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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

#111

Post by acveilleux »

stoshe wrote: post #81
mikeash wrote: post #66

What bugs me about this is when I asked them about the change on Twitter and they kept trying to blow smoke up my butt about how it's better for everyone. Their first response was that it's cheaper than before. Except it's not. Did they think I wouldn't actually go look at the prices? Then they said it's better because you can jump in and out at will. Only need Product X for a month? Only pay for a month. Which is fi…

A typical move to subscription based pricing LOWERS costs to the consumer, but the company gets the benefit of more predictable recurring revenues. That makes the pricing JetBrains puts out a little bit of a head-scratcher.

Starting from zero, their pricing is lower over a set number of year. They got rid of the initial "hump" and in turn made the annual amount higher. I didn't look too closely but I guess the cost evens out over a 3-4 year subscription span. For a business this is actually going to simplify accounting I would think. It's no longer a cap-ex with a maintenance fee, it's just rental so all pre-tax.

My guess is that overall their spreadsheeting makes this even out based on how customers have been paying.

The fringe bits (loss of permanence, ability to install a home copy) will disproportionately hurt solo/small business folks and hobbyists. The very people that have been their champion getting their software into enterprise dev teams.

I don't understand why they don't go to the rental model with optional one-time permanent license add-on.

So like hypothetically 100$/year rental and a 100$ supplement for permanent license. Basically option into the current deal. They can even make the sum total greater then it used to be. Like 120$/year rental + 100$ permanent license supplement.

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

#112

Post by nadams »

mikeash wrote: post #66

What bugs me about this is when I asked them about the change on Twitter and they kept trying to blow smoke up my butt about how it's better for everyone. Their first response was that it's cheaper than before. Except it's not. Did they think I wouldn't actually go look at the prices? Then they said it's better because you can jump in and out at will. Only need Product X for a month? Only pay for a month. Which is fi…

> Their first response was that it's cheaper than before. Except it's not. Did they think I wouldn't actually go look at the prices?

Uh - their "everything" price is $20/month = $240/year (or $200 for the annual plan)

(All renewal at current license price)

PHPStorm - $129

PyCharm - $99

ReSharper Ultimate - $600 (no renewal price)

If I were to purchase that with their old license it would cost me $828, with the new plan I only pay $240. And those are just the tools I have an immediate need for (I do Python, PHP, and C# on an almost daily basis).

$20/month for their full suite of tools? Count me in.

When I first found their tools - I was like "ehhh I don't know - I'll stick with Eclipse/Netbeans etc". Eventually I tried IntelliJ, PHPStorm and PyCharm and they have been the best IDEs I've ever used. Trust me I'll advocate open source when I can - but after all the issues I've had with Eclipse and Netbeans I almost just totally switched to vi.

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

#113

Post by dsabanin »

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…

All these threads complaining about JetBrains decision are actually debating what we as customers should do. I think you missed that point.

We give JetBrains a chance to change it's mind by this public outrage, and if they don't listen – many people will switch.

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

#114

Post by LyndsySimon »

toyg wrote: post #94
gortok wrote: post #5

It seems likely that JetBrains moved to this model because their current revenue model doesn't allow for enough runway to allow them to make updates as needed or grow the business. So from that perspective changing to a model where they continually get money helps them stay in business. Where they 'went wrong', if you could call it that, is that they forced developers down this new path without allowing us to 'dip ou…

IMHO the "dipping toes" was the switch to the current model, which they did 4 or 5 years ago. It was a clear attempt at moving from shrinkwrap to SaaS. The constant stream of reminders in-product, on blogs, twitter etc was a strong hint that they'd really like you to pay something every few months. They were much more forceful than the average software vendor. This is why I wasn't really surprised by recent news. As…

I've not needed any of the new PyCharm features in about two years - but I've still purchased the new versions. In fact, as I work for an open-source company, my PyCharm license at work is free. I buy the personal license for home even though I don't work on non-free software... because I want to support JetBrains.

