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Slack has raised our charges by $195k per year

(skyfall.dev)
1806 points JustSkyfall | 3 comments | 18 Sep 25 01:37 UTC | HN request time: 0.436s | source
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wpm ◴[18 Sep 25 02:03 UTC] No.45284156[source]▶
I can sympathize, but this was always the end deal for cloud SaaS apps. Give em a taste, get em hooked, get years of institutional knowledge and process embedded in the app, refuse to let them export it, and crank the price up.

It's not only guys named Larry who are lawnmowers. Don't stick your hand in. *Own* your shit. Be suspicious of anyone who tries to convince you not to. If it's "easy" it might come back to bite you.

Even if some self-hostable software stack does a rug pull and changes the license, you just don't have to update. You can go log into the database and export to whatever format you want.

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1. brookst ◴[18 Sep 25 03:00 UTC] No.45284734[source]▶
Counterpoint: if you are willing to pay $X/year, the service is worth $X/year to you or your business.

If the company charged 10% of X for some time to prove the value (or “lock you in” if you prefer), then great, you got a subsidized ride for some time.

I do think platforms should offer data export, and I think customers should demand it, and I am open to the law requiring it.

But ultimately I don’t have a ton of sympathy for the “suddenly this tool I assumed would be underpriced forever actually wants to charge what I think it’s worth” position.

I know, unpopular opinion, roast away. Or tell me why any company should assume its suppliers will never exercise their leverage and take that consumer surplus right back.

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2. jrockway ◴[18 Sep 25 03:04 UTC] No.45284758[source]▶
I think it's a fine argument to make. At some point, the price discovery mechanism has to ask someone a price that's too high. Someone then has to say "no".

Everyone starts off with a price that's too low because you want a "no" from a customer to be "no, because your product isn't useful to me" and not "no, I don't have that kind of money". (Maybe this is a flaw and generalizes to generative AI. I like Github Copilot for $0/month. I would not like it for $200/month. If it costs them $200/month to run it, then there is a big problem with the business model.)

3. swiftcoder ◴[18 Sep 25 07:20 UTC] No.45286572[source]▶
I don't think anyone is contending that Slack shouldn't be able to raise their prices. The problem is raising the price 40x overnight, and then going "pay up in 1 week or we delete all your data"