10 ms·

First thought: you've priced it quite ambitiously. A 10 user team would be $90/month, compared to $20 for JIRA + JIRA Agile, $42 for Asana premium, $50 for Trel

by SEMW 12y ago

First thought: you've priced it quite ambitiously. A 10 user team would be $90/month, compared to $20 for JIRA + JIRA Agile, $42 for Asana premium, $50 for Trello business (or free for normal trello), $35 for Pivotal Tracker, ... (Which isn't to say it necessarily should be cheaper, only that it seems surprising to see that price without any attempt to compare or justify why you believe that e.g. it's already, at launch, worth 3x as much as Pivotal Tracker).

eitally 12y ago
Agree 100%. Additionally, unless you also ship with substantial APIs, you'll be a nonstarter in the enterprise market, which demands interfaces to other systems (perhaps including code reviews, static analysis, source control (Git[hub], SVN, etc), ticketing, labor/time tracking, resource planning & allocation, SQA testing & validation, human resources, and whatever standard auth (SAML, OAuth, OpenID, LDAP)). Your pricing is also too high for a large org, especially when one could use something like Phabricator for free. This doesn't even get into MS Project or document management (MS Office? Google Drive?). Long story short, this looks like a good start and may work well for SMBs, but definitely not a big company.
- eitally 12y ago
  Just as an aside, my company has just spend several hundred thousand dollars licensing a well-known product & portfolio management (PPM) app. Not surprisingly, all the project managers were 100% in favor of this spend. Also not surprisingly, all the apps management were against it. Also as an aside, in most large companies, PPM is handled 100% separately, and by different people, than actual product management and dev planning/resource allocation/bug fixing/testing/support/etc.
  - Jack5500 12y ago
    "most" How do you know? I made the contrary experience
- pbreit 12y ago
  Be careful with interfaces and enterprise clients. They are both very slippery slopes at first and generally unnecessary unless you're really targeted there (which it appears you are not).
owly 12y ago
Agreed, Jira is pretty hard to beat for small teams and has a large base of plugins and integrations. This looks really cool but needs something a bit more to really stand out. Maybe at $5/user it could take off.
- jongold 12y ago
  I'd actively turn down a job if they used Jira. Absolutely horrific; using it genuinely makes me hate my life.
  - wsc981 12y ago
    At my current job we use Jira and personally I think it's a pretty good product, at least for a SCRUM workflow. Definitely beats any similar tools I've used in the past. I think the scrum board looks clear, it's easy to create user stories and tasks and it's also easy to switch between an operational and strategic workflow. We also use Confluence which also seems to do it's job properly as a wiki. I'm personally considering using Jira for my own projects in the future.
  - TheSockStealer 12y ago
    What is your preferred alternative? My company is looking at changing to another platform from Redmine.
    - vaceletm 12y ago
      I would suggest to look at Tuleap[1] Open Source full featured ALM, self-hosted or SaaS[2] consistent & easy to go upgrades. (Disclosure: I'm part of the dev team) [1] https://tuleap.org https://tuleap.org [2] http://mytuleap.com http://mytuleap.com
    - krschultz 12y ago
      I prefer Pivotal Tracker by a mile.
  - joshstrange 12y ago
    I only used Jira briefly before leaving that job for another, what didn't you like about it?
tghw 12y ago
What do you pay 10 people in a month? Probably somewhere between $60,000 and $100,000? Is the $90 vs $20 really that big of a difference? Especially if it's a good tool that helps your team be slightly more productive. I'm not saying that it will, I haven't tried it so I have no idea. I'm just surprised that people really want to shave less than $100 off of the tools they provide their team.
- wmeredith 12y ago
  This logic is sound, but any product will be compared price-wise to its competitors if all marketing statements are taken at face value (e.g. they all offer the same benefit of allowing you to manage your projects).
  - kareemm 12y ago
    > if all marketing statements are taken at face value But all marketing statements are rarely taken at face value. With self-service free trials, products can be compared and contrasted. One tool will work better for a given workflow than others. And it's a no-brainer to pay an additional e.g. $70/m to buy the best tool for the job.
- Lawtonfogle 12y ago
  $70 dollars is a lot in some organizations. Far more than it should be when compared to the overall budget. Even if a 1% boost in productivity would realize $600 to $1000 in savings, the penny wise culture in many organizations would be stuck trying to swallow a $70 payment.
- ProAm 12y ago
  > I'm just surprised that people really want to shave less than $100 off of the tools they provide their team. The problem is businesses don't just buy 1 tool for their team, they probably buy dozens, and if each one costs and additional $90 per team of ten that adds up quickly. Save money where you can especially when the results are the same.
  - 12y ago
whatsthatyousay 12y ago
I completely agree with you. The project management niche already has a lot of players and I don't see why I should pay double the price when the product i'm getting doesnt have the feature set to justify it.
yesimahuman 12y ago
I run a ~15 person startup, and my first thought was "huh, that's reasonable." And didn't think anything else about it. Shit, we pay hundreds for glorified databases for ATS and several other products. I really think pricing it lower will just push you to a less-valuable userbase.
- sitkack 12y ago
  The lower priced clients can be more demanding and less focused by asking for features they don't really need or use. It would be nice to track feature requests against customer application engagement as well as uptake by said customer. Attempting to make everyone happy leads to MS like products.
markhagan 12y ago
I thought the exact same thing! It looks like an amazing product, but I will never know for sure because it is too expensive for small teams.
andy_ppp 12y ago
Ha! Maybe he's not trying to make a billion dollars and instead is planning on making a great product. If you want outrageous pricing have a go at Slack! https://broadmargins.slack.com/pricing https://broadmargins.slack.com/pricing
endlessvoid94 12y ago
I think it's totally the right thing to do. They can always adjust their price as the market dictates (where "market" is people who do/don't pay for the product, not HN comments). Way better to charge and learn about what paying customers want, rather than make it cheap and hope to eventually convert them.
sitkack 12y ago
Bah! Jesus. Price. no matter.
NovaS1X 12y ago
My reaction when seeing the price was "Woah". I'm working hard enough for our company to pay $2 per user for HipChat. $9 per user is very expensive when it comes to these services at scale. I can see this on a team of 10-15 people, but certainly not on a company wide basis.
estebanrules 12y ago
I’m in agreement. The pricing is quite high for a new product, and there is a lot of competition out there.

