Earlier quoted context omitted.
CloudFlare publishes their pricing. Akamai doesn't. Dealing with salespeople is a massive PITA. They're not going to tell me anything that's not in the docs or support forums and I don't want to spend a week negotiating. I've seen many others make this point on HN over the years. Maybe Akamai only focuses on large enterprise customers while CloudFlare also goes for the SMB market. IDK. The HN crowd seems to work at S…
Fuck I hate this. I've avoided buying storage servers from ixsystems, despite the fact their products seem to be exactly what we need, because they won't tell me how much they fucking cost. They want to have a "conversation" about "solutions". Fuck you. Sell me boxes and tell me how much they cost. But they won't.
We'd actually love to be able to give you an "add to cart" price, but the reality is that most of our systems are configured to your specific requirements (with the exception of the FreeNAS Mini, which you can just add to cart on Amazon) instead of just "off the shelf".
It's actually not about trying to figure out how much is in your wallet, I assure you. In fact, we have one of the most transparent pricing processes in the biz. For example, we tell you your end price on our storage systems before a Reseller/VAR is even involved. We also fought the concept of having "list prices" for years, since we all know they're completely fictitious. However, it's something our F500, Gov't, and University customers almost always require so that they can measure and compare their discount.
Nonetheless, we do try to make the design process as quick and painless as possible for you, and regardless of whether or not you give us another shot, the feedback is always appreciated.
Cheers!