5 ms·

Harvest hikes bills by 1500% after purchased by Bending Spoons

112 points by jonathanlydall 2mo ago

josefritzishere 2mo ago
Private Equity destroys everything.
- metalliqaz 2mo ago
  yes it does, but this kind of abuse is also inherent in the system we have built I remember fondly the time when computing was build on common interfaces and open formats. A abusive software supplier would be fired and replaced. Now we have closed platforms and enshitification.
  - toomuchtodo 2mo ago
    This is why generative AI is great imho, it allows us to rapidly replicate capabilities that might experience enshittification without the historical moat of capital for investment in bespoke software engineering time. Find use case, find stakeholders, wrangle stakeholders, build application with tokens, manage it in a non profit, coop, or similar model. License it in a way that prevents capture by commercial interests. Private equity (or rather, capital driven operating models in general) cannot enshittify what they cannot capture. If models continue to improve, this cycle can accelerate if generating "good code" continues to become more efficient and less resource intensive over time. TLDR Building an anti-enshittification software factory.
    - A_D_E_P_T 2mo ago
      I agree -- and I think that the applications should be open-sourced and in general provided to the public commons. Some people won't like AI no matter what, but it's hard to argue with results that clearly benefit the public good and empower the little guy vs. public equity or the megacorp.
    - metalliqaz 2mo ago
      I understand this kind of thinking was the driver behind the so-called "SAS-pocalypse" in the stock market. I believe this is a very flawed way of thinking that misunderstands why companies actually pay for software services. What you have described is essentially to hire an AI to provide the service. Our current LLM-based systems are not capable of this and probably won't be with the currently used technology. Software services is not the code. The code is frankly the least important part.
      - toomuchtodo 2mo ago
        > I believe this is a very flawed way of thinking that misunderstands why companies actually pay for software services. What you have described is essentially to hire an AI to provide the service. Our current LLM-based systems are not capable of this and probably won't be with the currently used technology. Software services is not the code. The code is frankly the least important part. I think you are mistaken. You still need to pay someone to host the service, but that someone can be a non profit or coop who operates the open source software for you. For example, Karakeep is open source (https://github.com/karakeep-app/karakeep/ https://github.com/karakeep-app/karakeep/) but I pay monthly for it so I don't have to maintain an instance. At any time, I can dump my data, startup the open source software elsewhere, and I'm off to the races. Another example is OpenTofu and OpenBao (part of the Linux Foundation) replacing Hashicorp's Terraform and Vault commercial offerings, if your org has the appetite to operate those open source infrastructure offerings. If the code is open source, I/we can pay anyone willing to run it to run it, either as an individual or a corporation. I can incorporate a non profit or B Corp to run it. The code belongs to anyone, not an entity to be passed around for future potential cashflows by squeezing the customers who require the software it has ownership of. Certainly, maintenance of the subject software and its operation will still require resources and people, but those consuming the software have the control instead of a for profit entity. Organize software starting with the most profitable and start building with the software factory. For profit software industry margin is software consumer and user opportunity. Someone will still need to operate the open source outputs of this process, that is the economic opportunity. It is no longer "Who will build this?" The question is now "Who will operate this open code for me?" (i have both worked as an early employee at a SaaS startup and currently have a budget for buying software and SaaS products in the context of risk management and cybersecurity, and also am encouraged by my org to build solutions using AI whenever potentially more advantageous than purchasing a product or SaaS solution, so I am very familiar with this topic) Edit: Similar vibes to https://huddleup.substack.com/p/the-savannah-bananas-just-cost-resellers https://huddleup.substack.com/p/the-savannah-bananas-just-co... | https://x.com/JoePompliano/status/2085007330748383441 https://x.com/JoePompliano/status/2085007330748383441 > The Savannah Bananas spent hundreds of thousands of dollars building their own secondary ticketing platform. > No fees, every user is verified, tickets can only be sold for face value > In just 5 months, it's already saved fans $13.69M.
  - NitpickLawyer 2mo ago
    > A abusive software supplier would be fired and replaced. Oracle has joined the chat :) (and them joining the chat is an additional clause to the initial contract, billed at 300% hourly rate, with a minimum block of 900 man-hours)
  - happyopossum 2mo ago
    > abusive software supplier would be fired and replaced. Rose colored glasses much? We've never had the environment you're describing. Do you recall the 00's and '10s? It was cluttered with closed systems that had ridiculously high costs to move away from. Look at Oracle, or 15-20 year dominance of MS Outlook and Exchange that was so difficult for many customers to deal with it forced the creation of the hosted exchange business model. Heck, go back another decade and look at Novell and WordPerfect. We've always had closed platforms, and we've always had alternatives. Some businesses choose between them based on priorities that don't align with yours...
- dewey 2mo ago
  These companies that they bought were not doing so great to begin with otherwise they would not be for sale for a price where this makes sense.
- paulcole 2mo ago
  Your alternative is that companies shouldn't be allowed to change because the changes they want to make will make some people upset? Raise prices 1500% and you'll find out that you were way underpriced, you'll create an opportunity for a competitor, etc. This isn't cancer medication we're talking about here, it's some dumb SAAS product. Edit: Appreciate the haters as always but can somebody please explain what they believe a company should be forced to do?
- havaloc 2mo ago
  In general, I would agree, but I think some small businesses are romanticized. I have a house and have been with every small/medium local landscape company in town, finally settled on a landscape company that was bought by private equity. The pricing is about the same, but they actually do a good job, the employees are nice, and they answer the phone. You don't have to beg them to come do work and hunt them down, and they can usually come out pretty quick.