by SEMW 12y ago

eitally 12y ago

Agree 100%. Additionally, unless you also ship with substantial APIs, you'll be a nonstarter in the enterprise market, which demands interfaces to other systems (perhaps including code reviews, static analysis, source control (Git[hub], SVN, etc), ticketing, labor/time tracking, resource planning & allocation, SQA testing & validation, human resources, and whatever standard auth (SAML, OAuth, OpenID, LDAP)). Your pricing is also too high for a large org, especially when one could use something like Phabricator for free. This doesn't even get into MS Project or document management (MS Office? Google Drive?). Long story short, this looks like a good start and may work well for SMBs, but definitely not a big company.

eitally 12y ago
Just as an aside, my company has just spend several hundred thousand dollars licensing a well-known product & portfolio management (PPM) app. Not surprisingly, all the project managers were 100% in favor of this spend. Also not surprisingly, all the apps management were against it. Also as an aside, in most large companies, PPM is handled 100% separately, and by different people, than actual product management and dev planning/resource allocation/bug fixing/testing/support/etc.
- Jack5500 12y ago
  "most" How do you know? I made the contrary experience
pbreit 12y ago
Be careful with interfaces and enterprise clients. They are both very slippery slopes at first and generally unnecessary unless you're really targeted there (which it appears you are not).

owly 12y ago

Agreed, Jira is pretty hard to beat for small teams and has a large base of plugins and integrations. This looks really cool but needs something a bit more to really stand out. Maybe at $5/user it could take off.

