7 ms·

Very sad to hear, I bought Tailwind UI years ago and although it was a lot more expensive than I wanted, I've appreciated the care and precision and highly reco

• dawnerd 10mo ago
  I think think tailwind ui was one of the better purchases I’ve made (web tech wise). Up there with the lifetime acf pro license. This sucks to see but was pretty obvious when it became the go to framework for LLMs.
• khy 10mo ago
  Tailwind Plus is great - I love the lifetime access, but I always wondered how sustainable that model was. Even without AI, how many of those memberships could they sell?
  • satvikpendem 10mo ago
    I thought the same, and yet on the other hand, how could they have done it differently? People don't want to pay a subscription just to write a DSL of CSS. Perhaps they could've done it per project like some companies, but I don't think it'd be as popular as their lifetime model. Ironic.
    • re-thc 10mo ago
      MUI sells paid components paid monthly. Definitely doable for the paid product.
      • c-hendricks 10mo ago
        I'm not super familiar with tailwind plus, but I am familiar with MUI. MUIs paid offerings are open-core, you pay for support and a couple of extra features. Tailwind plus looks like paying for basic components (checkboxes, sidebars, buttons) and it doesn't even offer anything like DataGrid (free with mui).
        • re-thc 10mo ago
          > and it doesn't even offer anything like Shows Tailwind was just too little too late.
    • kelnos 10mo ago
      We can go back to how software was sold decades ago: you pay for version 1.0, and get bugfixes for the 1.x series. Then 2.0 is released, and if you want it, you pay again for the 2.x series. And so on. I agree on not wanting a subscription for something like this. But I also acknowledge that if people are still doing work on something post-sale (beyond bugfixes for a pre-defined support period), I should maybe expect to have to pay for that continuing work.
• risyachka 10mo ago
  What most don’t realize is that this will happen to most businesses in all categories as more people rely on ChatGPT and Claude for discovery. No discovery - no business. And same with ads.if OpenAI decides not to add ads - prepare for even faster business consolidation. Those businesses preferred by llms will exponentially grow, others will quickly go out of business
  • mattgreenrocks 10mo ago
    Underscoring the parent comment and adding to it: watching technologists on a site called Hacker News cheer on the centralization of power is really something.
    • nine_k 10mo ago
      There's nothing cheerful in that comment, it describes a danger that inexorably draws nearer and nearer.
      • mattgreenrocks 10mo ago
        My post was meant to underscore the parent’s post, not argue with it.
      • npodbielski 10mo ago
        Maybe he meant this in more general way. Or this is how did read this.
    • Aperocky 10mo ago
      I don't think any power is as centralized as Google is to search about 10 years ago? Or Facebook is to social media in the same time frame? What has changed other than the players?
      • raydev 10mo ago
        Google still offered a path for business/individuals that allowed both sides to profit immensely via advertising. Google also guided people to sources of information once you look past the ads. With the AI companies, they suck up all freely available and proprietary information, hide the sources, and give information away to consumers for mostly free.
• _JamesA_ 10mo ago
  Are you referring to signing up for the blog[1] email or something else? It was last updated July 25, 2025. [1]: https://tailwindcss.com/blog https://tailwindcss.com/blog
  • password4321 10mo ago
    Referring to TFA (couple of comments on the issue). https://github.com/tailwindlabs/tailwindcss.com/pull/2388#issuecomment-3715074726 https://github.com/tailwindlabs/tailwindcss.com/pull/2388#is... https://github.com/tailwindlabs/tailwindcss.com/pull/2388#issuecomment-3717222957 https://github.com/tailwindlabs/tailwindcss.com/pull/2388#is...
    • zamadatix 10mo ago
      I think they mean where does one sign up to this newsletter.
      • LouisLazaris 10mo ago
        I'm knee-deep in the tech newsletter niche and I've never seen an official Tailwind newsletter. The only one I subscribe to is a small, unofficial weekly newsletter by Vivian Guillen: https://tailwindweekly.com/ https://tailwindweekly.com/ The only problem is that it seems to have stopped sending in October.
• refulgentis 10mo ago
  Smells like unnecessary sycophancy: I grep'd Adam in every comment and every single. one. is positive and phrased like this. I grew up on this site, from 20 year old dropout waiter in Buffalo to 37 year old ex-Googler. One of the things I'm noticing me reacting to the last year or two is a "putting on a pedestal" effect that's unnecessary.
  • dr-detroit 10mo ago
    [dead]
  • mmcclure 10mo ago
    I think context matters here. People are being kind to someone who just had to lay off most of their team because, despite their project’s popularity and success (maybe even because of it), a massive change in the ecosystem completely destroyed their business model. I’ve never been a huge fan of using Tailwind personally, but I deeply appreciated that they were making a (mostly) non-enterprise FOSS model work in an interesting way. It’s a shame that it seems that’s likely dead in the water now.
    • deleted 10mo ago
      [deleted]
  • searls 10mo ago
    This is madness. Some stories actually have good guys. I don't know Adam directly, but we have plenty of second degree connections. I've benefited immensely from his work, have never heard anyone say a single negative thing about him, and I genuinely believe he's done more to push the web forward with Tailwind than the larger players have done (certainly more than Facebook did with React and Google has done with Angular/AMP/etc). Reflexively assuming that unanimous positive sentiment towards someone is itself an indication of a problem is exactly the reason people are writing posts as recently as (double checks) _yesterday_ titled "65% of Hacker News Posts Have Negative Sentiment, and They Outperform" https://philippdubach.com/standalone/hn-sentiment/ https://philippdubach.com/standalone/hn-sentiment/
• Aurornis 10mo ago
  Tailwind did a great job of building a fanbase. Even without LLMs I always thought they were on a collision course with market saturation, though. They generously gave lifetime access for a one-time payment, which was bound to run into problems as free alternatives became better and their core fanbase didn't have any reason to spend more money. Their business model also missed the boat on the rise of Figma and similar tools. I can think back to a couple different projects where the web developers wanted to use Tailwind [Plus] components but the company had a process that started in Figma. It's hard to sell the designers on using someone else's component library when they have to redraw it in Figma anyway.