- sph 2mo ago
  Fingers crossed it destroys the SaaS rent extraction model and we’ll go back to purchasing software.
  - dewey 2mo ago
    That made sense in times where you packaged software and sold it in a store, once. Now people barely run local-only software any more, most people live in Google Chrome and only use permanently online software. SaaS is the perfect model for software that's permanently being worked on.
    - ginko 2mo ago
      >Now people barely run local-only software any more, most people live in Google Chrome and only use permanently online software. Yes, because they were conditioned to do so by rent seeking companies.
      - dewey 2mo ago
        No because technology advanced and now everyone has a permanent online mini-computer with them at all times and we want to have the same documents we have at home/work also available on our phones.
bpodgursky 2mo ago
> Haldenby, whose business consists of up to 15 staff in the UK at any one time, with sister companies also in the US and Australia, said he was "in shock" when he received an email detailing the price changes. > Richard Haldenby, head of UK consultancy firm Salentis, told the BBC his monthly bill had risen from $130 (£95.50) to $2,110. If you estimate 25 employees total, that's $100/seat/mo. That's on the high end for enterprise SaaS but not really shocking enough to be a news scandal. The $130 they paid was laughably low. I also would migrate to a cheaper service ofc but Bending Spoons was aligning with the market pricing (at least the pre-2025 market) more than anything.
- sph 2mo ago
  > Bending Spoons was aligning with the market pricing Buzzword nonsense. Wasn’t the $130 they were being charged before the market pricing? You’re basically justifying that a 25-strong company can afford to pay more. Yes, that is true, but not all products have to extract as much profit as possible from their clients. Turn the problem around, how much does it cost Harvest to run their service for 25 additional users? It’s certainly not two grand a month.
  - bpodgursky 2mo ago
    Nobody sells their company to Bending Spoons if they are thriving. So, clearly $130 was not the correct pricing. Is the correct pricing that allows growth without alienating customers somewhere in-between? Probably.
- molf 2mo ago
  But it's not enterprise SaaS, is it? It's just a time tracking and invoicing tool. And it's not the only SaaS they will need? Companies with 25 employees generally don't have money to pay a dozen SaaS vendors $2k each every month. Maybe certain niche products that are critical to the business might be worth that much. But a time tracking & invoicing tool? Definitely not. Source: am actively moving away from Harvest due to this ridiculous price hike.
  - 2mo ago
draw_down 2mo ago
They're taking patio11's advice!
- ambicapter 2mo ago
  I mean, you're not wrong.
yieldcrv 2mo ago
Some existing customers might drop off But obviously you need 16 seats to drop for every paying seat in order for that to earn less money It also opens up a new market that takes them more seriously I dabbled in dropshipping and would literally put the same ebay ad at a 1,000% market next to the (seemingly undervalued) supplier I would buy from If you searched the item you would see both ads and people bought from me (you can’t do that at scale without getting flagged on that platform but a $8,000 pick me up was fine)
- antisthenes 2mo ago
  This reminds me of the game Eve Online. One of the frequent stories to hit the grapevine was someone putting up a common item at an insane price point in Jita or other popular trading system. And people would buy them (rarely, but consistently). Something like a piece of an asteroid ore at 50 million ISK. It's not exactly a crime, but for me it definitely sits in a moral grey area, somewhere between American Health care and selling bottled water in the desert for $1million/bottle.
  - WarmWash 2mo ago
    Probably the same people who doordash a $43 big mac at 8pm because "I'm hungry and I don't want to have to get up and drive over there"
  - lotsofpulp 2mo ago
    A willing buyer and seller engaging in a transaction for a digital luxury good is not as bad as “American healthcare”, but better than killing someone by depriving them of life saving water? Or is it not as bad as killing someone by depriving them of life saving water, but better than “American healthcare”? The use of that scale is not making sense to me.
  - rcxdude 2mo ago
    That depends. There's a few different trading scams in Eve but it does implement a pretty standard trading book, and so the way that works someone listing a price way above what anyone else is offering is never going to have their order filled. (if you do happen to accidentally offer to buy something at a wildly inflated price, then the person offering it for cheapest gets a windfall).
dofm 2mo ago
A tale as old as time… Bending Spoons is who you sell to when you have developed contempt for your customers. ETA: and contempt for your staff, too, since they basically always lose their jobs after explaining what they do
- coffeebeqn 2mo ago
  They’re literally just a big private equity firm with maybe above average PR
  - disgruntledphd2 2mo ago
    Same model, but they're more like a holding company for a bunch of tech stuff. They're apparently a great employer in Italy, which is a much better cost structure than the US (from their perspective).
- dehrmann 2mo ago
  We're going to see more of this as the web 2.0 and mobile development booms fade, and I don't have a good solution. What do you do when you're a mature SaaS with a solid customer base, stalled growth, headcount for hypergrowth, and investors looking to move on.
- penguin_booze 2mo ago
  [flagged]
  - dofm 2mo ago
    I cannot even begin to tell you how little I care about this sort of tiny-minded obsessiveness. ETA: For those who downvoted me — seriously, take a look at the number of times this one account has made this one correction. It's just po-faced, insubstantial, intellectual bullying behaviour at this point, correct though it is. It adds nothing to any discussion. I'll flag this behaviour the next time I see it done to anyone else, because it is shitty.
strenholme 2mo ago
