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How JetBrains Lost Years of Customer Loyalty in Just a Few Hours

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Re: How JetBrains Lost Years of Customer Loyalty in Just a Few Hours

#141
post #109

This isn't even Software-as-a-Service. Most companies that offer SaaS are HOSTING the software and thus incurring ongoing monthly costs. The Service part is that the purchaser doesn't have to install the software on their own machines, pay for nor update servers, etc. Selling rights to use [but not own] software on a monthly basis should be called RtpS - Rent-to-pwned-Software (cause you're pwned, you'll never own it…

Some SaaS "hostings" are paper-thin, like Adobe or Steam. They are glorified FTP sites.

Re: How JetBrains Lost Years of Customer Loyalty in Just a Few Hours

#142
post #126

What I don't get is why a developer would ever use proprietary software in the first place. I code—it's what I do. I want to tools to be excellent, certainly, and I don't want to have to spend a lot of time fixing them where they aren't, but I want to be able to improve them for my use cases. Who else in the world is as capable at knowing what I need as…me? If you use proprietary software, you're at the mercy of the…

IntelliJ and PyCharm both have open source cores, and are leaps and bounds ahead of every other IDE out there. (I use eclipse a lot for work, and there is a reason I use IntelliJ at home).

Re: How JetBrains Lost Years of Customer Loyalty in Just a Few Hours

#143
As someone who jumps between PHP, JavaScript, Python, and a tiny bit of Ruby, I have been using IntelliJ so that I don't have to buy and upgrade multiple IDEs each year. I really miss the simplified project management of the specialized IDEs. I would gladly pay $149/year for their "All Products" package (maybe even the $199).

Unfortunately, there are a few dealbreakers with their proposed model that will have me re-evaluating my development environment:

1) Losing the grandfathered pricing if my subscription lapses. I can swallow paying $149/year for the All Products and would do so, but I don't want to feel like a hostage where I'm stuck paying more if I take a month off of using the IDE.

2) $149/year is pretty reasonable, $199/year a little tougher to swallow, $249/year is a no-go.

3) As mentioned, I made a $200 investment in an IntelliJ license with the expectation that I would upgrade each year at $100. Now I'm forced to convert my existing perpetual license into a subscription where I'm held hostage to keep the lower price or I lose access to my product if I cancel the subscription after converting the license.

4) Losing access to the software if my subscription lapses. If the prices were more reasonable (like those of the grandfathered prices, but permanent without the hostage situation) then I could deal with the fact that I need to pay to play. But I feel like we're paying a premium price (albeit for good products). I like the idea others have floated of getting a perpetual license after having paid for a full year subscription.

Re: How JetBrains Lost Years of Customer Loyalty in Just a Few Hours

#144
post #17

It's my personal opinion that one only gets complaining rights if one doesn't use Gmail, one doesn't subscribe to NetFlix, one doesn't use Spotify, ad nauseum. JetBrains is making a business decision. That's what businesses do. Their current Community Edition is open-source. Anyone is free to pick up where they left off. That is an enormous contribution they've already made to the community. You make your consumer de…

Let me actually clarify what you are saying for you, as I see this sentiment quite often and it drives me nuts.

You are saying that as a paying customer, one is not allowed to question any product or service offering they pay for (or even will potentially pay for as a potential customer). One is not allowed to suggest improvements. One is not allowed to state that if the company would modify the offering in some way, then they would again become a paying customer. One's only choices are to pay for the product/service as is or walk away and keep quiet.

One is also not allowed to mention to friends/acquaintances/colleagues that they are dissatisfied with the overall value of a product or service, or indicate that they do not believe the overall value to be worth it. As before, one's only choices here are to give good recommendations of the product/service to others or to not say anything at all.

"Take what we offer or walk away quietly and never speak of this again, those are your only choices."

This is essentially what you are saying. Are you sure that is what you want to be saying?

Re: How JetBrains Lost Years of Customer Loyalty in Just a Few Hours

#145
We use PyCharm and love it. Could we do without it? Yes, of course. The tool makes a number of things more convenient but it isn't indispensable. That said, I'd hate to see it go.

