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I think they abstracted the problem so away that they have no idea what they are talking about. Having a single file that contains all your plans and make both

I think they abstracted the problem so away that they have no idea what they are talking about. Having a single file that contains all your plans and make both your app, marketing pages, and Stripe work from it is trivial and is just good engineering. It's not a "Pricing Engine" or a "Pricing Stack".

Pucilowski 3y ago
This is a naive view but I'll let someone else elaborate
- hartator 3y ago
  The difficulty of pricing lies on actually pricing things, there is no missing technical brick, but missing knowledge.
  - makeitdouble 3y ago
    I think recognizing it's a different problem than billing and have it as a different entity is important. And of course that knowledge needs to be materialized into a technical block. Now, I'm totally with you that calling that an "engine" is misleading for 99.9% of businesses. In most cases that's a configuration file, or a business class if they're dealing with more user behavior check, calculations or conversions.
    - hartator 3y ago
      Yes definitely. The domain of "Pricing" things is a giant industry; i.e., the accounting and finance industry.
  - shermantanktop 3y ago
    Did you previously get a new-customer discount on a previous order? What promotions are in effect? Are you eligible for that promotion based on your location or customer type? Are there bundle discounts that can apply? If you build an order, can we recommend eligible offers based on what is in the order already? That'll be a fun config file.
    - hartator 3y ago
      I am sure this doesn’t solve this though. It’s hard question to answer on individual basis, require some complex logic, and for sure some coding. You won’t be able to solve this with a “Pricing Stack”. Unfortunately, pricing is unsexy, complex, full unknowns, no easily testable, and odd.
      - graphememes 3y ago
        That's precisely what this type of tool targets fixing.
rtpg 3y ago
There are definitely easier and harder ways to handle pricing, but especially when you have higher touch sales “just use Stripe” stops working in a lot of cases. Ultimately bespoke sales deals show up, and you need to be diligent in your tooling and pricing design to make it work well (especially if you have any form of metering or dynamic pricing you want to take effect “immediately”) It’s easy to have the handful of price points and fixed billing. But there’s a lot of ways for things to get more complicated.

Pucilowski 3y ago

This is a naive view but I'll let someone else elaborate

hartator 3y ago
The difficulty of pricing lies on actually pricing things, there is no missing technical brick, but missing knowledge.
- makeitdouble 3y ago
  I think recognizing it's a different problem than billing and have it as a different entity is important. And of course that knowledge needs to be materialized into a technical block. Now, I'm totally with you that calling that an "engine" is misleading for 99.9% of businesses. In most cases that's a configuration file, or a business class if they're dealing with more user behavior check, calculations or conversions.
  - hartator 3y ago
    Yes definitely. The domain of "Pricing" things is a giant industry; i.e., the accounting and finance industry.
- shermantanktop 3y ago
  Did you previously get a new-customer discount on a previous order? What promotions are in effect? Are you eligible for that promotion based on your location or customer type? Are there bundle discounts that can apply? If you build an order, can we recommend eligible offers based on what is in the order already? That'll be a fun config file.
  - hartator 3y ago
    I am sure this doesn’t solve this though. It’s hard question to answer on individual basis, require some complex logic, and for sure some coding. You won’t be able to solve this with a “Pricing Stack”. Unfortunately, pricing is unsexy, complex, full unknowns, no easily testable, and odd.
    - graphememes 3y ago
      That's precisely what this type of tool targets fixing.

rtpg 3y ago

There are definitely easier and harder ways to handle pricing, but especially when you have higher touch sales “just use Stripe” stops working in a lot of cases. Ultimately bespoke sales deals show up, and you need to be diligent in your tooling and pricing design to make it work well (especially if you have any form of metering or dynamic pricing you want to take effect “immediately”) It’s easy to have the handful of price points and fixed billing. But there’s a lot of ways for things to get more complicated.