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How JetBrains Lost Years of Customer Loyalty in Just a Few Hours

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Re: How JetBrains Lost Years of Customer Loyalty in Just a Few Hours

#21

Post by cweagans »

You do realize that they haven't really changed their pricing model, right? They just changed how it's presented. It's always been a subscription if you want new features in an IDE (which most people do). I pay like $100/year for PHPstorm upgrades, and it's well worth the cost given the benefits that one receives from using the software (mostly in terms of productivity).

Yes, renting software is a skeezy model. Yes, they should still allow people to purchase perpetual licenses (which, for the record, you can still do until November). Yes, this could have been communicated differently and with more notice.

No, it's not the end of the world. A company has to make money, and at the end of the day, I'd much rather give my money to Jetbrains than many other companies because I know they make excellent tools that facilitate my ability to produce excellent software.

Re: How JetBrains Lost Years of Customer Loyalty in Just a Few Hours

#24

Post by awjr »

I'm going to take a wild guess and suggest this was driven by the CFO trying to provide better predictive earnings to their shareholders. It may also enable them to plan developer recruitment better but this feels very shareholder driven.

Personally, Webstorm is exceptional and worth every penny.

Re: How JetBrains Lost Years of Customer Loyalty in Just a Few Hours

#25

Post by konradb »

venomsnake wrote: post #7

So once again the people getting the best deal will be the pirates :( I suppose that we are at JetBrains market saturation levels - everybody is using their IDEs, so they just don't sell as many new licences to fuel growth.

I think their all-you-can-eat subscription deal is pretty good value. I use Intellij Ultimate but I have messed around with Appcode and Rubymine in the past and wanted to give CLion a go. I remember a while ago thinking 'surely they do some all you can eat package' and finding they didn't. This has answered it.

Realise that the same model doesn't work for everyone but the subscription deal for all-you-can-eat is damn good.

Re: How JetBrains Lost Years of Customer Loyalty in Just a Few Hours

#26

Post by chiph »

I think JetBrains miscalculated just how much people like the current licensing model.

I liked their first model - I paid for it and just used it. The current model, with the yearly upgrade premium, I tolerated. I felt it was a scam (are they going to publish an update in the next year so I get my money's worth? Probably not) but I could deal with it.

This new model doesn't work for me at all. As someone who bought his own license, used it at work, and got 3 employers to switch to it -- this doesn't feel right. I am reminded of Altova. They turned their $120 XML editor into a $999 enterprise behemoth. I haven't recommended them in over 10 years.

Re: How JetBrains Lost Years of Customer Loyalty in Just a Few Hours

#27

Post by nadams »

> I've seen companies who forget to renew their licenses promptly or who have long and convoluted processes to approve the expenditure. I guess, under the new model, development grinds to a halt until the purchase goes through.

That sounds like a problem with the company practices and policies and not Jetbrains. I'm pretty sure that would affect other things in the company as well (such as stalling to pay an internet bill or something).

Re: How JetBrains Lost Years of Customer Loyalty in Just a Few Hours

#28

Post by teacup50 »

cweagans wrote: post #21

You do realize that they haven't really changed their pricing model, right? They just changed how it's presented. It's always been a subscription if you want new features in an IDE (which most people do). I pay like $100/year for PHPstorm upgrades, and it's well worth the cost given the benefits that one receives from using the software (mostly in terms of productivity). Yes, renting software is a skeezy model. Yes,…

Sorry, but they have changed their pricing model; the previous model provided a perpetual license with a year of updates, and the new model is simply rental, which access terminating once you stop paying.

I don't rent my tools.

Re: How JetBrains Lost Years of Customer Loyalty in Just a Few Hours

#29

Post by fridek »

It's hard to make an argument that loyal customers are lost. Don't they by definition renew the license every year anyway? If not, still no one is lost - existing licenses don't magically expire. This change affects only potential new customers who are not renewing every year for some reason.

Re: How JetBrains Lost Years of Customer Loyalty in Just a Few Hours

#30

Post by microtonal »

oneJob wrote: post #17

It's my personal opinion that one only gets complaining rights if one doesn't use Gmail, one doesn't subscribe to NetFlix, one doesn't use Spotify, ad nauseum. JetBrains is making a business decision. That's what businesses do. Their current Community Edition is open-source. Anyone is free to pick up where they left off. That is an enormous contribution they've already made to the community. You make your consumer de…

It's my personal opinion that one only gets complaining rights if one doesn't use Gmail, one doesn't subscribe to NetFlix, one doesn't use Spotify, ad nauseum.

That does not make sense. Spotify et al. were like that from the beginning. You know what kind of deal you are getting. JetBrains is changing the rules of the game completely, with very little heads-up time, for people who might be deeply invested in their products.

It's comparable to what Adobe pulled off: they knew that most people did not have a choice, so they could force it on them. Luckily, the IDE landscape is a bit more healthy, so I expect that a subset of their customers will flee to other IDEs.

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