  • dfee 10mo ago
    alternatively, Adam executed the superior pricing strategy. had he charged for recurring licenses, would fewer people have signed up? would his subscriptions also be drawing down? i wouldn't have bought a sub, but i did pay for tailwind premium (and, frankly, didn't use it like i'd've hoped). however, it was a bit of a Kickstarter investment for me. i like Adam's persona, and was happy to see continued investment down this path. as many a business knows, you need to bring new initiatives to the table over, or accept that your one product carries all your risk. thank you for Tailwind, Adam.
    • tshaddox 10mo ago
      Adam presented his case for the lifetime pricing model in this podcast episode in 2023: https://hackersincorporated.com/episodes/lifetime-pricing-is-underrated https://hackersincorporated.com/episodes/lifetime-pricing-is... I believe he succeeding in convincing Sam and Ryan to adopt lifetime pricing for their UI course at https://buildui.com/pricing https://buildui.com/pricing. I've purchased Build UI, and it was an excellent product, but unfortunately it appears to be completely dead for at least a full year now. Neither the unannounced death of Build UI nor this apparently financial catastrophe for Tailwind bode well for the prospects of lifetime pricing! Although the problem might be more related to the entire market segment (frontend programming and design courses) than to the particular pricing model.
• seanw265 10mo ago
  I'll piggyback on this to highlight Refactoring UI as well. It's an ebook by Adam and Steve, though I'm not sure if it's technically part of Tailwind Labs or not. This book taught me so much about modern UI design. If you've ever tried building a component and thought to yourself, "hmm something about this looks off," you might benefit from this book. These days some of the examples might be a little bit dated (fashions come and go), but the principles it teaches you are rock solid.
  • porker 10mo ago
    FWIW I found Practical UI [1] a more actionable book than Refactoring UI. Both are similar but I found it covered the material in a more accessible way. 1. https://www.practical-ui.com/ https://www.practical-ui.com/
  • fud101 10mo ago
    i've read it and retained nothing. I always wonder what people get out of these hyped things that i'm unable to see.
    • yurishimo 10mo ago
      Did you read it cover to cover in one-(ish) sitting? I would argue it's more of a reference book that over time you can internalize into your own design language.
• port11 10mo ago
  I could never afford Tailwind UI but then again I don’t really use Tailwind. That said, as an open-source styling solution, they could be supported in other ways. A lot — and I really mean a lot — of websites are built with Tailwind, yet very few consider donating or buying what they have to offer. Plenty of F/LOSS is in the same state: businesses extract all value they can from open-source, but put back nothing. That’s mining The Commons. LLMs are just accelerating this trend. It’s never gonna work in the long run. Let’s go back to writing everything in house then, since we’re 100x more productive and don’t have to pay a dime for other people’s work.
  • tazjin 10mo ago
    My current take is that if you start an open-source project now, you should go full AGPL (or similar copyleft license), and require a CLA for contributors. If your thing ends up actually good you now have a defence against exploitation, and a way to generate income reliably (by selling the code under a different license). afaik, organisations like the FSF even endorse this.
    • matt-p 10mo ago
      I agree, I'm quite curious on what feelings are about still putting it in a public GitHub repo? AI models will train on your codebase, unethical actors will still take it and not pay. Others can give the .zip to Claude and ask it to reimplement it in a way that isn't license infringement. I think it really turns open source upside down. Is this a risk worth taking or best to just make getting the source something that's a .zip on a website which the models realistically won't train on.
      • TeMPOraL 10mo ago
        Or maybe ask yourself why are you doing open source in the first place? AI training on your code is success if you care about your code being genuinely helpful to others. It's a problem only if you're trying to make money or personal reputation, and abusing open source as a vector for it.
• mooreds 10mo ago
  > Btw the Tailwind newsletter/email that goes out is genuinely useful as well, so I recommend signing up for that if you use Tailwind CSS at all. What is the signup link? I googled a bit but couldn't find it.
  • ratatougi 10mo ago
    I think it's https://tailwindcss.com/blog https://tailwindcss.com/blog
• robertwt7 10mo ago
  yeah this is so sad, I'm an early supporter of Tailwind since v1 and I also bought the tailwind UI as well to support them. I hope this era doesn't discourage the tailwind team or put them out of business
• gterez 10mo ago
  Early customer here too. Tailwind UI was one of my best purchases in the sense that it helped me learn and use Tailwind in the best way possible, by showing me, not telling me. It was never sustainable as a product/business, as this pricing model requires constant growth. What I've seen along the way was a heavy pivot towards React (which left me wanting: I mostly use the Vue components & the HTML/JS components with Astro.js in the projects I work in) and even in the case of React, they haven't managed to arrive at a full, mature component library offering (while others have!). TL;DR: I'd be struggling to justify it as a purchase for a new user now, even before factoring AI in.
• Cnidarias 10mo ago
  As a question regarding Tailwind Plus, we / I exclusively use Angular but the templates are all React / Vue / plain HTML. Are these components mostly just the HTML styling which would then be easily used in Angular as well, or would it be too much of a hassle to adopt to Angular?