<story><title>Show HN: I made CSS Pro, a re-imagined Devtools for web design</title><url>https://csspro.com</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>aceazzameen</author><text>No. Monthly subscriptions suck. Every company wants to &amp;quot;tax&amp;quot; me monthly for something that&amp;#x27;s feature complete. The ones I already pay, I do so very begrudgingly. There&amp;#x27;s simply too many SaaS products out there.&lt;p&gt;Let&amp;#x27;s go back to perpetual licenses. And I&amp;#x27;ll gladly pay for upgraded versions, or not if the upgrade isn&amp;#x27;t worthwhile. When it&amp;#x27;s not SaaS, I also get to control what version I&amp;#x27;m using. The product doesn&amp;#x27;t own me, I get to own the product.</text></item><item><author>rcconf</author><text>Honestly the comments are a good example on how difficult it is to sell to developers and why startup ideas that target developers are dangerous to bootstrap.&lt;p&gt;Developers have high incomes, but are quite frankly, extremely cheap. And I actually mean cheap and not frugal. They will spend 40 hours&amp;#x2F;week for months to save $5&amp;#x2F;mo. There&amp;#x27;s basically no logic apart from that developers have a poor concept of time and money and are spending averse (again, cheap.)&lt;p&gt;In this case, this tool is $30&amp;#x2F;mo, or about $360 &amp;#x2F; year, what is that, 3 dinners for 2 people in a year? The tool may save the developer, let&amp;#x27;s say 3-4 hours &amp;#x2F; week and at 52 * 3 or about 156 hours of savings a year. At even 30 an hour, it&amp;#x27;s saved the developer $4,680, or at 60&amp;#x2F;hour, close to $10,000, but I can guarantee that 99% of developers will not spend $30&amp;#x2F;month to make their lives easier.&lt;p&gt;My only recommendation is try to sell this product to businesses and maybe offer them a deal based on the amount of developers they have. So sell it do a dev shop with 10 developers at $20&amp;#x2F;developer &amp;#x2F; per month. Businesses understand the time&amp;#x2F;money tradeoff and are not cheap.&lt;p&gt;Developers, my only word of advice, is seriously.. stop being so cheap and spend some money to make your lives easier.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jchw</author><text>Nailed it.&lt;p&gt;I happily pay a lot of money for nice things, but only if I get to own them. I am not cheap, I&amp;#x27;m picky. I&amp;#x27;m not picky by choice, I&amp;#x27;m picky by experience. I already know I can&amp;#x27;t trust subscriptions.&lt;p&gt;If you have to make your tool a one-time cost, you might come to realize it&amp;#x27;s not really worth the amount of money you could&amp;#x27;ve made by selling it for $5&amp;#x2F;mo, and that&amp;#x27;s a great illustration of just one reason why developers don&amp;#x27;t like subscriptions.</text></comment>
<story><title>Show HN: I made CSS Pro, a re-imagined Devtools for web design</title><url>https://csspro.com</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>aceazzameen</author><text>No. Monthly subscriptions suck. Every company wants to &amp;quot;tax&amp;quot; me monthly for something that&amp;#x27;s feature complete. The ones I already pay, I do so very begrudgingly. There&amp;#x27;s simply too many SaaS products out there.&lt;p&gt;Let&amp;#x27;s go back to perpetual licenses. And I&amp;#x27;ll gladly pay for upgraded versions, or not if the upgrade isn&amp;#x27;t worthwhile. When it&amp;#x27;s not SaaS, I also get to control what version I&amp;#x27;m using. The product doesn&amp;#x27;t own me, I get to own the product.</text></item><item><author>rcconf</author><text>Honestly the comments are a good example on how difficult it is to sell to developers and why startup ideas that target developers are dangerous to bootstrap.&lt;p&gt;Developers have high incomes, but are quite frankly, extremely cheap. And I actually mean cheap and not frugal. They will spend 40 hours&amp;#x2F;week for months to save $5&amp;#x2F;mo. There&amp;#x27;s basically no logic apart from that developers have a poor concept of time and money and are spending averse (again, cheap.)&lt;p&gt;In this case, this tool is $30&amp;#x2F;mo, or about $360 &amp;#x2F; year, what is that, 3 dinners for 2 people in a year? The tool may save the developer, let&amp;#x27;s say 3-4 hours &amp;#x2F; week and at 52 * 3 or about 156 hours of savings a year. At even 30 an hour, it&amp;#x27;s saved the developer $4,680, or at 60&amp;#x2F;hour, close to $10,000, but I can guarantee that 99% of developers will not spend $30&amp;#x2F;month to make their lives easier.&lt;p&gt;My only recommendation is try to sell this product to businesses and maybe offer them a deal based on the amount of developers they have. So sell it do a dev shop with 10 developers at $20&amp;#x2F;developer &amp;#x2F; per month. Businesses understand the time&amp;#x2F;money tradeoff and are not cheap.&lt;p&gt;Developers, my only word of advice, is seriously.. stop being so cheap and spend some money to make your lives easier.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mhuffman</author><text>I mean, you are taking shit for this comment for some reason, but it is absolutely true! At some point I don&amp;#x27;t want to have to pay for dozens of apps every month. Just charge me what you need and let me have it. If it is broken when you sold it to me, great, I will update. If you come up with new clever additions, I may or may not want those. But subscriptions take that ability away from you. And I want a tool to use, not a relationship with you forever!</text></comment>