Enjoy while it lasts. People are pissed about the approach they took to gain marketshare before changing the terms. Soon enough there will be a viable free alternative.
Docker 2.0 went from $11M to $135M in 2 years
121–130 of 334 posts
Re: Docker 2.0 went from $11M to $135M in 2 years
#122> 254% YoY from ~$11M ARR in late 2020 to ~$135M at the end of 2022 just by flipping Docker Hub and Docker Desktop to paid for businesses I have never met a single person who pays, or works for a company that pays, for Docker Desktop. Why would you? Paying for Docker Hub seems like something that people do because they have to short-term, but there’s no genuine selling point to it long-term and I suspect people will…
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Re: Docker 2.0 went from $11M to $135M in 2 years
#123Great to hear that. While I’m not a big fan of Docker desktop I really wish they restart docker swarm and kill thad abomination named Kubernetes. Docker compose and swarm are really cool technologies - easy to start with and more than enough for small and medium companies. I really hope they would bring it back and we start seeing managed swarm from cloud providers.
HashiCorp Nomad is a nice alternative is something you can look into if you're looking for a lightweight Kubernetes replacement. Also, it doesn't support everything Kubernetes does, it should be enough for most use cases.
Thanks, been thinking about it. It looks really nice, but it’s really hard to beat how easily you can go from compose in local development to swarm on prod in small team.
Re: Docker 2.0 went from $11M to $135M in 2 years
#124> ... capturing the credit card of the end-user developer for low-priced seats as a wedge into seat expansion in the org.
What a weird and gross series of words and concepts, all strung together like that.
Re: Docker 2.0 went from $11M to $135M in 2 years
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a product that has zero reduction in functionality if your license or trial runs out, just constantly nags you when you do useful things with it. Eventually, the workers at the company insist on the company buying it. Sometimes takes 6 months hah.
This works incredibly well on me. I often use free or open source versions of tools and just ignore the nagging prompts about licenses. Then over time, if I like it enough that I eventually end up getting a license for it. I think the ability for me to see the value in something first before committing helps a lot. The free version sort of builds a reservoir of good will that eventually pushes me over to just paying…
Agreed. The friction i have towards buying things i like is very low. As an Apple user i mistakenly convince myself that paying helps get better products[1], and so i don't mind buying products i like. However i have a ton of friction buying products when i don't know that they'll solve my problem. I judge them harshly on that first-buy.
[1]: A semi humorous jab at Apple.
Re: Docker 2.0 went from $11M to $135M in 2 years
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
Competitive Docker Desktop replacements (podman) are just starting to see adoption IMO. Let's see the number next year. Lots of companies had no other choice but to pay.
Maybe i'm just in a bubble but none of those Docker Desktop replacements work well on a locked down corporate laptop. Sure you can get it to work somehow, manually configuring proxies, dns and stuff. Docker Desktop somehow just works. Thats why we pay for it.
That is changing fast and in a year or two Podman and Rancher (and a few others) will be just as good. A number of large companies are also building their own in-house replacements.
I was personally looking for an alternative even before the license change, because the performance of Docker Desktop on my Macbook Pro is terrible in a number of different ways.
Re: Docker 2.0 went from $11M to $135M in 2 years
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a product that has zero reduction in functionality if your license or trial runs out, just constantly nags you when you do useful things with it. Eventually, the workers at the company insist on the company buying it. Sometimes takes 6 months hah.
This works incredibly well on me. I often use free or open source versions of tools and just ignore the nagging prompts about licenses. Then over time, if I like it enough that I eventually end up getting a license for it. I think the ability for me to see the value in something first before committing helps a lot. The free version sort of builds a reservoir of good will that eventually pushes me over to just paying…
I'm curious if there are any podcasts/blogs/books which give "pricing ideas/strategies" based on a "risky" premise like this: keep it very simple and don't worry about theft, because enterprise customers won't steal, and the math works out.
Here's an excerpt of their pricing terms:
Do I need a paid subscription to use the images on Docker Hub for commercial use? Images on Docker Hub can be used for commercial use, as long as Docker Desktop is properly licensed. Paid subscriptions are needed for commercial use of Docker Desktop at organizations with more than $10 million annual revenue OR more than 250 employees.
Re: Docker 2.0 went from $11M to $135M in 2 years
#128I remember everyone had written Docker off for dead when they announced their updated pricing plans, but they really made perfect sense, and I am happy to see the company recover. A large chunk of the tech world today relies on their products, but they were making next to nothing for it. It is definitely worth it for large companies to throw a few dollars their way considering the massive amount of value they are get…
Great move by them to introduce a license requirement for 250+ seats but not waste resources enforcing it (as far as I can tell). Those who will pay, will pay. Those who won’t, will switch tools no matter how painful. They stayed relevant by keeping all their users, even those technically breaking the license, but also collected some cash.
many indies went broke with market changes, using this logic..
ps- I like this! I want the world to be like that.. but, reality check.. don't let suits find out
Re: Docker 2.0 went from $11M to $135M in 2 years
#129I remember everyone had written Docker off for dead when they announced their updated pricing plans, but they really made perfect sense, and I am happy to see the company recover. A large chunk of the tech world today relies on their products, but they were making next to nothing for it. It is definitely worth it for large companies to throw a few dollars their way considering the massive amount of value they are get…
> A large chunk of the tech world today relies on their products, but they were making next to nothing for it.
Yes, but only because they ran a massive marketing campaign, and then achieved market penetration as a result of years of developer cargo-culting.
Containers have been around years before Docker, docker added a ton of bloat and a repository. So what? None of the predecessors (Jails, OpenVZ, etc.) needed tens of millions of dollars. Docker just capitalized on something that was open source and shamelessly monetized it. Great for them but not really worthy of admiration or anything to be remotely impressed by.
Re: Docker 2.0 went from $11M to $135M in 2 years
#130I remember everyone had written Docker off for dead when they announced their updated pricing plans, but they really made perfect sense, and I am happy to see the company recover. A large chunk of the tech world today relies on their products, but they were making next to nothing for it. It is definitely worth it for large companies to throw a few dollars their way considering the massive amount of value they are get…
I suspect the initial negative take on the license change was correct, and this is the dying gasp of the company.
It's just taking longer than expected to replace Docker Desktop. But I am seeing a lot of progress on Podman and Rancher and a few others, and some of the larger tech companies are also building in-house replacements. A lot of the people who had to scramble to find a replacement are not happy about it.
In a year or two I think some of the companies that paid for licenses to avoid migrating are going to rethink their license costs, because the free alternatives will be just as good as Docker Desktop. Then we will see whether this revenue increase was sustainable or simply the transient result of holding customers hostage when they had no alternatives but to pay.