This is the problem with subscription based software. In the days when people owned the software they used, a price increase like this would simply not be possible. People would be able to upgrade their own software on their own timeline. Since Windows, despite its many faults, has a rock solid ABI (application binary interface), that piece of proprietary software from 2006 I use today still runs fine, as does that open source game from 2005 which I don’t need to figure out how to recompile. So, yes, if these companies were able to buy the software instead of renting a SAAS (software as a service), they wouldn’t be subject to a huge bill to continue using what they have been using. And they would be able to still use that software for the foreseeable future.
- dboreham 2mo ago
  This argument is unfortunately flawed. If the customers had been handed the software on day 1, by day 100 it would be full of security bugs, would need to be re-written for the new version of Node.js (the old one having been deprecated and also full of security bugs). They'd have to find somewhere to run it and pay someone to keep an eye on that deployment for when it does something weird that affects service. Oh and they'd have to maintain mobile apps on Android and iOS as those platforms change and break things. They might need to buy cyber risk insurance too. AI tools do show promise of being able to handle all these things in the future, but at least for the past few years these customers had an incredible bargain vs what it would have cost them to run and maintain the application even if they had the source code for free. If they had used a desktop Win32 binary as you suggested, that would also have needed security updates, and it wouldn't have worked on phones or macbooks, and it would have needed a back end service (see above).
  - swiftcoder 2mo ago
    > If the customers had been handed the software on day 1, by day 100 it would be full of security bugs, would need to be re-written for the new version of Node.js (the old one having been deprecated and also full of security bugs). We don't have to make everything a javascript app running on the open internet. Though even an insecure node server could be perfectly fine if deployed on the corpnet behind a VPN...
kstrauser 2mo ago
Every now and then I check out the Evernote Reddit out of morbid curiosity. One person recently announced they’d finally had enough and were leaving because Bending Spoons increased their monthly bill from $20 to $30. They’d been paying $240/yr for freaking Evernote. I’m astonished at how much abuse many people will tolerate as an alternative to changing their habits. Bending Spoons made the same discovery, but gleefully, and apparently it makes a profit for them. I just don’t get it. I mean, I do, but I wish I didn’t. It’s depressing.
- havaloc 2mo ago
  I do some tech consulting on the side and beg people (literally) to switch from Comcast (US TV and Internet Provider) to say YouTube TV, saving them hundreds of dollars a month. They WILL NOT do it, even though I would do all the work, show them how to do it, explain how it's essentially the same but much cheaper, how to use it, and not charge very much to do so (I bill typically less than $60 an hour, and it would only take a few hours to do all that).
  - pmontra 2mo ago
    I think that Comcast is a USA only service so have no idea of what people watch or listen to on Comcast. But above all, why do they need a consultant to do the switch? There is more to it than a credit card and a subscription?
    - toomuchtodo 2mo ago
      People are fickle, resistant to change, and do not default to action broadly speaking. Various levels of handholding and potentially encouragement can be required, and even then, some folks will still be like "Nah, I'm good." Humans are tricky.
    - swiftcoder 2mo ago
      > why do they need a consultant to do the switch? Last time I had to cancel a Comcast subscription it took half a day of phone calls, and then I still had to hand-deliver the modem to a pretty dodgy service centre the wrong side of Dorchester
freediddy 2mo ago
The message is obviously: If Bending Spoons buys your vendor, then gtfo as quickly as possible. Don't wait, don't sit around like a sucker and hope you won't get screwed over, you will.
- browningstreet 2mo ago
  I wonder how Bending Spoons categorizes their approaches internally. Komoot is much better than the competition and only slightly premium in terms of cost. It seems that some of their platforms they intend to evolve, and others are there for bleeding dry.
- kstrauser 2mo ago
  Absolutely. You have until the end of your subscription to migrate. After that the thumb screws come out.
- insane_dreamer 2mo ago
  I was worried about Komoot when they purchased it but so far no issues -- has even improved somewhat (was already quite good). But what happened with Harvest may be an omen.
drbscl 2mo ago
Bending Spoons' entire business model is buying businesses that are failing/non-profitable despite having customers. Is it much of a surprise that the first thing they do is to massively increase pricing to make RoI?
- lotsofpulp 2mo ago
  It is if you enjoy feeling indignation rather than acknowledging the fact that some businesses don’t have an upward trajectory.
- x0x0 2mo ago
  Airtable and Harvest weren't failing. They just weren't as profitable as hoped, and appear to have eaten most of their TAM and were wasting the engineering dollars being spent building features to increase the TAM. Bending Spoons business model is less buying failing businesses and more buying runouts; ending ongoing investment in them / shifting to maintenance; and and hiking prices to grab as much cash as possible. It's Broadcom's business model (see vmware) just pointed at b2c or software in the smb not enterprise category.
ChrisArchitect 2mo ago
https://archive.ph/3xFCY https://archive.ph/3xFCY (when did BBC.com become paywalled?)
- xp84 2mo ago
  I think they realized that deapite their paid-for-by-TV-license status, they can do whatever they want to non-UK traffic.
  - drcongo 2mo ago
    bbc.com is part of BBC Worldwide, a separate commercial subsidy of the BBC, and not part of the TV license funding.
- r721 2mo ago
  >The BBC is introducing a paywall in the U.S. https://www.niemanlab.org/2025/06/the-bbc-is-introducing-a-paywall-in-the-u-s/ https://www.niemanlab.org/2025/06/the-bbc-is-introducing-a-p... (June 26, 2025)
  - fuzzfactor 2mo ago
    I sure hope their advertisers are asking for huge amounts of money back since thay can no longer reach millions of people which they were paying to reach previously.
trgn 2mo ago
always great to see reminders that software is not a commodity.
tiahura 2mo ago
How is any of this overpriced crudware going to survive a person with domain knowledge and a ChatGPT Pro sub?
loufe 2mo ago
"What's Changing" That warning infobox triggers an AI flag in my brain instantly.
- xp84 2mo ago
  Or even when not AI, it definitely triggers the “we’re screwing you” sense!
orliesaurus 2mo ago
