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Tell HN: Pivotal Tracker removes non-enterprise price tiers
Just got this email from VMware re Pivotal Tracker:
To our Pivotal Tracker customers,
Effective March 31, 2024, Pivotal Tracker “Startup” and “Standard” subscriptions will no longer be available for purchase and yearly auto-renewals will be canceled. Going forward, Pivotal Tracker will only be available for purchase as an “Enterprise” subscription. If you are interested in purchasing an “Enterprise” subscription to continue your Pivotal Tracker access, more information can be found here.
You will continue to have access to Pivotal Tracker until your yearly subscription expires. Upon expiration of your subscription you will be given 60 days access at no charge to ensure you have time to migrate any needed data, please review the download instructions here.
Regards,
Tanzu Division
- AllegedAlec 3y agoThe entire VMware rugpull of all subscriptions is a huge dick move. I hope they eat a bag of dicks and go under entirely.
- NeoTar 3y agoI think you can blame Broadcom now.
- wrs 3y agoWell, people have had that sentiment about Oracle even longer than Broadcom, but that doesn’t seem to be a problem for either of them.
- anticorporate 3y agoUnfortunately correct. But personally, I won't even entertain an Oracle solution with my department's budget because of this. I wish more IT decision makers would do the same.
- wrs 3y agoI hear you. I canceled our Dyn contract when they were acquired and let them know why. Unfortunately it isn’t always so easy to switch.
- bombcar 3y agoBecause they're eating enterprise dicks, and there's big money in them there bags.
- tempestn 3y agoWe've got a great workflow with Pivotal, and a ton of data in there, especially completed stories for reference. Seems like a price gouge for folks like us for whom switching would be painful.
- wrl 3y agoRough. PT's "automatic" sprint planning and velocity measurement has always been a killer feature for me as a solo user. Even if the free plan isn't going away immediately, the writing's on the wall. Anybody know of other task/project management software that has similar automatic velocity measurement and sprint planning functionality? It does so much for my productivity that I might just build something myself if there's nothing else around.
- geoelectric 3y agoYeah, if it doesn’t already exist this could be the forcing function. I know a lot of people like that functionality you describe.
- namdnay 3y agoBack in my enterprise days I remember getting decent results with the Portfolio add-on to JIRA. Like all things JIRA it’s a bit heavy and slow, but full of features
- throwway120385 3y agoThey renamed it a few years ago, removed a bunch of features, and have been gradually re-adding them because they realized that Portfolio was only useful with those features. I'm still waiting for them to re-add features around capacity estimation by team member per project, a feature that was in Portfolio in 2017. At least they finally fixed the biggest issue I had with Portfolio, that the "save changes" view didn't have any filters.
- esher 3y agoLinear has something velocity like: https://linear.app/docs/project-graph https://linear.app/docs/project-graph - I am not using it and I don't know how it compares to PT.
- wrl 3y agoThis is interesting but misses the real killer PT feature: closing the loop between velocity and planning: 1. Tasks have points 2. Sprints have duration 3. Points accomplished per sprint is velocity 4. Use the average velocity of the past few sprints to pull some number of tasks off the top of the backlog. Those are the tasks for the next sprint. It makes sprint planning basically transparent. I just prioritise the backlog (sometimes lazily) and it keeps me pretty productive. It's almost gamification in a way, but not quite.
- sigden 3y agoAnyone have any details on enterprise pricing?
- tempestn 3y agoI've emailed them, but don't have a reply yet. Presumably they're a bit inundated at the moment. Took me a few attempts writing it before I managed an appropriately civil tone. Ended up venting my frustration cryptically instead, by including a pic of the Enterprise D in the footer.
- teeray 3y agoLikely xx% of your predicted revenue.
- bombcar 3y agoSomeone should make a website that just lists basic pricing for various tiers of companies that try to hide it.
- thebruce87m 3y agoIt could be a SaaS, and when you go to the pricing page it doesn’t tell you the price, but you can set up a sales call.
- tempestn 3y agoPlease create that landing page. I'd love to see that hit the homepage here.
- leros 3y agoEnterprise pricing isn't always standardized. A lot of the time it's tailored to "what it's worth for this particular client".
