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We noticed this also for the online software services that we use. Many of them increased in price, which I can understand with rising costs. However, a large n

by abejora 25d ago

We noticed this also for the online software services that we use. Many of them increased in price, which I can understand with rising costs. However, a large number of them also have/introduced a 'hostile' structure that force you into paying through the nose. Case in point was the timesheet software that we used: * They increased the cost of all price tiers. * They moved features from lower tiers to higher tiers, forcing you to pay more. * And this all was leveraged via "per seat" pricing. So a modest increase in price quickly becomes a lot, simply because of the multiplicative nature of per-seat pricing. This per-seat pricing is especially absurd to us. To run the software it makes little difference whether there are 3 users or 6 users, yet the total cost of those 3 additional users was an additional 500 dollars! This got so out of hand that we decided to build our own timesheet software, which we now happily use. I have always seen software as the promise that you only need to build it once, and can reuse and leverage it many times over to reduce your costs. However, this does NOT seem to be the case anymore. You see the same in streaming services: limits on the amount of devices you can have in your family, moving features into higher cost tiers, and so on...

ivanbakel 25d ago
To play devil's advocate a bit: running software isn't free. If you're paying for an online service, the hosting cost to the company does scale per-seat. It's easy to say that the company only paid the cost of development once (and even then, more users = more development demand), but you're not a user of a single unit of developed software. For streaming services, I think the development-hosting needle swings way towards hosting. Streaming video is the vast majority of their costs and efforts, so scaling prices per-user is the only sensible option. The "software" of those services is bad and interchangeable, and not what anyone wants or is paying for in the first place.
- Forgeties79 25d ago
  That may be the case but they are getting so aggressive that I am constantly having to reconfirm devices within my own home. Luckily I just run my own server now but we have HBO for free with my cell plan so that’s the ones subscription we still have. I have to do email 2FA probably every 4th or 5th time we open it because it’s on “too many devices.”
- akudha 25d ago
  Taking Netflix as example - it has been going downhill steadily, they have a habit of canceling good shows after one or two seasons etc. It is no wonder users get annoyed when they have to pay more over time, and get less for their money. Increasing prices is never going to be popular even when it is justified, but users are more likely to tolerate if the price increase comes with better features or at minimum, no drop in features/quality. Another egregious thing these subscriptions do is all kinds of dark patterns. Making it super easy to subscribe but super hard to cancel, not informing before charging (how hard can it be to send an email "upcoming charge next week"), showing ads in supposedly "ad-free" services etc. All this just add to the frustration which leads users to cancel.
- sejje 25d ago
  To play devil's advocate against your DA argument: the guy you're replying to already knows the costs of 6 seats. He said he built his own software to replace it. He knows better than you do what he had to replace, because he did exactly that.
  - ivanbakel 24d ago
    I don't see what bearing the point you're trying to make has on the above comment. The question is not "how much it costs", the question is whether or not it's reasonable for a company to institute per-seat pricing. I think it is, if you're using that company's hosted service, since the hosting burden for them does scale per-seat.
matthiaswh 25d ago
Tell me you use harvest without telling me you use harvest.
ShinyLeftPad 25d ago
Microsoft did it with 365 after the introduction of Copilot: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eYVPThx7yss https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eYVPThx7yss Maybe it's one of the many ways we finance all those datacenters. Sure Netflix doesn't directly own datacenters but the logic works by proxy.

by abejora 25d ago

ivanbakel 25d ago

To play devil's advocate a bit: running software isn't free. If you're paying for an online service, the hosting cost to the company does scale per-seat. It's easy to say that the company only paid the cost of development once (and even then, more users = more development demand), but you're not a user of a single unit of developed software. For streaming services, I think the development-hosting needle swings way towards hosting. Streaming video is the vast majority of their costs and efforts, so scaling prices per-user is the only sensible option. The "software" of those services is bad and interchangeable, and not what anyone wants or is paying for in the first place.

Forgeties79 25d ago
That may be the case but they are getting so aggressive that I am constantly having to reconfirm devices within my own home. Luckily I just run my own server now but we have HBO for free with my cell plan so that’s the ones subscription we still have. I have to do email 2FA probably every 4th or 5th time we open it because it’s on “too many devices.”
akudha 25d ago
Taking Netflix as example - it has been going downhill steadily, they have a habit of canceling good shows after one or two seasons etc. It is no wonder users get annoyed when they have to pay more over time, and get less for their money. Increasing prices is never going to be popular even when it is justified, but users are more likely to tolerate if the price increase comes with better features or at minimum, no drop in features/quality. Another egregious thing these subscriptions do is all kinds of dark patterns. Making it super easy to subscribe but super hard to cancel, not informing before charging (how hard can it be to send an email "upcoming charge next week"), showing ads in supposedly "ad-free" services etc. All this just add to the frustration which leads users to cancel.
sejje 25d ago
To play devil's advocate against your DA argument: the guy you're replying to already knows the costs of 6 seats. He said he built his own software to replace it. He knows better than you do what he had to replace, because he did exactly that.
- ivanbakel 24d ago
  I don't see what bearing the point you're trying to make has on the above comment. The question is not "how much it costs", the question is whether or not it's reasonable for a company to institute per-seat pricing. I think it is, if you're using that company's hosted service, since the hosting burden for them does scale per-seat.

matthiaswh 25d ago

Tell me you use harvest without telling me you use harvest.

ShinyLeftPad 25d ago

Microsoft did it with 365 after the introduction of Copilot: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eYVPThx7yss https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eYVPThx7yss Maybe it's one of the many ways we finance all those datacenters. Sure Netflix doesn't directly own datacenters but the logic works by proxy.