I posted about my friend Igor who had a similar experience on my LI [1] - from a few hundred to $3000+ a month - and a lot of people reacted saying you could simply vibe-code an alternative in hours and save thousands of dollars. it does seem like either people drank the kool-aid on vibecoding...or it's actually really possible that shitty software that we once relied upon can now be vibed into existence in hours at most. [1] https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7491638606579519488/ https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7491638...
- dabeeeenster 2mo ago
  I used to write that software - the answer is that most of it can be vibe coded in a day now.
  - orliesaurus 2mo ago
    hope you're happier now than then!
jjice 2mo ago
I never used Evernote (thankfully), but since their Bending Spoons acquisition, they seem to have between 50% to 150% increases to their various plans in three years. Doubling the price of your product in such a short time is one thing, but being able to do so because people have 15+ years of data in your service is the icing on the cake. To be fair, apparently Evernote was not profitable, so some sort of price hike was going to be required no matter what. Bending Spoons is not a good steward of said increase though. Lots of poor communication on price increases from what I've heard from Evernote users.
etrautmann 2mo ago
Bending Spoons just bought Airtable too, correct?
- drbscl 2mo ago
  Yes, that's correct
deleted 2mo ago
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havaloc 2mo ago
Something seems off here, I don't see a huge climb in pricing. I feel $9 a month a seat is inline with SAAS pricing. Today's pricing: https://www.getharvest.com/pricing https://www.getharvest.com/pricing Pricing in 2023 (I looked at various years): https://web.archive.org/web/20230530052857/https://www.getharvest.com/pricing https://web.archive.org/web/20230530052857/https://www.getha...
- drcongo 2mo ago
  It's explained in the article. They now charge for number of projects, clients and tasks, as well as active users.
- SyneRyder 2mo ago
  The small print here is the gotcha: "Your base rate includes core features. As your team grows, additional invoices, projects, clients, and tasks are billed based on what you use, so you're never overpaying." Harvest / Bending Spoons moved to charging for usage on top of the per-seat cost. Want to bill a new client? Now you need to pay more per month. Client gave you a new project? That's now a higher monthly fee again. Previously the Solo plan could have as many projects as you liked. I commented when it happened to me on HN here: "They took my ~$100/yr Harvest time-tracking Solo plan, increased the price by 2.5x for a more restricted plan than I had... or I could get back the plan I had for $20,000/year." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48849810 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48849810 Click through to the comment if you want the punchline on how I solved this for myself. EDIT: Found my Twitter post at the time with my screenshot from inside the Harvest interface: "Your plan is changing soon! You're on a Solo plan and will be moved to the Enterprise plan." mhermann above has an even better screenshot. https://x.com/syneryder/status/2060707054709567582/photo/1 https://x.com/syneryder/status/2060707054709567582/photo/1 https://x.com/syneryder/status/2060844948250087816 https://x.com/syneryder/status/2060844948250087816
  - toomuchtodo 2mo ago
    Can you share what you vibe coded? Well done!
drcongo 2mo ago
Bending Spoons are scumbags.
AlexandrB 2mo ago
Bending Spoons's entire business model is product enshittification. Once they acquire a company, it's time to jump ship to a competing product.
shermantanktop 2mo ago
What is newsworthy here? Price goes up, customers leave.
mherrmann 2mo ago
They doubled my bill from $130 to $280 per year and graciously also offered me a $19,000 per year plan [1]. I declined and am now using Clockify. 1: https://x.com/m_herrmann/status/2039876227088163161 https://x.com/m_herrmann/status/2039876227088163161
- agsqwe 2mo ago
  We've been paying ~100 a month for the last 13 years and got an email earlier this month: "On your next renewal date, August 31, 2026, your account will be transitioned to a Harvest Enterprise plan with Unlimited usage billing. You will be automatically billed $2,199.50 for your new monthly plan. You can always downgrade to Flex usage billing, which would have an estimated price of $416.05 and would adapt to your monthly usage.". Needless to say, after 2 days with Codex the account has been closed.
  - lucasstafford 2mo ago
    [flagged]
- gainlyai007 1mo ago
  [dead]
jimt1234 2mo ago
I helped a friend-of-a-friend around 2010 with a 'computer issue'. She ran the original version of QuickBooks on an old-ass PC, connected only to a dot-matrix printer (no internet). Everything worked fine, except the printer was toast; she wanted me to fix it. She said she went to Best Buy for a replacement dot-matrix printer, and the staff pretty much laughed at her, told her to just upgrade. I asked her why she has never done that, upgrade her setup - PC, Windows, QuickBooks, printer, etc. She said everything worked fine for her, so why pay money to upgrade? Back then I thought she was kinda crazy, just being stubborn. But after a few years of reading about companies like Broadcom and Being Spoons, I get it. Good for her. Oh, and the 'fix' to her busted dot-matrix printer was eBay. I found an exact model for less than $100. Ordered it. Connected it. And she was back in business. She was so happy she made me a big plate of lumpia. :)
binarynate 2mo ago
This is the same playbook Bending Spoons used for Meetup.com, where they jacked up prices so high after acquiring it that it's no longer a viable platform for consumers
cpill 2mo ago
GUYS!LLMs killed the SaaS star! Just vibe code a vanilla Django app. No front-end frame work. No mobile app (just use your mobile's browser). Basic security baked in. It can handle 100k traffic a day easy which is 99% of small to medium businesses. There are hundreds of cheap, easy to use hosting providers out there now (an LLM can figure out how to use). Or self host on a Raspberry Pi if you are slightly nerby (there are hundreds of videos on YouTube about it). Hit a technical hurdle: LLM will fix it. Can't figure it out yourself, just throw a couple grand at a recent graduate to drive the LLM for you. There are tens of thousands who would do it for the experience on their CV. SaaS is dead!
guerrerocarlos 2mo ago
Not sure if really the right place to mention it, but I created a small tool to create invoices that maybe could be useful as alternative? In case you wanna give it a try: https://www.invoices-templates.com/ https://www.invoices-templates.com/ Feedback is welcome.
MomenKhalid 1mo ago
[flagged]

