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Minimum paid teams subscription is $300/yr. I use free teams and will be switching to GitHub or somewhere else because of how short notice this was. Docker re

Minimum paid teams subscription is $300/yr. I use free teams and will be switching to GitHub or somewhere else because of how short notice this was. Docker really shit the bed on this one.

0cf8612b2e1e 4y ago
Potato potato. Like it or not, they ditched a bunch of free loaders and likely turned a significant number of them into paid customers (at least until they have time to migrate). Big corporate players were already paying, so from a MBA penny counting move, it is brilliant.
- prepend 4y ago
  More likely they disrupted their users and now people are switching off them and hedging against the risk of docker doing disruptive things. They aren’t quite Novell/SCO levels of dumb, but it’s sad to see such a good company spiral into nothingness.
  - imiric 4y ago
    And organizations that don't switch, will begrudgingly pay up to avoid impacting their users, but will be left with a sour taste as they've essentially been blackmailed into paying. There's no way they're turning these orgs into long-term customers. Especially now when there are plenty of alternative image hosts. I don't get why they couldn't charge by usage, or have more granular tiers. For small teams and projects $300/yr is not an insignificant amount. What a tonedeaf and greedy decision, communicated in a terribly unclear way.
    - jen20 4y ago
      Just like Amazon released Finch as a response to the conversion of Docker Desktop to pay-only software, no doubt one of the big players will take advantage of this too.
    - Symbiote 4y ago
      The cost difference between projects must be enormous. Some comments in this discussing refer to projects with many millions of hits. Mine has 5000. A free tier with 10GB of image storage and some small number of pulls per month would be fine.
  - coredog64 4y ago
    The aggressive data retention requirements for the Docker client was the last straw for a lot of enterprises.
- candiddevmike 4y ago
  Going from $0/yr to $300/yr is a significant kick in the pants, at least for solo devs.
  - replygirl 4y ago
    they have a $60/yr plan that does concurrent builds and allows near-daily vuln scans. sure there are better options out there but i find it hard to believe someone who needs more than that isn't getting $20/mo of value from it (that costs what, somewhere around 5 to 15 minutes of work?)
- lamontcg 4y ago
  > from a MBA penny counting move, it is brilliant. while slowly killing their brand one cut at a time.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - 0cf8612b2e1e 4y ago
    What brand? Yes, they developed and popularized the container workflow, but what does Docker the company have to offer me? Container registry? I can get that at a number of providers who will do their best to offer an API compatible service.
    - ahepp 4y ago
      > What brand? Yes, they developed and popularized the container workflow, The name of their company is synonymous with container technology, because they made a nice UI. I think it's fair to say they have a brand. > but what does Docker the company have to offer me? Container registry? I can get that at a number of providers who will do their best to offer an API compatible service. That's exactly how they're killing their brand. Maybe it would be better to say they are failing to keep their brand relevant.
- piva00 4y ago
