Show HN: I made CSS Pro, a re-imagined Devtools for web design • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: I made CSS Pro, a re-imagined Devtools for web design

#111

Post by sb8244 » Thu, Jun 01, 2023, 2:20 PM UTC

last_responder wrote: post #81

rcconf wrote: post #69

Honestly the comments are a good example on how difficult it is to sell to developers and why startup ideas that target developers are dangerous to bootstrap. Developers have high incomes, but are quite frankly, extremely cheap. And I actually mean cheap and not frugal. They will spend 40 hours/week for months to save $5/mo. There's basically no logic apart from that developers have a poor concept of time and money a…

>Developers, my only word of advice, is seriously.. stop being so cheap and spend some money to make your lives easier. >but I can guarantee that 99% of developers will not spend $30/month to make their lives easier. Your post is insulting and it really seems like it is an ad for this product.

It is insulting, but sometimes the shoe fits. Developer tools is notoriously difficult because engineers (and their managers, and the teams) are very cheap.

Re: Show HN: I made CSS Pro, a re-imagined Devtools for web design

#112

Post by filmgirlcw » Thu, Jun 01, 2023, 2:20 PM UTC

This looks great and I’m not against charging for tools — I’m not even against subscriptions (even tho they often annoy me personally), but the value prop here doesn’t seem to match $30 a month (or $15 if you do annual).

And it isn’t because I’m cheap — I spend lots of money on lots of stuff — or that I don’t value indie development (same), but this pricing puts this utility in the same class as things like Figma, the Adobe Suite, a lot of CMSes (Webflow, Craft, etc.) for a utility that might be useful, but doesn’t strike me as $360 a year (or even $180 a year) useful.

The value prop just isn’t here for me, even tho I like what this is trying to do. At $5 a month/$50 a year, I think you’d get more traction and much better volume than what you can get at $30 a month/$180 a year prepaid.

And I have to say, when I see prices this high, I’m hesitant to prepay from unknown companies because I don’t have any expectation about how long it will be in business or continue to update the product, because I don’t see how you get sustainable development at this price point. Figma and Adobe can charge what they charge because they’ve earned it and because those are tools where you feel like you get your money’s worth.

$30 a month for something that will improve but not fundamentally change the way I do web dev, I’m sorry but no.

Re: Show HN: I made CSS Pro, a re-imagined Devtools for web design

#113

Post by douglaswlance » Thu, Jun 01, 2023, 2:25 PM UTC

rcconf wrote: post #69

Honestly the comments are a good example on how difficult it is to sell to developers and why startup ideas that target developers are dangerous to bootstrap. Developers have high incomes, but are quite frankly, extremely cheap. And I actually mean cheap and not frugal. They will spend 40 hours/week for months to save $5/mo. There's basically no logic apart from that developers have a poor concept of time and money a…

Developers in general aren't cheap.

Developers who spend their time commenting about how something is too expensives are cheap.

Re: Show HN: I made CSS Pro, a re-imagined Devtools for web design

#114

Post by filmgirlcw » Thu, Jun 01, 2023, 2:25 PM UTC

rcconf wrote: post #69

Honestly the comments are a good example on how difficult it is to sell to developers and why startup ideas that target developers are dangerous to bootstrap. Developers have high incomes, but are quite frankly, extremely cheap. And I actually mean cheap and not frugal. They will spend 40 hours/week for months to save $5/mo. There's basically no logic apart from that developers have a poor concept of time and money a…

Spending money is one thing. I don’t think most devs are opposed to doing that, especially for things that are central to your work. But I’m hard-pressed to see how a browser extension that will improve but not demonstrable change how browser dev tools work is worth $30 a month. This reminds me of Mighty, the $30 a month web browser that promised to be a lot faster and better (it ran off of cloud servers), but was absolutely not worth $30 a month (and I tried it and gave it an honest shot and it wasn’t). Mighty failed and now I think is trying to pivot to some sort of AI generative art thing.

Pricing too high will kill your business the same way pricing too low will. It has nothing to do with people being cheap, it has to do with value proposition, especially relative to other tools.

Re: Show HN: I made CSS Pro, a re-imagined Devtools for web design

#115

Post by mnsc » Thu, Jun 01, 2023, 2:28 PM UTC

sy7ar wrote: post #102

rcconf wrote: post #69

Honestly the comments are a good example on how difficult it is to sell to developers and why startup ideas that target developers are dangerous to bootstrap. Developers have high incomes, but are quite frankly, extremely cheap. And I actually mean cheap and not frugal. They will spend 40 hours/week for months to save $5/mo. There's basically no logic apart from that developers have a poor concept of time and money a…

Unless all your work involves CSS I doubt it saves 3-4 hours / week. Also, saving 3 hours of work doesn't mean you get paid for 3 hours more. It's also a dependency that's not guaranteed to exist as long as the default browser dev tools or available on every machine.

If all you do is css I doubt you have a workflow where this tool would save you 3-4 hours a week. It might even be ~20 minutes/week and 10 minutes/week stumbling while relearning your habits to use (depend on) this tool. And then a year later when you are completely dependent on this tool. Boom. It's now acquired by and part of Atom Text Editor Enterprise Ide where all those who invested too much in Atom went to die.

