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

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

#181

Post by tiffanyh »

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…

I don't disagree with what you saying, but ...

People seem to forget what the cost of a perpetual license use to be.

Licenses would easily equate to 3-years (36-months) or more, of what a monthly subscription would cost.

Case in point:

$439, you can buy a perpetual license of Microsoft Office

$7/mo, you can get the same functionality + hosting + storage as a monthly subscription

It'd take over 5-years to breakeven.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/p/office-profe...

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/buy/compare-al...

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

#182

Post by rusl1 »

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…

It's incredible how American centric you are. 360 $ is a whole month of food for two people in Europe. Not joking.

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

#183

Post by bgirard »

not_a_shill wrote: post #159
jchw wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nailed it. I happily pay a lot of money for nice things, but only if I get to own them. I am not cheap, I'm picky. I'm not picky by choice, I'm picky by experience. I already know I can't trust subscriptions. If you have to make your tool a one-time cost, you might come to realize it's not really worth the amount of money you could've made by selling it for $5/mo, and that's a great illustration of just one reason wh…

You are cheap. You're still basing your decision on the cost of using the product instead of the value it provides you. This isn't targeting you specifically though, most comments in this thread are stereotypical developers too.

You have to recognize the incentive of developers working for a large company:

I can either 1) pay for it out of my own pocket, 2) expense it monthly which after wasting time in expense reports basically goes back to 1 where I pay for it myself, or 3) go through the software procurement process. I've done all 3, and none of these really yield a personal benefit. 1+2 are annoying, and 3 takes time away from your main job and it's hard to get the licensing right. And at scale I think game theory does well at modeling behavior for why developers wouldn't want to go through any of these options.

For a freelance developer I'll speculate that for a dev that bills hourly the benefit aren't great, but it's still value passed on to the customer so it might be worthwhile.

If I ran my own freelance business and charged a flat fee I would 100% buy this tool if I did a lot of CSS work.

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

#184

Post by bombcar »

tiffanyh wrote: post #181
aceazzameen wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't disagree with what you saying, but ... People seem to forget what the cost of a perpetual license use to be. Licenses would easily equate to 3-years (36-months) or more , of what a monthly subscription would cost. Case in point: $439, you can buy a perpetual license of Microsoft Office $7/mo, you can get the same functionality + hosting + storage as a monthly subscription It'd take over 5-years to breakeven.…

There has to be a reason all these companies love SaaS vs yearly upgrades and I think it’s because “subscriptions” get forgotten or ignored or “it’s not worth worrying about”.

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

#185

Post by ESTheComposer »

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…

$360 is only 3 dinners for 2 people?

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

#186

Post by efields »

This is very cool. The gradient/bkg generator alone is very cool. But I think you’re trying to sell a design tool to developers, even highly proficient CSS developers, who have their _ways_. This is not a $30/month tool to those folks. This is a neat app to generate little parts of a website. Does not look like a daily driver, unless you’re cranking out a lot of unique CSS monthly.

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

#187

Post by zapt02 »

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…

Agreed. Value-wise this is a $30 product with one year of free upgrades, not $30/month.

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

#188

Post by tiffanyh »

bombcar wrote: post #184
tiffanyh wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree with what you saying, but ... People seem to forget what the cost of a perpetual license use to be. Licenses would easily equate to 3-years (36-months) or more , of what a monthly subscription would cost. Case in point: $439, you can buy a perpetual license of Microsoft Office $7/mo, you can get the same functionality + hosting + storage as a monthly subscription It'd take over 5-years to breakeven.…

There has to be a reason all these companies love SaaS vs yearly upgrades and I think it’s because “subscriptions” get forgotten or ignored or “it’s not worth worrying about”.

Having predictable revenue is a huge reason.

As opposed to super lumpy revenue due to bursts of revenue coming in after a new version release.

There's also a lot of business risk because if you have a new version people don't like, they don't have to upgrade and now you don't get that burst of revenue your company needs to stay afloat.

EDIT: also, perpetual licenses create the wrong incentives. We've all complained about software bloat before. With a perpetual license, you only get paid on upgrades ... creating a situation where the software vendor jams in more (unneeded) functionality in order to justify creating a new version release.

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

#189

Post by ilrwbwrkhv »

wg0 wrote: post #22

This is jaw dropping amount of work TBH. Just curious how much time and effort that is. If it is an indie thing, it is too much work looking at that many tools within a tool.

The author has written a bunch of similar extensions in the past. I am sure a lot of that code was reused.

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

#190

Post by Hamuko »

demarq wrote: post #172
jchw wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nailed it. I happily pay a lot of money for nice things, but only if I get to own them. I am not cheap, I'm picky. I'm not picky by choice, I'm picky by experience. I already know I can't trust subscriptions. If you have to make your tool a one-time cost, you might come to realize it's not really worth the amount of money you could've made by selling it for $5/mo, and that's a great illustration of just one reason wh…

Are you saying that you don’t have subscriptions at all?

I don't think I have any software subscriptions. I used to have a Tweetbot subscription, which was fairly cheap and definitely useful, but I probably don't have to detail what happened to that.

Otherwise I think the only subscription I have left at the moment is Humble Choice. And that's kind of a weird one since you don't need to keep the subscription active to keep the rewards, and you can in fact to choose whether or not to pay month-to-month.

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