TheRealPomax 4y ago
      Thanks for the clarification. I took your comment as a personal assault from the phrasing, accusing me of being a hypocrite because I happen to draw a paycheque these days. Thank you for explaining that wasn't the intention.