Re: Show HN: I made CSS Pro, a re-imagined Devtools for web design

#116

Post by filmgirlcw » Thu, Jun 01, 2023, 2:28 PM UTC

lolinder wrote: post #99

tmikaeld wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think developers in general are cheap, it's that they are employed somewhere and therefore it doesn't benefit THEM to save time, it benefits their employer. It may even be detrimental to the developer as it put higher expectations on the developer to produce more if the suddenly perform better at a specific task..

Most tools like this are priced with the understanding that they'll be billed to the employer in the end, not paid out of pocket by the developer. They probably need to add org licenses soon in order to better accommodate that.

Yeah, but a lot of employers would still bristle at $180 a year (if you pay in advance) for a souped up version of dev tools. Not to mention that most places that would have a budget for something like this would need to do a security audit of anything like this.

If you’re a consultant or have a lot of client projects, you can absolutely bill the client for this sort of thing. But that’s not the situation for everyone and certainly doesn’t strike me as the audience being targeted by the landing page.

Re: Show HN: I made CSS Pro, a re-imagined Devtools for web design

#117

Post by Alifatisk » Thu, Jun 01, 2023, 2:30 PM UTC

rcconf wrote: post #69

Honestly the comments are a good example on how difficult it is to sell to developers and why startup ideas that target developers are dangerous to bootstrap. Developers have high incomes, but are quite frankly, extremely cheap. And I actually mean cheap and not frugal. They will spend 40 hours/week for months to save $5/mo. There's basically no logic apart from that developers have a poor concept of time and money a…

I think it’s the monthly subscription for a offline product is what makes the devs to loose their interest, and I get it.

I don’t own the product when subscribing, I am only leasing it for as long as I pay. I don’t like that, I prefer to own my products.

Everything is slowly turning into a subscription, sure this is only 30$ a month, but if all my products were subscription based, I would go bankrupt.

Re: Show HN: I made CSS Pro, a re-imagined Devtools for web design

#118

Post by unshavedyak » Thu, Jun 01, 2023, 2:36 PM UTC

rcconf wrote: post #69

Honestly the comments are a good example on how difficult it is to sell to developers and why startup ideas that target developers are dangerous to bootstrap. Developers have high incomes, but are quite frankly, extremely cheap. And I actually mean cheap and not frugal. They will spend 40 hours/week for months to save $5/mo. There's basically no logic apart from that developers have a poor concept of time and money a…

> They will spend 40 hours/week for months to save $5/mo. There's basically no logic apart from that developers have a poor concept of time and money and are spending averse (again, cheap.)

To slightly counter. I am a developer with a high-ish (average for the industry, i suppose) income. I love paying for my tools. HOWEVER, i expect you'd call me cheap.

Why? Well because i am very averse to subscriptions, and i think this is primarily due to being a developer and being around this culture. This culture which is flooded with startups all wanting X$ per seat, user, etc. I've seen these things scale excessively on loop. It's not 1 $5 sub. It's the 20 tools all vying for subscriptions, tiers of subscriptions, etc.

I happily pay for things i can buy that improve my DX or productivity. However subs have to be exceptionally good to justify because they're in competition, in my head, with every other sub i already manage. Even if it doesn't make sense to have X and Y products "compete" because they're not even remotely related - they are in my head. They're in the list of subscriptions which i obsessively prune because this industry has left me feeling like i need to.

I love "subs" like JetBrains though.

Re: Show HN: I made CSS Pro, a re-imagined Devtools for web design

#119

Post by LeonB » Thu, Jun 01, 2023, 2:37 PM UTC

aceazzameen wrote: post #90

rcconf wrote: post #69

Honestly the comments are a good example on how difficult it is to sell to developers and why startup ideas that target developers are dangerous to bootstrap. Developers have high incomes, but are quite frankly, extremely cheap. And I actually mean cheap and not frugal. They will spend 40 hours/week for months to save $5/mo. There's basically no logic apart from that developers have a poor concept of time and money a…

No. Monthly subscriptions suck. Every company wants to "tax" me monthly for something that's feature complete. The ones I already pay, I do so very begrudgingly. There's simply too many SaaS products out there. Let's go back to perpetual licenses. And I'll gladly pay for upgraded versions, or not if the upgrade isn't worthwhile. When it's not SaaS, I also get to control what version I'm using. The product doesn't own…

It might be a pedantic point but when you buy a perpetual license you don’t “own” the product - you “own” a license to use the product, on the terms in the license.

Re: Show HN: I made CSS Pro, a re-imagined Devtools for web design

#120

Post by sammywater » Thu, Jun 01, 2023, 2:37 PM UTC

rcconf wrote: post #69

Honestly the comments are a good example on how difficult it is to sell to developers and why startup ideas that target developers are dangerous to bootstrap. Developers have high incomes, but are quite frankly, extremely cheap. And I actually mean cheap and not frugal. They will spend 40 hours/week for months to save $5/mo. There's basically no logic apart from that developers have a poor concept of time and money a…

[dead]