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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

#151

Post by epalmer »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #136
nadams wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 pl…

In that example, you have someone working regularly enough in PHP, Python and .Net (Resharper) to appreciate the JetBrains tools. I'm sure it happens, but it doesn't seem to be the usual case to me. edit But looking at the pricing page ( https://www.jetbrains.com/toolbox/ ), a pure C# dev could just get "ReSharper Ultimate" for £79 Per year, or "ReSharper" for £71 per year, which I think is not much different from th…

I code php, java, python regularly. My team of two code php and java regularly and a little python. We have a small resource starved team. May not be normal but it is for us.

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

#152

Post by jrs235 »

Rezo wrote: post #138
jrs235 wrote: post #109

This isn't even Software-as-a-Service. Most companies that offer SaaS are HOSTING the software and thus incurring ongoing monthly costs. The Service part is that the purchaser doesn't have to install the software on their own machines, pay for nor update servers, etc. Selling rights to use [but not own] software on a monthly basis should be called RtpS - Rent-to-pwned-Software (cause you're pwned, you'll never own it…

JetBrains produces a continuous stream of improvements to all of their tools, previously they would have to artificially hold some of the bigger changes back to justify the next big yearly version number increase. With subscriptions, this is no longer necessary, everyone can have the latest and greatest right away. And I do hope the next logical step is to offer an optional fully hosted service that has feature parit…

"previously they would have to artificially hold some of the bigger changes back to justify the next big yearly version number increase"

I get that. Perhaps they should or could have just sold the current latest version as is for a bit less and then whenever the next big release comes out offer a prorated upgrade amount to those that feel the new features are worth the additional upgrade amount. Their model, withholding features so they could package them into a huge update, was hurting themselves and their customers.

What's to say they don't start pulling IntelliJ with other/more products? That is, to stop or slow down development/improvements and now milk a cash cow?

Clarification: They could have sold a working perpetual license without the 1 year of upgrades. When they have an upgrade they have an prorated upgrade path/cost based on when you purchased your current license/product.

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

#153

Post by izacus »

fridek wrote: post #29

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.

There's a significant attitude difference when you pay for upgrade every year because the product is improving or when you have to pay so the company doesn't pull the killswitch in your tooling.

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

#154

Post by toyg »

Rezo wrote: post #138
jrs235 wrote: post #109

This isn't even Software-as-a-Service. Most companies that offer SaaS are HOSTING the software and thus incurring ongoing monthly costs. The Service part is that the purchaser doesn't have to install the software on their own machines, pay for nor update servers, etc. Selling rights to use [but not own] software on a monthly basis should be called RtpS - Rent-to-pwned-Software (cause you're pwned, you'll never own it…

JetBrains produces a continuous stream of improvements to all of their tools, previously they would have to artificially hold some of the bigger changes back to justify the next big yearly version number increase. With subscriptions, this is no longer necessary, everyone can have the latest and greatest right away. And I do hope the next logical step is to offer an optional fully hosted service that has feature parit…

Yeah, but the "right" way to do it is to disable updates on license expiration, not just turn off a product you might have paid for since 2010.

Maybe the best thing to do would be an initial payment worth, say, 6 months, followed by monthly renewals; if the renewal does not go through, updates stop. This would be closer to the current model, but would still switch most revenue (renewals) to the SaaS model.

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

#155

Post by toyg »

estefan wrote: post #146
fastball wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contractors that work with different clients using different languages? You've never heard of someone that works with different languages at different times? Huh.

Why not just use IDEA ultimate and install different plugins per language?

I tried, it's not the same. The dedicated tools are better.

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

#156

Post by matwood »

bitserf wrote: post #20

The problem I have with subscription model for my tools is this: It removes the option for me to decide to not upgrade because the improvements are not worth the cost. Note that I have been upgrading my license most every year, but chances are I'll just make do with what I have next time around. If the current pricing model isn't viable for them, I'm sorry, but it is not my problem. It's already the most I pay for an…

> It removes the option for me to decide to not upgrade because the improvements are not worth the cost.

The blog post stated this as a reason. They want to focus on quality instead of features to sell upgrade licenses. I was a bit put off that statement though since I expect bug fixes as part of my original purchase price.

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

#157

Post by alt_f4 »

joshstrange wrote: post #117
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 o…

Doing professional Java dev with Eclipse since '10, never had any serious issues with Eclipse. IMHO, the biggest Eclipse-related issues I've had were with dodgy 3rd party plugins.

I find that people who "HATE" Eclipse passionately often don't understand how to use it properly. E.g... why is it taking a long time to build? Well, you enabled "Build automatically" in the project settings of your 900KLOC project...

Anyway, I've had this debate many times, I have no interest in having it again. I am just happy Eclipse works well for my needs, so I have no reason to worry about IntelliJ, SaaS licensing or whatever.

I would just encourage people who are unhappy about the changes to give Eclipse another shot -- who knows, maybe you will like it the second time around.

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

#158

Post by 67726e »

navait wrote: post #56
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.

Pretty tough to pirate their products in the first place, and I imagine "phone home" type applications will only make it harder. Especially when they already have a community edition in place, I think more people will use that.

It's probably tough to pirate their products in the first place because there isn't much of an incentive to crack them. It's not like a Call of Duty release where kids with no money the world over want the product. This is a tool for professionals, the kind of people who can shell out a couple billable hours worth of cash or get a license from their employer.

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

#159

Post by estefan »

aikah wrote: post #100

To be fair , it worked quite well for Adobe products ( most of them are now using a monthly subscription scheme ) despite all the dissatisfaction voiced by some customers at first. It is both good for Adobe and good for the competition. In fact allowed some challengers to be profitable when everybody pirated Photoshop before as 95% of people using it only took advantage of 1% of Photoshop features. It will be a good…

It's been good news for Serif. I've bought a grand total of 4 non-games on my Mac, Serif's Affinity Photo & Designer being 2 of them so I didn't have to pay Adobe for things I'd only use intermittently (Intellij being a third).

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

#160

Post by acomjean »

zeveb wrote: post #126

What I don't get is why a developer would ever use proprietary software in the first place. I code—it's what I do. I want to tools to be excellent, certainly, and I don't want to have to spend a lot of time fixing them where they aren't, but I want to be able to improve them for my use cases. Who else in the world is as capable at knowing what I need as…me? If you use proprietary software, you're at the mercy of the…

I use php storm because it works really well out of the box. > I want to tools to be excellent, certainly, and I don't want to have to spend a lot of time fixing

Thats what drew me to the JetBrains product line. The default functionality and polish feels good compared with eclipse which is what I usually use when I'm in java. I still jump into emacs for some file editing because it feels right. But eclipse still seem strangely odd to use (that could just be the whole java toolchain thing). I spend a certain amount of time on learning the tools and learning how to configure. The curve on emacs/eclipse configuration is steep. oddly I donated for me emacs / eclipse since I use them enough.

> If you use proprietary software, you're at the mercy of the vendor for features..

Something I kinda knew, even as a paying customer, but this change really brings it home. Especially since we now have to keep paying to keep using.

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