jongold 12y ago
I'd actively turn down a job if they used Jira. Absolutely horrific; using it genuinely makes me hate my life.
- wsc981 12y ago
  At my current job we use Jira and personally I think it's a pretty good product, at least for a SCRUM workflow. Definitely beats any similar tools I've used in the past. I think the scrum board looks clear, it's easy to create user stories and tasks and it's also easy to switch between an operational and strategic workflow. We also use Confluence which also seems to do it's job properly as a wiki. I'm personally considering using Jira for my own projects in the future.
- TheSockStealer 12y ago
  What is your preferred alternative? My company is looking at changing to another platform from Redmine.
  - vaceletm 12y ago
    I would suggest to look at Tuleap[1] Open Source full featured ALM, self-hosted or SaaS[2] consistent & easy to go upgrades. (Disclosure: I'm part of the dev team) [1] https://tuleap.org https://tuleap.org [2] http://mytuleap.com http://mytuleap.com
  - krschultz 12y ago
    I prefer Pivotal Tracker by a mile.
- joshstrange 12y ago
  I only used Jira briefly before leaving that job for another, what didn't you like about it?

tghw 12y ago

What do you pay 10 people in a month? Probably somewhere between $60,000 and $100,000? Is the $90 vs $20 really that big of a difference? Especially if it's a good tool that helps your team be slightly more productive. I'm not saying that it will, I haven't tried it so I have no idea. I'm just surprised that people really want to shave less than $100 off of the tools they provide their team.

wmeredith 12y ago
This logic is sound, but any product will be compared price-wise to its competitors if all marketing statements are taken at face value (e.g. they all offer the same benefit of allowing you to manage your projects).
- kareemm 12y ago
  > if all marketing statements are taken at face value But all marketing statements are rarely taken at face value. With self-service free trials, products can be compared and contrasted. One tool will work better for a given workflow than others. And it's a no-brainer to pay an additional e.g. $70/m to buy the best tool for the job.
Lawtonfogle 12y ago
$70 dollars is a lot in some organizations. Far more than it should be when compared to the overall budget. Even if a 1% boost in productivity would realize $600 to $1000 in savings, the penny wise culture in many organizations would be stuck trying to swallow a $70 payment.
ProAm 12y ago
> I'm just surprised that people really want to shave less than $100 off of the tools they provide their team. The problem is businesses don't just buy 1 tool for their team, they probably buy dozens, and if each one costs and additional $90 per team of ten that adds up quickly. Save money where you can especially when the results are the same.
- 12y ago

whatsthatyousay 12y ago

I completely agree with you. The project management niche already has a lot of players and I don't see why I should pay double the price when the product i'm getting doesnt have the feature set to justify it.

yesimahuman 12y ago

I run a ~15 person startup, and my first thought was "huh, that's reasonable." And didn't think anything else about it. Shit, we pay hundreds for glorified databases for ATS and several other products. I really think pricing it lower will just push you to a less-valuable userbase.

sitkack 12y ago
The lower priced clients can be more demanding and less focused by asking for features they don't really need or use. It would be nice to track feature requests against customer application engagement as well as uptake by said customer. Attempting to make everyone happy leads to MS like products.

markhagan 12y ago

I thought the exact same thing! It looks like an amazing product, but I will never know for sure because it is too expensive for small teams.

andy_ppp 12y ago

Ha! Maybe he's not trying to make a billion dollars and instead is planning on making a great product. If you want outrageous pricing have a go at Slack! https://broadmargins.slack.com/pricing https://broadmargins.slack.com/pricing

endlessvoid94 12y ago

I think it's totally the right thing to do. They can always adjust their price as the market dictates (where "market" is people who do/don't pay for the product, not HN comments). Way better to charge and learn about what paying customers want, rather than make it cheap and hope to eventually convert them.

sitkack 12y ago

Bah! Jesus. Price. no matter.

NovaS1X 12y ago

My reaction when seeing the price was "Woah". I'm working hard enough for our company to pay $2 per user for HipChat. $9 per user is very expensive when it comes to these services at scale. I can see this on a team of 10-15 people, but certainly not on a company wide basis.

estebanrules 12y ago

I’m in agreement. The pricing is quite high for a new product, and there is a lot of competition out there.