How JetBrains Lost Years of Customer Loyalty in Just a Few Hours • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by gdulli » Fri, Sep 04, 2015, 2:53 PM UTC

Latty wrote: post #131

gdulli wrote: post #123

Personally, they had lost my goodwill already with their old upgrade policy. If you bought a license on 01/2014, it expired on 12/2014, and you didn't need the product again until 04/2015, the upgrade you purchase in April begins on 01/2015, retroactively beginning after the end of the previous license. So you don't get the full 12 months they charge you for. When I realized that it was the end of my support for them…

Why would it work another way? You are paying to extend your old license, of course it carries on from when it finished. If you want a year from the present moment, that's not an extension, it's a new purchase. Otherwise, no one would extend until after a new release came out once it ended.

> Why would it work another way?

Because I shouldn't have to retroactively pay for a period I didn't use a product and the natural thing for me to assume was my status as a previous customer/license holder was what enabled me to an upgrade with the advertised "year's" worth of upgrades? Because that's how upgrade licenses work for other software products? (Windows/Office, other stuff I've used.)

They can define a license however they want, it's just up to me whether I find it worthwhile, and I didn't.

But at least in those days I had the option of continuing to use the older version after it expired.

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

#172

Post by Permit » Fri, Sep 04, 2015, 2:53 PM UTC

I wonder if we're only getting to see one side of the issue here. How does enterprise react to changes like this?

Could JetBrains perhaps compromise: Offer the current licensing for individual/independent developers, but the subscription model for enterprise licenses? Businesses are more likely to consume multiple products than an indie developer.

What do you guys think?

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

#173

Post by microtonal » Fri, Sep 04, 2015, 2:54 PM UTC

dagw wrote: post #57

epalmer wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use IntelliJ, phpStorm and pyCharm all on a regular business. But I work for a university and just assume that the subscriptions won't lapse. That may be a bad assumption given that I control the departments budget and it would come out of my allocations if the cost go up. Mixed feelings on this change. But I really like the three products I use and will continue to use them.

If you regularly use/upgrade lots of their products then this new scheme should work out cheaper. The people who potentially lose out are the people who only used one of their cheaper products and people who go several years without upgrading.

Or, if you are on their flagship product (IntelliJ IDEA). Sure, you save a whopping 10 Euro per year. But suddenly, you have a subscription rather than owning a perpetual license. Sounds like a bad deal.

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

#174

Post by barrkel » Fri, Sep 04, 2015, 2:54 PM UTC

nadams wrote: post #112

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 pl…

I switched from RubyMine to emacs and got a significant productivity boost. YMMV, but I don't think I'll ever use an IDE for a dynamic language again.

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

#175

Post by cwyers » Fri, Sep 04, 2015, 2:55 PM UTC

balabaster wrote: post #161

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…

Wait, what? The only product I use is Resharper... I was paying $119 an update before, now I'll be paying $240?!? Yeah, that's not a good deal for me. There's no amount of skewed math I can apply that makes $240 less than $119...

Here's the pricing policy:

https://www.jetbrains.com/toolbox/

The $20 is for all products, Resharper alone is $11.90 a month or $119 a year.

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

#176

Post by Latty » Fri, Sep 04, 2015, 2:56 PM UTC

hoopism wrote: post #128

In the previous thread on the announcement I expressed some concerns ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10165919 ). An employee responded: "I see this is turning into a conspiracy theory ) Fortunately, there's a little thing called competition that prevents raising rates at will without facing the consequences, and JetBrains is no exception: we're no monopoly" So the message first was "We did this for YOU!" and t…

That's misinterpreting the response - he was saying that they were not going to jack up prices arbitrarily. 'You can always go elsewhere' vs 'We aren't aiming to screw you over - you can always go elsewhere.' - there is a big difference.

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

#177

Post by jasonellis » Fri, Sep 04, 2015, 2:56 PM UTC

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…

You are absolutely right. As someone who uses PHP, Python, JavaScript and a little Ruby, I had purchased IntelliJ so I didn't have to renew multiple licenses each year. If they had just come out with their "All Products" subscription service at $149/year, I would have signed up for it immediately.

I don't like their proposal that I must forfeit my perpetual license to IntelliJ to take advantage of the lower price and that if my subscription lapses for any reason I'll be forced to pay an extra $100 a year!

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

#178

Post by silvestrov » Fri, Sep 04, 2015, 2:56 PM UTC

Polishing and bug fixes cost money, but nobody wants to pay for that. People only want to pay for new shiny features.

If IntelliJ doesn't get money because developers think "old version is good enough for me", then there is no money for bug fixing and for keeping the product alive. It would end up as abandonware like most apps on the iPhone App Store.

I'd guess the IDE have now reached this "fully featured" milestone where most developers don't care to upgrade. So IntelliJ has to switch to a subscription model to survive.

So we users have the choice between paying a subscription or having the IDE end up as unmaintained software due to lack of funds.

IntelliJ can't put out a new paid "version 15" which has bug-fixes only. People would be unhappy about that too.

I feel that the core IDE has degraded in quality over the past years because the releases were feature-driven, and I'd be happy to see IntelliJ refocus on quality instead of quantity.

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

#179

Post by jordigh » Fri, Sep 04, 2015, 2:57 PM UTC

manigandham wrote: post #135

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…

Please... some of us need to get work done and are perfectly happy to pay someone else to give us good quality products. Just because you can do something doesn't mean it's worth doing yourself.

Why not pay them to do it for you and also keep the ability to do it yourself, should you ever need it?

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

#180

Post by venomsnake » Fri, Sep 04, 2015, 2:57 PM UTC

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.

From what I have seen it is pretty trivial (at least if you were around in the 90s)