112 points by jonathanlydall 2mo ago

josefritzishere 2mo ago

Private Equity destroys everything.

metalliqaz 2mo ago
yes it does, but this kind of abuse is also inherent in the system we have built I remember fondly the time when computing was build on common interfaces and open formats. A abusive software supplier would be fired and replaced. Now we have closed platforms and enshitification.
- toomuchtodo 2mo ago
  This is why generative AI is great imho, it allows us to rapidly replicate capabilities that might experience enshittification without the historical moat of capital for investment in bespoke software engineering time. Find use case, find stakeholders, wrangle stakeholders, build application with tokens, manage it in a non profit, coop, or similar model. License it in a way that prevents capture by commercial interests. Private equity (or rather, capital driven operating models in general) cannot enshittify what they cannot capture. If models continue to improve, this cycle can accelerate if generating "good code" continues to become more efficient and less resource intensive over time. TLDR Building an anti-enshittification software factory.
  - A_D_E_P_T 2mo ago
    I agree -- and I think that the applications should be open-sourced and in general provided to the public commons. Some people won't like AI no matter what, but it's hard to argue with results that clearly benefit the public good and empower the little guy vs. public equity or the megacorp.
  - metalliqaz 2mo ago
    I understand this kind of thinking was the driver behind the so-called "SAS-pocalypse" in the stock market. I believe this is a very flawed way of thinking that misunderstands why companies actually pay for software services. What you have described is essentially to hire an AI to provide the service. Our current LLM-based systems are not capable of this and probably won't be with the currently used technology. Software services is not the code. The code is frankly the least important part.
    - toomuchtodo 2mo ago
      > I believe this is a very flawed way of thinking that misunderstands why companies actually pay for software services. What you have described is essentially to hire an AI to provide the service. Our current LLM-based systems are not capable of this and probably won't be with the currently used technology. Software services is not the code. The code is frankly the least important part. I think you are mistaken. You still need to pay someone to host the service, but that someone can be a non profit or coop who operates the open source software for you. For example, Karakeep is open source (https://github.com/karakeep-app/karakeep/ https://github.com/karakeep-app/karakeep/) but I pay monthly for it so I don't have to maintain an instance. At any time, I can dump my data, startup the open source software elsewhere, and I'm off to the races. Another example is OpenTofu and OpenBao (part of the Linux Foundation) replacing Hashicorp's Terraform and Vault commercial offerings, if your org has the appetite to operate those open source infrastructure offerings. If the code is open source, I/we can pay anyone willing to run it to run it, either as an individual or a corporation. I can incorporate a non profit or B Corp to run it. The code belongs to anyone, not an entity to be passed around for future potential cashflows by squeezing the customers who require the software it has ownership of. Certainly, maintenance of the subject software and its operation will still require resources and people, but those consuming the software have the control instead of a for profit entity. Organize software starting with the most profitable and start building with the software factory. For profit software industry margin is software consumer and user opportunity. Someone will still need to operate the open source outputs of this process, that is the economic opportunity. It is no longer "Who will build this?" The question is now "Who will operate this open code for me?" (i have both worked as an early employee at a SaaS startup and currently have a budget for buying software and SaaS products in the context of risk management and cybersecurity, and also am encouraged by my org to build solutions using AI whenever potentially more advantageous than purchasing a product or SaaS solution, so I am very familiar with this topic) Edit: Similar vibes to https://huddleup.substack.com/p/the-savannah-bananas-just-cost-resellers https://huddleup.substack.com/p/the-savannah-bananas-just-co... | https://x.com/JoePompliano/status/2085007330748383441 https://x.com/JoePompliano/status/2085007330748383441 > The Savannah Bananas spent hundreds of thousands of dollars building their own secondary ticketing platform. > No fees, every user is verified, tickets can only be sold for face value > In just 5 months, it's already saved fans $13.69M.
- NitpickLawyer 2mo ago
  > A abusive software supplier would be fired and replaced. Oracle has joined the chat :) (and them joining the chat is an additional clause to the initial contract, billed at 300% hourly rate, with a minimum block of 900 man-hours)
- happyopossum 2mo ago
  > abusive software supplier would be fired and replaced. Rose colored glasses much? We've never had the environment you're describing. Do you recall the 00's and '10s? It was cluttered with closed systems that had ridiculously high costs to move away from. Look at Oracle, or 15-20 year dominance of MS Outlook and Exchange that was so difficult for many customers to deal with it forced the creation of the hosted exchange business model. Heck, go back another decade and look at Novell and WordPerfect. We've always had closed platforms, and we've always had alternatives. Some businesses choose between them based on priorities that don't align with yours...
dewey 2mo ago
These companies that they bought were not doing so great to begin with otherwise they would not be for sale for a price where this makes sense.
paulcole 2mo ago
Your alternative is that companies shouldn't be allowed to change because the changes they want to make will make some people upset? Raise prices 1500% and you'll find out that you were way underpriced, you'll create an opportunity for a competitor, etc. This isn't cancer medication we're talking about here, it's some dumb SAAS product. Edit: Appreciate the haters as always but can somebody please explain what they believe a company should be forced to do?
havaloc 2mo ago
In general, I would agree, but I think some small businesses are romanticized. I have a house and have been with every small/medium local landscape company in town, finally settled on a landscape company that was bought by private equity. The pricing is about the same, but they actually do a good job, the employees are nice, and they answer the phone. You don't have to beg them to come do work and hunt them down, and they can usually come out pretty quick.
sph 2mo ago
Fingers crossed it destroys the SaaS rent extraction model and we’ll go back to purchasing software.
- dewey 2mo ago
  That made sense in times where you packaged software and sold it in a store, once. Now people barely run local-only software any more, most people live in Google Chrome and only use permanently online software. SaaS is the perfect model for software that's permanently being worked on.
  - ginko 2mo ago
    >Now people barely run local-only software any more, most people live in Google Chrome and only use permanently online software. Yes, because they were conditioned to do so by rent seeking companies.
    - dewey 2mo ago
      No because technology advanced and now everyone has a permanent online mini-computer with them at all times and we want to have the same documents we have at home/work also available on our phones.