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

#115

Post by fastball »

mikeash wrote: post #90
fastball wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. If they "go out of business" you will save money with the new model, because instead of paying for a year of the license in advance, you are paying by month. 2. Nothing in their old model prevented them from raising prices. Not sure how you think switching to a monthly subscription model changes that. i.e. your entire premise, that this is an investment of time and money, really has nothing to do with JetBrains' s…

I think you're missing the fact that with the old model your purchase keeps working forever, you just don't get updates. With the new model, your purchase stops working when the subscription runs out. If they went out of business or raised prices in the old model, I could keep using the version I purchased for as long as I wanted. With the new model, my software turns into a pumpkin and my choice is either to keep pa…

You can use the open source community edition of many of their products forever...

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

#116

Post by toyg »

WorldMaker wrote: post #74
teacup50 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where JetBrains went wrong is in spreading themselves too thin on too many development fronts, letting products like IntelliJ languish with few significant features added and far too many bugs unfixed, and then deciding the solution to a lack of effort on these products was to switch to a subscription model so that all of their customers would pay for the updates whether or not they're worth paying for.

It seems to me that where JetBrains went wrong was building every language supported as a separate application. According to their announcement post the stated goal of was to deal with the customer ask to get easier discounts on multiple language products or to move from one language to another more easily. To JetBrains the solution was apparently to switch to SaaS, which kind of makes sense, but from my perspective…

The subdivision served multiple purposes: it increased revenue by segmenting the market, and it allowed for a level of specialization that was difficult to achieve with a single tool. For example, some of the PyCharm stuff requires hacks that most Java developers wouldn't want in their IDE, and I honestly wouldn't want to deal with any Java stuff if I can avoid it.

At the end of the day, the announcement is just corporate speak for "we need more money more regularly, so from now on you're going to pay rent; to make it a bit sweeter, rent includes use of swimming pool and sauna, which you may or may not need". Most businesses switching to SaaS don't do it for the customer, they do it for themselves.

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

#117

Post by joshstrange »

alt_f4 wrote: post #60

Yet another reason for me to stick with Eclipse. When will people realise that true & complete OSS is the only answer.

When it stops being a massive PITA to use...

I HATE Eclipse, it's a massively bloated POS IMHO and I wouldn't touch it with a 10' pole. Eclipse is what drove me FAR away from IDE's until a friend recommended JetBrains to me and I found how awesome it was.

OSS fanatics drive me up a wall. I don't have unlimited amounts of time to customise something a ton just to make it useable. I'm not going to make my life harder on purpose so that I can sit on my high horse. I want to get things done not be constantly futzing around with display drivers, font rendering, icon sets, endless pages of customization, etc. Do you have full control in OSS? Yes, but the defaults normally suck.

I want something that takes me to 80-90% on day 1, I don't care if I can take it to 100% in OSS (it normally starts at 20% at best), it's simply not worth my time. Now given 2 products, one closed and one OSS that perform equally or close to equally well out of the box I will lean towards OSS but I'm not going to go out of my way to use it just so I can tout my neck-bearded-ness. Money = Time and I'm not interested in wasting the "non-renewable" one of the two.

Note: none of this applies to servers, linux is the only thing I'd ever consider using on a server. This is primarily aimed at OSS programs and OS's (Open Office or whatever they are calling it now, Eclipse, Linux on the desktop, etc)

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

#118

Post by MichaelGG »

Microsoft recently did the same thing, requiring you to sign in with a Microsoft Account to continually re-activate Visual Studio (90 days, I think). So now, even with an MSDN sub, after it expires, you don't get the software. Rather significant change. Though, with BizSpark and other programs it will probably only impact larger companies.

Plus when customers view changes like this as unfair or unethical, they suddenly find themselves caring a lot less about using a disassembler and changing some jumps.

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

#120

Post by jbob2000 »

gorohoroh wrote: post #75
jbob2000 wrote: post #15

Meh, the only real issue there is the phoning home. The other issues he points out seem pretty contrived.

JetBrains rep here. "Phoning home" is actually not new. We've introduced JetBrains Account as a way of authorizing a product instance (as an alternative to license keys) for a couple of years now. Current student licenses work exactly the same way, as well as a part of classroom and OS licenses AFAIK. A lot of current personal and some commercial licenses are managed through a JetBrains Account as well. With the new…

Thanks for the reply! It's actually not an issue for me at all, my comment was more about the legitimacy of the OP's arguments.
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