  The big corp I work for has looked for self-hosting alternatives after their pricing move. There was nothing in Docker actually locking us in them, it was just convenient. I for one haven't touched any official Docker stuff for a while now, free alternatives fill the gap pretty well. It is brilliant, until it's not, I'm very sure they are trying to squeeze as much as they can from the cash cow before it dies, there's almost no reason to actually pay Docker for what it is, and they lost the support from the techies who championed them 10 years ago after these pricing changes. I was one of them, had been using Docker since pre-1.0 days...
  - KronisLV 4y ago
    > I for one haven't touched any official Docker stuff for a while now, free alternatives fill the gap pretty well. DockerHub still seems to have the most images out there and is what many people reach for when they need to run some pre-built image. I have my own Nexus which acts as a caching proxy and is also where I upload my own custom container images to use on my own servers, but that sort of setup probably isn't for everyone. Also, Docker Desktop still seems to be the most popular way to run containers in Windows, unless something like Podman Desktop or Rancher Desktop seem stable enough for you.
    - nickcox 4y ago
      Rancher Desktop has been rock solid for my use cases for at least the last year or so.
- dkarl 4y ago
  Spending decisions aren't always made by penny-pinchers. Sometimes it's inertia, not disrupting the status quo, dance with who brung ya, avoiding work, a hundred reasons why groups of people transition from a free plan to a paid plan with the same company over time if the company hasn't given them a sudden, dramatic, stressful reminder that they need to shop around and always be ready to switch to whoever gives them the best deal. Docker wants to be a sticky default, not a commodity that has to compete with ECR and GCR on cost and features.
dahfizz 4y ago
How will they ever survive without you using the service for free...
- vorpalhex 4y ago
  People use dockerhub, become familar with it and then recommend it. I used to use dockerhub and recommend it at my workplaces, and we did indeed buy subscriptions. Now I don't use it and actively recommend a competitor. Indeed it seems more and more companies will stop using it.
- joshmanders 4y ago
  It's more than free users leaving. I have 2 orgs on Docker Hub, one is paid for my company's private images for our products and services, the other is an org for free images we maintain and give to the community. With this change we'll have to move the free org somewhere else... If we do that we may as well move the paid org too. So now they're losing out on revenue, because I'm not splitting my stuff between two different registries. We'll just migrate to a new one and that registry will get our paid team too.
- ericb 4y ago
  I'm sure losing any one free-user is inconsequential and even advantageous per free account they rid themselves of. BUT, there's a massive brand-value to being the place, and the company that everyone goes to. Losing that status is something they might not survive, especially in the user-hostile manner they are acting. The hate-your-user approach works only if there are no alternatives and competitors who would like to eat your lunch (github, gitlab).
- ahepp 4y ago
  Their (mostly free) users are the only asset they have. They didn't invent container technology, they made a nice interface that popularized it. That's fine, they did a good job, but it seems like they are getting funding on the premise that they're somehow going to be able to get money out of everyone running linux containers. What services does Docker actually provide? You don't need a crystal ball to know hosting image tarballs is going to be a very low margin business, even if you have the HUGE advantage of baking your URL into the client. And once you kill that goose, even if it only lays copper eggs, it's not coming back. Once users don't use docker.io, what relevance will the Docker client have?