bpodgursky 2mo ago

> Haldenby, whose business consists of up to 15 staff in the UK at any one time, with sister companies also in the US and Australia, said he was "in shock" when he received an email detailing the price changes. > Richard Haldenby, head of UK consultancy firm Salentis, told the BBC his monthly bill had risen from $130 (£95.50) to $2,110. If you estimate 25 employees total, that's $100/seat/mo. That's on the high end for enterprise SaaS but not really shocking enough to be a news scandal. The $130 they paid was laughably low. I also would migrate to a cheaper service ofc but Bending Spoons was aligning with the market pricing (at least the pre-2025 market) more than anything.

sph 2mo ago
> Bending Spoons was aligning with the market pricing Buzzword nonsense. Wasn’t the $130 they were being charged before the market pricing? You’re basically justifying that a 25-strong company can afford to pay more. Yes, that is true, but not all products have to extract as much profit as possible from their clients. Turn the problem around, how much does it cost Harvest to run their service for 25 additional users? It’s certainly not two grand a month.
- bpodgursky 2mo ago
  Nobody sells their company to Bending Spoons if they are thriving. So, clearly $130 was not the correct pricing. Is the correct pricing that allows growth without alienating customers somewhere in-between? Probably.
molf 2mo ago
But it's not enterprise SaaS, is it? It's just a time tracking and invoicing tool. And it's not the only SaaS they will need? Companies with 25 employees generally don't have money to pay a dozen SaaS vendors $2k each every month. Maybe certain niche products that are critical to the business might be worth that much. But a time tracking & invoicing tool? Definitely not. Source: am actively moving away from Harvest due to this ridiculous price hike.
- 2mo ago

draw_down 2mo ago

They're taking patio11's advice!

ambicapter 2mo ago
I mean, you're not wrong.

yieldcrv 2mo ago

Some existing customers might drop off But obviously you need 16 seats to drop for every paying seat in order for that to earn less money It also opens up a new market that takes them more seriously I dabbled in dropshipping and would literally put the same ebay ad at a 1,000% market next to the (seemingly undervalued) supplier I would buy from If you searched the item you would see both ads and people bought from me (you can’t do that at scale without getting flagged on that platform but a $8,000 pick me up was fine)

antisthenes 2mo ago
This reminds me of the game Eve Online. One of the frequent stories to hit the grapevine was someone putting up a common item at an insane price point in Jita or other popular trading system. And people would buy them (rarely, but consistently). Something like a piece of an asteroid ore at 50 million ISK. It's not exactly a crime, but for me it definitely sits in a moral grey area, somewhere between American Health care and selling bottled water in the desert for $1million/bottle.
- WarmWash 2mo ago
  Probably the same people who doordash a $43 big mac at 8pm because "I'm hungry and I don't want to have to get up and drive over there"
- lotsofpulp 2mo ago
  A willing buyer and seller engaging in a transaction for a digital luxury good is not as bad as “American healthcare”, but better than killing someone by depriving them of life saving water? Or is it not as bad as killing someone by depriving them of life saving water, but better than “American healthcare”? The use of that scale is not making sense to me.
- rcxdude 2mo ago
  That depends. There's a few different trading scams in Eve but it does implement a pretty standard trading book, and so the way that works someone listing a price way above what anyone else is offering is never going to have their order filled. (if you do happen to accidentally offer to buy something at a wildly inflated price, then the person offering it for cheapest gets a windfall).

dofm 2mo ago

A tale as old as time… Bending Spoons is who you sell to when you have developed contempt for your customers. ETA: and contempt for your staff, too, since they basically always lose their jobs after explaining what they do

coffeebeqn 2mo ago
They’re literally just a big private equity firm with maybe above average PR
- disgruntledphd2 2mo ago
  Same model, but they're more like a holding company for a bunch of tech stuff. They're apparently a great employer in Italy, which is a much better cost structure than the US (from their perspective).
dehrmann 2mo ago
We're going to see more of this as the web 2.0 and mobile development booms fade, and I don't have a good solution. What do you do when you're a mature SaaS with a solid customer base, stalled growth, headcount for hypergrowth, and investors looking to move on.
penguin_booze 2mo ago
[flagged]
- dofm 2mo ago
  I cannot even begin to tell you how little I care about this sort of tiny-minded obsessiveness. ETA: For those who downvoted me — seriously, take a look at the number of times this one account has made this one correction. It's just po-faced, insubstantial, intellectual bullying behaviour at this point, correct though it is. It adds nothing to any discussion. I'll flag this behaviour the next time I see it done to anyone else, because it is shitty.

strenholme 2mo ago

This is the problem with subscription based software. In the days when people owned the software they used, a price increase like this would simply not be possible. People would be able to upgrade their own software on their own timeline. Since Windows, despite its many faults, has a rock solid ABI (application binary interface), that piece of proprietary software from 2006 I use today still runs fine, as does that open source game from 2005 which I don’t need to figure out how to recompile. So, yes, if these companies were able to buy the software instead of renting a SAAS (software as a service), they wouldn’t be subject to a huge bill to continue using what they have been using. And they would be able to still use that software for the foreseeable future.