- rsingel 3y agoWait, you are seriously going to trust them after this rugpull? You should be running away
- tempestn 3y agoAnyone have recommendations for alternatives that would require minimal adjustment for someone accustomed to Pivotal? From a quick glance ClickUp or Monday.com look ok maybe? JIRA is obviously common but presumably would have a large learning curve. Asana? Also while Pivotal does offer an export, most alternatives don't appear to import from it. Though maybe that will change with this. And I suppose a middleman could be used.
- tempestn 3y agoLinear actually looks quite good, but I'm a bit afraid of committing to a smaller option now and ending up with another rugpull.
- ljm 3y agoI can recommend Linear. Very nice UX. I think the higher level project stuff is a little bit lacking, especially on the reporting side, but it’s definitely a leaner option than the incumbents.
- throwway120385 3y agoLinear was awesome when we used it in 2019/2020. The only reason we didn't commit to it long term was that it is impossible to get our business people to commit to estimates that don't at least have the appearance of being a time period.
- webwielder2 3y agoWe switched from PT to Linear and couldn't be happier.
- tempestn 3y agoWere you able to import your data? Directly or through another app?
- webwielder2 3y ago
- neilv 3y ago> Upon expiration of your subscription you will be given 60 days access at no charge to ensure you have time to migrate any needed data, please review the download instructions here. You don't disrupt customer businesses like this just because you want to eliminate their pricing tier. A more likely way to handle that situation is to grandfather in the current subscribers (for a much longer period), and only disallow new subscribers at that tier.
- bombcar 3y agoYou do if you want to make the big enterprise money with little cost. Grandfathering in is nice, but it really just pulls the bandage off slower in the long run.
- neilv 3y agoI'm sure it makes bottom-line business sense, if you want to be enterprise-only. (You'll alienate numerous small companies and startups, who will never buy a VMware product again, but only a small percentage of those will grow enough to become enterprise customers.) A slow bandage pull in this case means giving giving a large window, for the customer to migrate on customer's own timeline, such as after completion of projects using the tool.
- bombcar 3y agoThe sad reality is that if a company "makes it" they'll buy from vendors they swore they'd never touch again - if it makes sense at the time. This is why the big vendors continue to exist. Sucks for us, but that's life.
- neilv 3y agoI, for one, know how to hold a grudge. Also, seems like the reputability of the vendor should be a factor in vendor selection. Why would one willingly use a vendor with an apparent mindset of "screw you, the moment it makes sense for me"? (Maybe because a decision-maker didn't expect to personally be on the hook if the vendor also screws their company, in the same well-known ways it's screwed others? If screwing happens before the decision-maker moves on: "I'm shocked; shocked! Who could have foreseen this costly mess?")
- sanity 3y agoBoy do I regret recommending Pivotal Tracker to people over the years, imagine doing something like this to paying customers - nasty.
- fred_is_fred 3y agoIt's not like you could have predicted Broadcom would buy it. The best tools for the job always change over time. It's why I'm not using Eudora for email anymore.
- wink 3y agoI'd use Eudora (the binary built in 2007? with updated TLS) over Outlook any time in 2024.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- usernamed7 3y agowow can't believe i'm seeing this hot garbage still exists. I used PT for a project a few years ago and it was super underwhelming and janky. The fact that they would pull this... no surprise at all.
- fred_is_fred 3y agoThis has the hallmark of a Broadcom product call. Milk subs for what you can and underinvest in the products.
- NonlinearGarden 3y agoDoes anyone have the links for the "more information can be found here" and "download instructions here" bits of this?
- danbtl 3y agoThey didn't even bother to update their website from what I can tell. You can still download a backup of all your data (in Pivotal Tracker, click on the MORE menu, then on Export CSV).
- NonlinearGarden 3y ago[flagged]
- NonlinearGarden 3y agoI missed the edit window before noticing the completely fair flagging of this post, so I'm going to try again, this time, following the rules I have now read more recently and carefully. Sorry folks, second post, new norms. This is what I wish I'd posted: I don't think their current team thinks about the product website very much. I think this has become even more true since the Broadcom acquisition, but even before that, they still had - and have! - a banner about being "here for you in these unusual times." It's from early COVID times. As of this writing, their latest blog post is about _adding PayPal as a payment option._ It's from December, before the Broadcom deal closed. I think "add paypal" and "eliminate non-enterprise paid tiers" are different enough as product directions to illustrate the impact of Broadcom's thinking on the product. For anyone coming to this conversation later, there's a site at talk.storytime.solutions dedicated to talking about Pivotal Tracker alternatives.