6 ms·

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 g

by 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.
- eitally 12y ago
  A perhaps more salient example is one we faced last year: do we switch from Eclipse to IntelliJ? Nearly all of the Java developers we asked preferred IntelliJ. That's ok, no problem ... but we're facing switching 300 people from a free IDE to one that costs several hundred dollars, for internal appdev (not a product company, so all of the above hits the SG&A opex spend ... which the street always wants to be minimal). So, 300x$400, the 150X$400 MSDN subscriptions we have for the MS guys, plus ~1500 MS servers, plus about 300 RHEL servers, plus .... The point is, it all add up, and as Patrick (patio11) has noted several times, large companies much prefer bulk, one time POs to subscriptions. Being able to forecast and accrue for both Capex & Opex is extremely important in many large, thin margin companies, especially ones that are not IT-centric.
  - cpeterso 12y ago
    So, in the end, did you switch to IntelliJ? The suspense is killing me! :)
  - lukego 12y ago
    These costs could still be modest in comparison to the salaries of 300 people.
  - sulam 12y ago
    Your servers are the lion's share of your opex, so buy the licenses. That said, if Eclipse is working for you, I'm surprised the CE edition of Intellij isn't fine, too.
- tghw 12y ago
  > when the results are the same. Of course, if the results are the same, you should decide on price. But software isn't a commodity product. Each one has strengths and weaknesses. I'm just surprised at the amount of price sensitivity considering a difference of 30 seconds a day between one tool and the other more than makes up for the price difference.
  - ProAm 12y ago
twerquie 12y ago
That logic doesn't make any sense. It's like saying hey, my car costs thirty thousand dollars, why shouldn't I spend $50 on a sandwich?
- phreeza 12y ago
  No, its more like buying premium oil for an expensive car.
  - nothrabannosir 12y ago
    True, the sandwich comparison was wrong and yours is good. But GPs question stands: what makes this worth the extra price over its competitors? Or: what makes premium oil worth the extra money, compared to regular?
  - spdustin 12y ago
    Which I still wouldn't do. It's a commodity, engine oil, and largely the same between brands. Ditto with PM software. Or most any other software. If the creators of Matterhorn can continue to shelve egos, keep effecting some humble sincerity and focus on why their tool is better, we may find it's an exception to that rule. Edit: clarified that the devs are already showing low-ego and sincerity - I realized my wording didn't suggest that earlier.
    - ryanx435 12y ago
      engine oil is not the same between brands, and synthetic and regular oil are markedly different. pm software is not the same between brands either. each one I've used offers a different user experience and each tends to excel in their own way. software, in general, is also not the same between brands, as you state. yahoo search is different than bing is different from Google.
    - serf 12y ago
      >Which I still wouldn't do. It's a commodity, engine oil, and largely the same between brands. Ditto with PM software. Or most any other software. As a former mechanic I would like to point out a flaw in your way of thinking about engine oil as a commodity similar across the board. Regular engine oils vary in overall quality not due to the oil itself being of substantially better or worse quality itself, but because of the different combinations of surfactants and detergents that the varying brands use, and molecular uniformity allowing tighter tolerances in the engineered part using the oil in question. The more expensive the motor oil, the less it chemically looks like crude oil until you get to the most expensive types of oils (synthetics), which aren't crude based at all but synthesized using the Fischer-Tropsch process. Precision engineered parts require synthetic oils. It's akin to placing your smartphone face down on an asphalt sidewalk. At high speeds and temperatures the contaminants in a lower grade oil will destroy the car that calls for the 50 dollar oil cans, and it'd be ill advised to ignore the need for it.
ultramancool 12y ago
If you're already able to pay salaries, you probably don't care, but for small side-project type startups without any funding but with a few people contributing, it's a _big_ difference. I suspect this is why JIRA has very different pricing for <=10 and >10 users.
- easytiger 12y ago
  That's not how large orgs do their budgets in many cases.
istvan__ 12y ago
Well I don't think that comparing costs this way makes too much sense. Running a successful business requires having more income than spendings. If you can achieve the same thing with $20 instead of $90 than you found a potential competitive advantage, even though not a huge one. :) Being frugal works very well for many corporations, including Amazon. I don't see that priced justified compare to JIRA based on the feature list of this tool.
ryanx435 12y ago
when we do project cost estimations at the large medical device development company I work at, we use $15,000 per person month. so to answer your question, 10 people would cost $150,000. so this just further proves your point that some large corporations are less price sensitive than others.
lloeki 12y ago
Totally agree with you, yet here is anecdotal evidence: as soon as I introduced it, Slack has had huge success in our company, yet when the time came for getting into paid tier (20 seats), the answer was a resounding "no" from the top of the chain.