dboreham 2mo ago
This argument is unfortunately flawed. If the customers had been handed the software on day 1, by day 100 it would be full of security bugs, would need to be re-written for the new version of Node.js (the old one having been deprecated and also full of security bugs). They'd have to find somewhere to run it and pay someone to keep an eye on that deployment for when it does something weird that affects service. Oh and they'd have to maintain mobile apps on Android and iOS as those platforms change and break things. They might need to buy cyber risk insurance too. AI tools do show promise of being able to handle all these things in the future, but at least for the past few years these customers had an incredible bargain vs what it would have cost them to run and maintain the application even if they had the source code for free. If they had used a desktop Win32 binary as you suggested, that would also have needed security updates, and it wouldn't have worked on phones or macbooks, and it would have needed a back end service (see above).
- swiftcoder 2mo ago
  > If the customers had been handed the software on day 1, by day 100 it would be full of security bugs, would need to be re-written for the new version of Node.js (the old one having been deprecated and also full of security bugs). We don't have to make everything a javascript app running on the open internet. Though even an insecure node server could be perfectly fine if deployed on the corpnet behind a VPN...

kstrauser 2mo ago

Every now and then I check out the Evernote Reddit out of morbid curiosity. One person recently announced they’d finally had enough and were leaving because Bending Spoons increased their monthly bill from $20 to $30. They’d been paying $240/yr for freaking Evernote. I’m astonished at how much abuse many people will tolerate as an alternative to changing their habits. Bending Spoons made the same discovery, but gleefully, and apparently it makes a profit for them. I just don’t get it. I mean, I do, but I wish I didn’t. It’s depressing.

havaloc 2mo ago
I do some tech consulting on the side and beg people (literally) to switch from Comcast (US TV and Internet Provider) to say YouTube TV, saving them hundreds of dollars a month. They WILL NOT do it, even though I would do all the work, show them how to do it, explain how it's essentially the same but much cheaper, how to use it, and not charge very much to do so (I bill typically less than $60 an hour, and it would only take a few hours to do all that).
- pmontra 2mo ago
  I think that Comcast is a USA only service so have no idea of what people watch or listen to on Comcast. But above all, why do they need a consultant to do the switch? There is more to it than a credit card and a subscription?
  - toomuchtodo 2mo ago
    People are fickle, resistant to change, and do not default to action broadly speaking. Various levels of handholding and potentially encouragement can be required, and even then, some folks will still be like "Nah, I'm good." Humans are tricky.
  - swiftcoder 2mo ago
    > why do they need a consultant to do the switch? Last time I had to cancel a Comcast subscription it took half a day of phone calls, and then I still had to hand-deliver the modem to a pretty dodgy service centre the wrong side of Dorchester

freediddy 2mo ago

The message is obviously: If Bending Spoons buys your vendor, then gtfo as quickly as possible. Don't wait, don't sit around like a sucker and hope you won't get screwed over, you will.

browningstreet 2mo ago
I wonder how Bending Spoons categorizes their approaches internally. Komoot is much better than the competition and only slightly premium in terms of cost. It seems that some of their platforms they intend to evolve, and others are there for bleeding dry.
kstrauser 2mo ago
Absolutely. You have until the end of your subscription to migrate. After that the thumb screws come out.
insane_dreamer 2mo ago
I was worried about Komoot when they purchased it but so far no issues -- has even improved somewhat (was already quite good). But what happened with Harvest may be an omen.

drbscl 2mo ago

Bending Spoons' entire business model is buying businesses that are failing/non-profitable despite having customers. Is it much of a surprise that the first thing they do is to massively increase pricing to make RoI?

lotsofpulp 2mo ago
It is if you enjoy feeling indignation rather than acknowledging the fact that some businesses don’t have an upward trajectory.
x0x0 2mo ago
Airtable and Harvest weren't failing. They just weren't as profitable as hoped, and appear to have eaten most of their TAM and were wasting the engineering dollars being spent building features to increase the TAM. Bending Spoons business model is less buying failing businesses and more buying runouts; ending ongoing investment in them / shifting to maintenance; and and hiking prices to grab as much cash as possible. It's Broadcom's business model (see vmware) just pointed at b2c or software in the smb not enterprise category.

ChrisArchitect 2mo ago

https://archive.ph/3xFCY https://archive.ph/3xFCY (when did BBC.com become paywalled?)

xp84 2mo ago
I think they realized that deapite their paid-for-by-TV-license status, they can do whatever they want to non-UK traffic.
- drcongo 2mo ago
  bbc.com is part of BBC Worldwide, a separate commercial subsidy of the BBC, and not part of the TV license funding.
r721 2mo ago
>The BBC is introducing a paywall in the U.S. https://www.niemanlab.org/2025/06/the-bbc-is-introducing-a-paywall-in-the-u-s/ https://www.niemanlab.org/2025/06/the-bbc-is-introducing-a-p... (June 26, 2025)
- fuzzfactor 2mo ago
  I sure hope their advertisers are asking for huge amounts of money back since thay can no longer reach millions of people which they were paying to reach previously.

trgn 2mo ago

always great to see reminders that software is not a commodity.

tiahura 2mo ago

How is any of this overpriced crudware going to survive a person with domain knowledge and a ChatGPT Pro sub?

loufe 2mo ago

"What's Changing" That warning infobox triggers an AI flag in my brain instantly.

xp84 2mo ago
Or even when not AI, it definitely triggers the “we’re screwing you” sense!

orliesaurus 2mo ago

I posted about my friend Igor who had a similar experience on my LI [1] - from a few hundred to $3000+ a month - and a lot of people reacted saying you could simply vibe-code an alternative in hours and save thousands of dollars. it does seem like either people drank the kool-aid on vibecoding...or it's actually really possible that shitty software that we once relied upon can now be vibed into existence in hours at most. [1] https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7491638606579519488/ https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7491638...

