We have now added a Social License to our Purchase page (http://heliumhq.com/purchase). It gives everyone who tweets about Helium a free license!
Show HN: Helium - Simple web automation
61–70 of 71 posts
Re: Show HN: Helium - Simple web automation
#62I hope you succeed with your project, but sorry, I feel that your pricing is batshit insane, pardon my French. $200 per year subscription for 1 machine for the basic license with support only for the installation, basically. And probably bugfixes, I'm guessing. If for whatever reason I'd like to create a 3-4-5 VM test farm I'd have to pay $600-$800-$1000 per year. And, again, subscription. If I don't pay after one ye…
Thank you for the honest feedback and the good wishes. Here's why we think our subscription model makes sense: In our evaluation (heliumhq.com/AutomatingGmailWithHelium.pdf), developing a script with Helium took 75% less effort (man-days) and 66% less code than a script written in pure Selenium. The average developer salary in the US in 2010 was $90k a year( http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/software-develope…
I'm not a entrepreneur, but from everything I've seen in products I bought or wanted to buy, the personal edition/regular edition, the price was almost always kept under $100. It makes purchases far more likely.
Make the license "floating" as you said in another post and reduce the cost to $99. Then make a professional edition (extra features) and an enterprise/volume discount edition (no necessarily extra features but can buy in bulk for reduced overall cost).
Similar to what people like Atlassian or Jetbrains are doing, basically ;)
(also kudos for the starter license addition, the "social" license - nice touch)
Re: Show HN: Helium - Simple web automation
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Using CasperJS, you get more or less the same. http://docs.casperjs.org/en/latest/modules/casper.html#click...
Sorry, but in the link you give (clickLabel), I still have to provide the HTML element type (" " or " "). How does CasperJS for instance let me type some text into a text field with a label to its left?
That is an optional parameter. You also have an easy way to fill a form: http://docs.casperjs.org/en/latest/modules/casper.html#fill
Re: Show HN: Helium - Simple web automation
#64First of all let me say that I have no problem with paying for software, even closed source or otherwise. I already pay a chunk of personal money for JetBrains tools and stuff from RedGate to let me get on and do my job more efficiently, and my company does the same. However your license condition: "If you want to run Helium on another machine then you must first remove it from the computer you were using it on previ…
I see. I'm very sorry to hear that you are so frustrated with the licensing scheme. We should also offer "floating" licenses which are not tied to a particular machine. Would that be OK for your needs?
If you emulated the JetBrains style of license, where the license is purchased for a developer such that it can be installed wherever he/she is working then I'd be interested.
For example, today I'm running three Linux VM's on my PC, each one has a launched instance of PyCharm because I'm multi-tasking over three different projects and switching between them as and when I need to. If I couldn't do that with PyCharm then I'd be buying a different tool.
ps: don't apologise, I suspect this is probably your first foray into licensing, I hope the feedback is useful.
Re: Show HN: Helium - Simple web automation
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
First off, excellent idea. It seems simple and straightforward to automate web site interaction, especially for those lacking APIs (e.g. my stoneage bank, to check for telegraphic transfer payments). But I'm torn. On the one hand, I support developers getting paid for creating tools/libraries (instead of working on in-house software; or consumer/business startups). I think it's better for the world. It's also how I'v…
Interesting post full of ideas - many thanks. I agree that it would be great for us to be able to get the best of both worlds - paying business customers and (probably) non-paying users that supply the google-juice, as you so aptly put it. Maybe we can offer a "Social license" that allows people to use Helium for free if they tweet about it.
Tweet-for-license is a logical idea, but it feels too paid-for-compliment - even though people must be sincere, since they want the license... like Dropbox's referral program.
However, maybe google juice isn't that important for your market... if you can reach them in some more specific way, you don't need lots of freebie-loving hackers. Also, there's a downside to lots of free users: by whetting the appetite of people who will never pay, you create a vacuum for a clone to fill.
PS: rmrfrmrf's (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6915104) comment on Heroku's plugins sounds close to "service components" I mentioned above. Building on his idea, http://pingdom.com offers free user alerts, and https://travis-ci.org/ offers continuous integration testing via github hook - both have a free tier.
Re: Show HN: Helium - Simple web automation
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry, but in the link you give (clickLabel), I still have to provide the HTML element type (" " or " "). How does CasperJS for instance let me type some text into a text field with a label to its left?
That is an optional parameter. You also have an easy way to fill a form: http://docs.casperjs.org/en/latest/modules/casper.html#fill
OK. But to fill in the form I have to give HTML names which may not (and most likely won't) have anything to do with what the user experiences. This is very much unlike Helium's approach.
Re: Show HN: Helium - Simple web automation
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting post full of ideas - many thanks. I agree that it would be great for us to be able to get the best of both worlds - paying business customers and (probably) non-paying users that supply the google-juice, as you so aptly put it. Maybe we can offer a "Social license" that allows people to use Helium for free if they tweet about it.
Tweet-for-license is a logical idea, but it feels too paid-for-compliment - even though people must be sincere, since they want the license... like Dropbox's referral program. However, maybe google juice isn't that important for your market... if you can reach them in some more specific way, you don't need lots of freebie-loving hackers. Also, there's a downside to lots of free users: by whetting the appetite of peop…
Tweet-for-license is working well so far, we'll see how it goes. And the required tweet "Trying #helium web automation (heliumhq.com)" is imho really not that much of a compliment. But obviously, we want something in return for giving away free(!) licenses.
I can see your point of creating a "vacuum". Since we are giving away licenses for free now, the challenge will be to not let such a vacuum happen, yet create enough demand for businesses to pay for licenses.
I really don't see us offering a hosted SaaS platform at the moment. I can see the advantages for the subscription model, but we're busy implementing Helium for languages other than Python, so don't have time to set up a platform. It's just not our core competency.
Re: Show HN: Helium - Simple web automation
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see. I'm very sorry to hear that you are so frustrated with the licensing scheme. We should also offer "floating" licenses which are not tied to a particular machine. Would that be OK for your needs?
If you emulated the JetBrains style of license, where the license is purchased for a developer such that it can be installed wherever he/she is working then I'd be interested. For example, today I'm running three Linux VM's on my PC, each one has a launched instance of PyCharm because I'm multi-tasking over three different projects and switching between them as and when I need to. If I couldn't do that with PyCharm t…
I can see the attraction of JetBrains' style of license. We'll look into this.
It's not our first foray into licensing and we actually have offered a "floating" licensing scheme which seems to be what JetBrains offer before. We just have not implemented (=coded) such a scheme yet for Helium.
Re: Show HN: Helium - Simple web automation
#69We have now added a Social License to our Purchase page ( http://heliumhq.com/purchase ). It gives everyone who tweets about Helium a free license!
That's an excellent idea :)
Re: Show HN: Helium - Simple web automation
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tweet-for-license is a logical idea, but it feels too paid-for-compliment - even though people must be sincere, since they want the license... like Dropbox's referral program. However, maybe google juice isn't that important for your market... if you can reach them in some more specific way, you don't need lots of freebie-loving hackers. Also, there's a downside to lots of free users: by whetting the appetite of peop…
Tweet-for-license is working well so far, we'll see how it goes. And the required tweet "Trying #helium web automation (heliumhq.com)" is imho really not that much of a compliment. But obviously, we want something in return for giving away free(!) licenses. I can see your point of creating a "vacuum". Since we are giving away licenses for free now, the challenge will be to not let such a vacuum happen, yet create eno…
Cool, you've tried that twitter idea already. Looks good. Iterating so quickly bodes well for your success.