Minimum paid teams subscription is $300/yr. I use free teams and will be switching to GitHub or somewhere else because of how short notice this was. Docker really shit the bed on this one.

0cf8612b2e1e 4y ago

Potato potato. Like it or not, they ditched a bunch of free loaders and likely turned a significant number of them into paid customers (at least until they have time to migrate). Big corporate players were already paying, so from a MBA penny counting move, it is brilliant.

prepend 4y ago
More likely they disrupted their users and now people are switching off them and hedging against the risk of docker doing disruptive things. They aren’t quite Novell/SCO levels of dumb, but it’s sad to see such a good company spiral into nothingness.
- imiric 4y ago
  And organizations that don't switch, will begrudgingly pay up to avoid impacting their users, but will be left with a sour taste as they've essentially been blackmailed into paying. There's no way they're turning these orgs into long-term customers. Especially now when there are plenty of alternative image hosts. I don't get why they couldn't charge by usage, or have more granular tiers. For small teams and projects $300/yr is not an insignificant amount. What a tonedeaf and greedy decision, communicated in a terribly unclear way.
  - jen20 4y ago
    Just like Amazon released Finch as a response to the conversion of Docker Desktop to pay-only software, no doubt one of the big players will take advantage of this too.
  - Symbiote 4y ago
    The cost difference between projects must be enormous. Some comments in this discussing refer to projects with many millions of hits. Mine has 5000. A free tier with 10GB of image storage and some small number of pulls per month would be fine.
- coredog64 4y ago
  The aggressive data retention requirements for the Docker client was the last straw for a lot of enterprises.
candiddevmike 4y ago
Going from $0/yr to $300/yr is a significant kick in the pants, at least for solo devs.
- replygirl 4y ago
  they have a $60/yr plan that does concurrent builds and allows near-daily vuln scans. sure there are better options out there but i find it hard to believe someone who needs more than that isn't getting $20/mo of value from it (that costs what, somewhere around 5 to 15 minutes of work?)
lamontcg 4y ago
> from a MBA penny counting move, it is brilliant. while slowly killing their brand one cut at a time.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- 0cf8612b2e1e 4y ago
  What brand? Yes, they developed and popularized the container workflow, but what does Docker the company have to offer me? Container registry? I can get that at a number of providers who will do their best to offer an API compatible service.
  - ahepp 4y ago
    > What brand? Yes, they developed and popularized the container workflow, The name of their company is synonymous with container technology, because they made a nice UI. I think it's fair to say they have a brand. > but what does Docker the company have to offer me? Container registry? I can get that at a number of providers who will do their best to offer an API compatible service. That's exactly how they're killing their brand. Maybe it would be better to say they are failing to keep their brand relevant.
piva00 4y ago
The big corp I work for has looked for self-hosting alternatives after their pricing move. There was nothing in Docker actually locking us in them, it was just convenient. I for one haven't touched any official Docker stuff for a while now, free alternatives fill the gap pretty well. It is brilliant, until it's not, I'm very sure they are trying to squeeze as much as they can from the cash cow before it dies, there's almost no reason to actually pay Docker for what it is, and they lost the support from the techies who championed them 10 years ago after these pricing changes. I was one of them, had been using Docker since pre-1.0 days...
- KronisLV 4y ago
  > I for one haven't touched any official Docker stuff for a while now, free alternatives fill the gap pretty well. DockerHub still seems to have the most images out there and is what many people reach for when they need to run some pre-built image. I have my own Nexus which acts as a caching proxy and is also where I upload my own custom container images to use on my own servers, but that sort of setup probably isn't for everyone. Also, Docker Desktop still seems to be the most popular way to run containers in Windows, unless something like Podman Desktop or Rancher Desktop seem stable enough for you.
  - nickcox 4y ago
    Rancher Desktop has been rock solid for my use cases for at least the last year or so.
dkarl 4y ago
Spending decisions aren't always made by penny-pinchers. Sometimes it's inertia, not disrupting the status quo, dance with who brung ya, avoiding work, a hundred reasons why groups of people transition from a free plan to a paid plan with the same company over time if the company hasn't given them a sudden, dramatic, stressful reminder that they need to shop around and always be ready to switch to whoever gives them the best deal. Docker wants to be a sticky default, not a commodity that has to compete with ECR and GCR on cost and features.

dahfizz 4y ago

How will they ever survive without you using the service for free...

vorpalhex 4y ago
People use dockerhub, become familar with it and then recommend it. I used to use dockerhub and recommend it at my workplaces, and we did indeed buy subscriptions. Now I don't use it and actively recommend a competitor. Indeed it seems more and more companies will stop using it.
joshmanders 4y ago
It's more than free users leaving. I have 2 orgs on Docker Hub, one is paid for my company's private images for our products and services, the other is an org for free images we maintain and give to the community. With this change we'll have to move the free org somewhere else... If we do that we may as well move the paid org too. So now they're losing out on revenue, because I'm not splitting my stuff between two different registries. We'll just migrate to a new one and that registry will get our paid team too.
ericb 4y ago
I'm sure losing any one free-user is inconsequential and even advantageous per free account they rid themselves of. BUT, there's a massive brand-value to being the place, and the company that everyone goes to. Losing that status is something they might not survive, especially in the user-hostile manner they are acting. The hate-your-user approach works only if there are no alternatives and competitors who would like to eat your lunch (github, gitlab).
ahepp 4y ago
Their (mostly free) users are the only asset they have. They didn't invent container technology, they made a nice interface that popularized it. That's fine, they did a good job, but it seems like they are getting funding on the premise that they're somehow going to be able to get money out of everyone running linux containers. What services does Docker actually provide? You don't need a crystal ball to know hosting image tarballs is going to be a very low margin business, even if you have the HUGE advantage of baking your URL into the client. And once you kill that goose, even if it only lays copper eggs, it's not coming back. Once users don't use docker.io, what relevance will the Docker client have?