dabeeeenster 2mo ago
I used to write that software - the answer is that most of it can be vibe coded in a day now.
- orliesaurus 2mo ago
  hope you're happier now than then!

jjice 2mo ago

I never used Evernote (thankfully), but since their Bending Spoons acquisition, they seem to have between 50% to 150% increases to their various plans in three years. Doubling the price of your product in such a short time is one thing, but being able to do so because people have 15+ years of data in your service is the icing on the cake. To be fair, apparently Evernote was not profitable, so some sort of price hike was going to be required no matter what. Bending Spoons is not a good steward of said increase though. Lots of poor communication on price increases from what I've heard from Evernote users.

etrautmann 2mo ago

Bending Spoons just bought Airtable too, correct?

drbscl 2mo ago
Yes, that's correct

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havaloc 2mo ago

Something seems off here, I don't see a huge climb in pricing. I feel $9 a month a seat is inline with SAAS pricing. Today's pricing: https://www.getharvest.com/pricing https://www.getharvest.com/pricing Pricing in 2023 (I looked at various years): https://web.archive.org/web/20230530052857/https://www.getharvest.com/pricing https://web.archive.org/web/20230530052857/https://www.getha...

drcongo 2mo ago
It's explained in the article. They now charge for number of projects, clients and tasks, as well as active users.
SyneRyder 2mo ago
The small print here is the gotcha: "Your base rate includes core features. As your team grows, additional invoices, projects, clients, and tasks are billed based on what you use, so you're never overpaying." Harvest / Bending Spoons moved to charging for usage on top of the per-seat cost. Want to bill a new client? Now you need to pay more per month. Client gave you a new project? That's now a higher monthly fee again. Previously the Solo plan could have as many projects as you liked. I commented when it happened to me on HN here: "They took my ~$100/yr Harvest time-tracking Solo plan, increased the price by 2.5x for a more restricted plan than I had... or I could get back the plan I had for $20,000/year." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48849810 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48849810 Click through to the comment if you want the punchline on how I solved this for myself. EDIT: Found my Twitter post at the time with my screenshot from inside the Harvest interface: "Your plan is changing soon! You're on a Solo plan and will be moved to the Enterprise plan." mhermann above has an even better screenshot. https://x.com/syneryder/status/2060707054709567582/photo/1 https://x.com/syneryder/status/2060707054709567582/photo/1 https://x.com/syneryder/status/2060844948250087816 https://x.com/syneryder/status/2060844948250087816
- toomuchtodo 2mo ago
  Can you share what you vibe coded? Well done!

drcongo 2mo ago

Bending Spoons are scumbags.

AlexandrB 2mo ago

Bending Spoons's entire business model is product enshittification. Once they acquire a company, it's time to jump ship to a competing product.

shermantanktop 2mo ago

What is newsworthy here? Price goes up, customers leave.

mherrmann 2mo ago

They doubled my bill from $130 to $280 per year and graciously also offered me a $19,000 per year plan [1]. I declined and am now using Clockify. 1: https://x.com/m_herrmann/status/2039876227088163161 https://x.com/m_herrmann/status/2039876227088163161

agsqwe 2mo ago
We've been paying ~100 a month for the last 13 years and got an email earlier this month: "On your next renewal date, August 31, 2026, your account will be transitioned to a Harvest Enterprise plan with Unlimited usage billing. You will be automatically billed $2,199.50 for your new monthly plan. You can always downgrade to Flex usage billing, which would have an estimated price of $416.05 and would adapt to your monthly usage.". Needless to say, after 2 days with Codex the account has been closed.
- lucasstafford 2mo ago
  [flagged]
gainlyai007 1mo ago
[dead]

jimt1234 2mo ago

I helped a friend-of-a-friend around 2010 with a 'computer issue'. She ran the original version of QuickBooks on an old-ass PC, connected only to a dot-matrix printer (no internet). Everything worked fine, except the printer was toast; she wanted me to fix it. She said she went to Best Buy for a replacement dot-matrix printer, and the staff pretty much laughed at her, told her to just upgrade. I asked her why she has never done that, upgrade her setup - PC, Windows, QuickBooks, printer, etc. She said everything worked fine for her, so why pay money to upgrade? Back then I thought she was kinda crazy, just being stubborn. But after a few years of reading about companies like Broadcom and Being Spoons, I get it. Good for her. Oh, and the 'fix' to her busted dot-matrix printer was eBay. I found an exact model for less than $100. Ordered it. Connected it. And she was back in business. She was so happy she made me a big plate of lumpia. :)

binarynate 2mo ago

This is the same playbook Bending Spoons used for Meetup.com, where they jacked up prices so high after acquiring it that it's no longer a viable platform for consumers

cpill 2mo ago

GUYS!LLMs killed the SaaS star! Just vibe code a vanilla Django app. No front-end frame work. No mobile app (just use your mobile's browser). Basic security baked in. It can handle 100k traffic a day easy which is 99% of small to medium businesses. There are hundreds of cheap, easy to use hosting providers out there now (an LLM can figure out how to use). Or self host on a Raspberry Pi if you are slightly nerby (there are hundreds of videos on YouTube about it). Hit a technical hurdle: LLM will fix it. Can't figure it out yourself, just throw a couple grand at a recent graduate to drive the LLM for you. There are tens of thousands who would do it for the experience on their CV. SaaS is dead!

guerrerocarlos 2mo ago

Not sure if really the right place to mention it, but I created a small tool to create invoices that maybe could be useful as alternative? In case you wanna give it a try: https://www.invoices-templates.com/ https://www.invoices-templates.com/ Feedback is welcome.

MomenKhalid 1mo ago

[flagged]