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Genuine question: when there are so many other ways to create attractive visualizations for the browser, why should someone pay hundreds of dollars a year to pl

Genuine question: when there are so many other ways to create attractive visualizations for the browser, why should someone pay hundreds of dollars a year to plotly for some of their "professional" and "advanced" chart types? What pain are they easing that makes this a potentially worthwhile expense?

CCoffie 11y ago
Maybe enterprise support for businesses?
fixxer 11y ago
I have learned to never underestimate the proclivity of large corporations to pay for things that they could otherwise get for free.
j42 11y ago
Any business "dashboard" or management portal that relies on data and developer efficiency might... Account manager says: "I want to be able to view charts for all our sales data by time, with the ability to zoom in on a range... and make it pretty too!" Developer [if smart] says: "Well, there's highcharts but it's kinda clunky and also with a premium pricing tier... the best way is always to roll your own SVG + animations with D3, but there are also a ton of HTML5/JS open source canvas libraries that could make some really cool charts... but without feature X, unless we took a week to build Y." CEO Says: "This is a waste of time, <$1,000 in a tax-deductible expense doesn't matter if we can use this data in our business immediately without wasting more developer time on the issue." Honestly there's a huge market for data-graphic libraries/services, and the most robust API's are all commercially licensed in some way. The multitude of free offerings all come VERY close to being great, but slightly miss the mark meaning it's "roll-your-own" for non-standard solutions. Essentially: if the time their chart API's save your developers is > the cost of the license and you can set aside your purist ideals and undying love for d3. [edit] I say that having assumed all 3 roles in said hypothetical discussion -- as of April 2015 I had yet to find an OS JS library with every chart type/feature we needed. Sometimes you can afford to do it right, other times the convenience is (begrudgingly) worth the cost.

CCoffie 11y ago

Maybe enterprise support for businesses?

fixxer 11y ago

I have learned to never underestimate the proclivity of large corporations to pay for things that they could otherwise get for free.

j42 11y ago

Any business "dashboard" or management portal that relies on data and developer efficiency might... Account manager says: "I want to be able to view charts for all our sales data by time, with the ability to zoom in on a range... and make it pretty too!" Developer [if smart] says: "Well, there's highcharts but it's kinda clunky and also with a premium pricing tier... the best way is always to roll your own SVG + animations with D3, but there are also a ton of HTML5/JS open source canvas libraries that could make some really cool charts... but without feature X, unless we took a week to build Y." CEO Says: "This is a waste of time, <$1,000 in a tax-deductible expense doesn't matter if we can use this data in our business immediately without wasting more developer time on the issue." Honestly there's a huge market for data-graphic libraries/services, and the most robust API's are all commercially licensed in some way. The multitude of free offerings all come VERY close to being great, but slightly miss the mark meaning it's "roll-your-own" for non-standard solutions. Essentially: if the time their chart API's save your developers is > the cost of the license and you can set aside your purist ideals and undying love for d3. [edit] I say that having assumed all 3 roles in said hypothetical discussion -- as of April 2015 I had yet to find an OS JS library with every chart type/feature we needed. Sometimes you can afford to do it right, other times the convenience is (begrudgingly) worth the cost.