7 ms·

I believe this kind of service is the way forward when it comes to developer tooling. But paying $39/mo/user for having the right to deal with the deployment my

by cpa 4y ago

I believe this kind of service is the way forward when it comes to developer tooling. But paying $39/mo/user for having the right to deal with the deployment myself for a tool that is still alpha is pretty high. I understand the (tremendous) value prop, but that's the kind of price I'd be expecting from a SaaS version, not from a self-hosted app. Although not giving a discount for self-hosting and a price per user is the "modern" way to do open source (see gitlab or mattermost), it still feels a bit wrong. Anyway, excuse my old man rant, awesome work and good luck making a business out of it! I'll give it a try.

hugodutka 4y ago
Thanks! The pricing is there mostly to set expectations for the future. The current release works (for the most part) for individual users and it would not support a team well. Hocus is free for up to 3 users, so we expect people who deploy the alpha version not to pay a thing.
- inhumantsar 4y ago
  For a self-hosted solution that pricing is a complete non-starter. I have a team of 30 devs, so it would be $1,200/mo. That's on par with GitHub's enterprise plan plus Codespaces instance usage. There's no way I could consider this for my company at that price.
  - hugodutka 4y ago
    Hocus is more cost-efficient when you need larger instances. If you need 8 CPU cores ($0.72/hour on Codespaces) and a single dev uses their IDE for 4 hours a day on average, Codespaces itself would come out to about $0.72 * 4 * 5 * 4 * 30 = $1728 a month. But that gives me the idea that maybe we should introduce cheaper pricing plans but with limits on VM resources - pay less if you have lower compute requirements.
    - inhumantsar 4y ago
      Maybe I'm confused here, but wouldn't I still be paying instance costs on top of your per-seat license? 256 cores would be about $2.50 to $5/hr in AWS depending on reservations and how much you're able to oversubscribe. That's another $1,500 to $3,000/mo on top of your $1,170/mo. If you're paying for the compute then cool, that's a good price. If this is self-hosted though then I can't really see why I would bother unless I had no choice but to self host and cobbling together a simpler if less ideal solution isn't allowed.
benatkin 4y ago
For me it's a different issue. To me, Developer Tools are very personal, and I've come to view using non-free IDEs as a waste of time in the long-run. If I'm going to set it up for myself individually, I want the whole thing to be open source*. * It has the dreaded "View License" on GitHub
- jlkuester7 4y ago
  It was this philosophy that kept me away from JetBrains IDE's for years. Eventually, someone talked me into giving it a try and there was no going back for me! Basically ALL the other software I run, from the OS on up, is FLOSS, but I happily pay to run WebStorm for my JS/TS development! The value provided to me is light-years ahead of the Eclipse/VSCode flavor of the month. I remain a firm proponent of FLOSS, but I am also realistic about the value of truly great proprietary software!
  - benatkin 4y ago
    It was JetBrains that led me to developing the opinion that IDEs should be open source - at least the ones I use.
    - esafak 4y ago
      Why, because it's so good that you'd pay any price?
      - benatkin 4y ago
        Heck nah. After using it for a while I realized I didn't like it too much, so I switched. The 5% of the time when I wanted to use it take advantage of the muscle memory I developed while migrating to the other IDE (at the time, MacVim), I couldn't, unless I wanted to pay or keep an old version around...
        Kwpolska 4y ago
        If you're saying that you've got muscle memory for JetBrains keyboard shortcuts and you want them elsewhere, most IDEs let you configure them. There is a JetBrains-style keymap for VSCode, for example.
danwee 4y ago
I believe it's a step backwards. If I cannot open your project locally in my favorite IDE, then you are handcuffed to a specific vendor... and that will hurt you in the long run.
- michaelmior 4y ago
  It doesn't mean you can't open the project locally. If you want to install the necessary dependencies and tools, you can still do that.

by cpa 4y ago

hugodutka 4y ago

Thanks! The pricing is there mostly to set expectations for the future. The current release works (for the most part) for individual users and it would not support a team well. Hocus is free for up to 3 users, so we expect people who deploy the alpha version not to pay a thing.

inhumantsar 4y ago
For a self-hosted solution that pricing is a complete non-starter. I have a team of 30 devs, so it would be $1,200/mo. That's on par with GitHub's enterprise plan plus Codespaces instance usage. There's no way I could consider this for my company at that price.
- hugodutka 4y ago
  Hocus is more cost-efficient when you need larger instances. If you need 8 CPU cores ($0.72/hour on Codespaces) and a single dev uses their IDE for 4 hours a day on average, Codespaces itself would come out to about $0.72 * 4 * 5 * 4 * 30 = $1728 a month. But that gives me the idea that maybe we should introduce cheaper pricing plans but with limits on VM resources - pay less if you have lower compute requirements.
  - inhumantsar 4y ago
    Maybe I'm confused here, but wouldn't I still be paying instance costs on top of your per-seat license? 256 cores would be about $2.50 to $5/hr in AWS depending on reservations and how much you're able to oversubscribe. That's another $1,500 to $3,000/mo on top of your $1,170/mo. If you're paying for the compute then cool, that's a good price. If this is self-hosted though then I can't really see why I would bother unless I had no choice but to self host and cobbling together a simpler if less ideal solution isn't allowed.

benatkin 4y ago

For me it's a different issue. To me, Developer Tools are very personal, and I've come to view using non-free IDEs as a waste of time in the long-run. If I'm going to set it up for myself individually, I want the whole thing to be open source*. * It has the dreaded "View License" on GitHub

jlkuester7 4y ago
It was this philosophy that kept me away from JetBrains IDE's for years. Eventually, someone talked me into giving it a try and there was no going back for me! Basically ALL the other software I run, from the OS on up, is FLOSS, but I happily pay to run WebStorm for my JS/TS development! The value provided to me is light-years ahead of the Eclipse/VSCode flavor of the month. I remain a firm proponent of FLOSS, but I am also realistic about the value of truly great proprietary software!
- benatkin 4y ago
  It was JetBrains that led me to developing the opinion that IDEs should be open source - at least the ones I use.
  - esafak 4y ago
    Why, because it's so good that you'd pay any price?
    - benatkin 4y ago
      Heck nah. After using it for a while I realized I didn't like it too much, so I switched. The 5% of the time when I wanted to use it take advantage of the muscle memory I developed while migrating to the other IDE (at the time, MacVim), I couldn't, unless I wanted to pay or keep an old version around...
      - Kwpolska 4y ago
        If you're saying that you've got muscle memory for JetBrains keyboard shortcuts and you want them elsewhere, most IDEs let you configure them. There is a JetBrains-style keymap for VSCode, for example.

danwee 4y ago

I believe it's a step backwards. If I cannot open your project locally in my favorite IDE, then you are handcuffed to a specific vendor... and that will hurt you in the long run.

michaelmior 4y ago
It doesn't mean you can't open the project locally. If you want to install the necessary dependencies and tools, you can still do that.