by tghw 12y ago

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.

eitally 12y ago
A perhaps more salient example is one we faced last year: do we switch from Eclipse to IntelliJ? Nearly all of the Java developers we asked preferred IntelliJ. That's ok, no problem ... but we're facing switching 300 people from a free IDE to one that costs several hundred dollars, for internal appdev (not a product company, so all of the above hits the SG&A opex spend ... which the street always wants to be minimal). So, 300x$400, the 150X$400 MSDN subscriptions we have for the MS guys, plus ~1500 MS servers, plus about 300 RHEL servers, plus .... The point is, it all add up, and as Patrick (patio11) has noted several times, large companies much prefer bulk, one time POs to subscriptions. Being able to forecast and accrue for both Capex & Opex is extremely important in many large, thin margin companies, especially ones that are not IT-centric.
- cpeterso 12y ago
  So, in the end, did you switch to IntelliJ? The suspense is killing me! :)
- lukego 12y ago
  These costs could still be modest in comparison to the salaries of 300 people.
- sulam 12y ago
  Your servers are the lion's share of your opex, so buy the licenses. That said, if Eclipse is working for you, I'm surprised the CE edition of Intellij isn't fine, too.
tghw 12y ago
> when the results are the same. Of course, if the results are the same, you should decide on price. But software isn't a commodity product. Each one has strengths and weaknesses. I'm just surprised at the amount of price sensitivity considering a difference of 30 seconds a day between one tool and the other more than makes up for the price difference.
- ProAm 12y ago

twerquie 12y ago

That logic doesn't make any sense. It's like saying hey, my car costs thirty thousand dollars, why shouldn't I spend $50 on a sandwich?

phreeza 12y ago
No, its more like buying premium oil for an expensive car.
- nothrabannosir 12y ago
  True, the sandwich comparison was wrong and yours is good. But GPs question stands: what makes this worth the extra price over its competitors? Or: what makes premium oil worth the extra money, compared to regular?
- spdustin 12y ago
  Which I still wouldn't do. It's a commodity, engine oil, and largely the same between brands. Ditto with PM software. Or most any other software. If the creators of Matterhorn can continue to shelve egos, keep effecting some humble sincerity and focus on why their tool is better, we may find it's an exception to that rule. Edit: clarified that the devs are already showing low-ego and sincerity - I realized my wording didn't suggest that earlier.
  - ryanx435 12y ago
    engine oil is not the same between brands, and synthetic and regular oil are markedly different. pm software is not the same between brands either. each one I've used offers a different user experience and each tends to excel in their own way. software, in general, is also not the same between brands, as you state. yahoo search is different than bing is different from Google.
  - serf 12y ago
    >Which I still wouldn't do. It's a commodity, engine oil, and largely the same between brands. Ditto with PM software. Or most any other software. As a former mechanic I would like to point out a flaw in your way of thinking about engine oil as a commodity similar across the board. Regular engine oils vary in overall quality not due to the oil itself being of substantially better or worse quality itself, but because of the different combinations of surfactants and detergents that the varying brands use, and molecular uniformity allowing tighter tolerances in the engineered part using the oil in question. The more expensive the motor oil, the less it chemically looks like crude oil until you get to the most expensive types of oils (synthetics), which aren't crude based at all but synthesized using the Fischer-Tropsch process. Precision engineered parts require synthetic oils. It's akin to placing your smartphone face down on an asphalt sidewalk. At high speeds and temperatures the contaminants in a lower grade oil will destroy the car that calls for the 50 dollar oil cans, and it'd be ill advised to ignore the need for it.

ultramancool 12y ago

If you're already able to pay salaries, you probably don't care, but for small side-project type startups without any funding but with a few people contributing, it's a _big_ difference. I suspect this is why JIRA has very different pricing for <=10 and >10 users.

easytiger 12y ago
That's not how large orgs do their budgets in many cases.

istvan__ 12y ago

Well I don't think that comparing costs this way makes too much sense. Running a successful business requires having more income than spendings. If you can achieve the same thing with $20 instead of $90 than you found a potential competitive advantage, even though not a huge one. :) Being frugal works very well for many corporations, including Amazon. I don't see that priced justified compare to JIRA based on the feature list of this tool.

ryanx435 12y ago

when we do project cost estimations at the large medical device development company I work at, we use $15,000 per person month. so to answer your question, 10 people would cost $150,000. so this just further proves your point that some large corporations are less price sensitive than others.

lloeki 12y ago

Totally agree with you, yet here is anecdotal evidence: as soon as I introduced it, Slack has had huge success in our company, yet when the time came for getting into paid tier (20 seats), the answer was a resounding "no" from the top of the chain.