One thing that has always bothered me about JetBrains is the "personality" of their support. It is isn't good. We haven't needed a lot of it, maybe 2 or 3 incidents since PyCharm came out (we adopted right away). Yet, there's a bothersome lag in support (I am not talking about international time zones) as well as a lack of quality. It's almost --but not quite-- condescending in feel.

I do understand there might be language and cultural differences at play here. I also have experience with German companies (not just software). Their approach to customer service can be very dry and very different from what you might experience in the US. I am guessing the Czech Republic might be similar.

I know these are generalizations that could be way off base. In the case of JetBrains, if the product was not good we would have stopped using them purely based on the substandard support.

As far as paying monthly. No. Thanks. I want my software to work and work reliably. If I chose not to upgrade for a year or two, these tools need to work. A monthly plan with 30 day call-the-mothership is a non-starter for me. I will not, ever, buy into something like that for my business. I want less overhead, not more. And I don't want a situation where if things are tight for a few months we lose half of our tools. Buying into something like that would be a really dumb decision on the part of a business owner or manager.

I look at something like MS Office. We purchased licenses back in 2007. We have not needed any of the new features. And so, our 15 or so licenses work just fine for what we need to do and we do not need to spend another dime to use the software. From a business perspective that is the right way to use tools and the right way to make purchases. You do not want to bleed money on a regular basis for software updates you don't need or updates that don't make enough of a material impact to justify their cost.

Anyhow, I hope JetBrains reconsiders. We have been looking at some of their other products but will not even consider them if they are converted to monthly subscription products. If they insist on taking this approach I suspect products like SublimeText will see a boost in adoption. Yes, not the same thing, but not the end of the world and it is a really, really good product with a very friendly license.

Re: How JetBrains Lost Years of Customer Loyalty in Just a Few Hours

#146
post #66

What bugs me about this is when I asked them about the change on Twitter and they kept trying to blow smoke up my butt about how it's better for everyone. Their first response was that it's cheaper than before. Except it's not. Did they think I wouldn't actually go look at the prices? Then they said it's better because you can jump in and out at will. Only need Product X for a month? Only pay for a month. Which is fi…

Contractors that work with different clients using different languages? You've never heard of someone that works with different languages at different times? Huh.

Why not just use IDEA ultimate and install different plugins per language?

Re: How JetBrains Lost Years of Customer Loyalty in Just a Few Hours

#148
post #100

To be fair , it worked quite well for Adobe products ( most of them are now using a monthly subscription scheme ) despite all the dissatisfaction voiced by some customers at first. It is both good for Adobe and good for the competition. In fact allowed some challengers to be profitable when everybody pirated Photoshop before as 95% of people using it only took advantage of 1% of Photoshop features. It will be a good…

Adobe photoshop has pretty much a monopoly. IDEs do not.

Re: How JetBrains Lost Years of Customer Loyalty in Just a Few Hours

#149

You do realize that they haven't really changed their pricing model, right? They just changed how it's presented. It's always been a subscription if you want new features in an IDE (which most people do). I pay like $100/year for PHPstorm upgrades, and it's well worth the cost given the benefits that one receives from using the software (mostly in terms of productivity). Yes, renting software is a skeezy model. Yes,…

Sorry, but they have changed their pricing model; the previous model provided a perpetual license with a year of updates, and the new model is simply rental, which access terminating once you stop paying. I don't rent my tools.

So don't. There are plenty of other tools out there that you can use. Did you previously pay the yearly fee to continue getting upgrades?

Re: How JetBrains Lost Years of Customer Loyalty in Just a Few Hours

#150
post #55

You do realize that they haven't really changed their pricing model, right? They just changed how it's presented. It's always been a subscription if you want new features in an IDE (which most people do). I pay like $100/year for PHPstorm upgrades, and it's well worth the cost given the benefits that one receives from using the software (mostly in terms of productivity). Yes, renting software is a skeezy model. Yes,…

Keeping prices the same while providing less for the money is still a change in the pricing model. Before, the choice after a year was to pay for an upgrade or keep using the old version. Now the choice after a year is to pay for a renewal or find a new tool entirely.

Did you previously pay the yearly fee to continue to get upgrades?
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