Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Zendesk raises their prices 60%-300%, users predictably revolt

support.zendesk.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 109 posts

Re: Zendesk raises their prices 60%-300%, users predictably revolt

#41

Post by patio11 »

mattmaroon wrote: post #36

I don't understand why they're charging more per user as you scale. I don't know that I've ever seen a service like this. More typical would be $12 per mo per agent from 1-3. $10 from 4-20, etc. What's crazy is their service is considerably more expensive than hosted Exchange servers (which give you volume discounts, not increases) though Exchange probably costs a lot more to run. We use Zendesk and like it, but if w…

I don't understand why they're charging more per user as you scale.

Price discrimination between business types. An enterprise is not a collection of 1,200 one-man companies.

Re: Zendesk raises their prices 60%-300%, users predictably revolt

#42

Post by patio11 »

ahoyhere wrote: post #39
spolsky wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easy: Grandfather every existing customer, permanently.

That's not really an answer. If you're raising prices because of a profit issue, then you are prepared to lose some customers (the least profitable ones) so you can better serve the ones that give you a profit. Which is why I asked for strategies that worked, not "Don't."

I'm thinking the marginal costs to providing this service, as well as the marginal costs for providing FogBugz (and many, many other SAAS apps asides), are so low as to be almost incalculable. Every customer is profitable almost by virtue of being there.

Also, in a company which is growing rapidly, the average price per month paid at any plan level is going to quickly converge on your currently published price per month. That is another factor which suggests using Joel's solution, if you're growing.

Re: Zendesk raises their prices 60%-300%, users predictably revolt

#43

Post by jhancock »

ahoyhere wrote: post #17

I think anyone who uses ZenDesk will know that they don't love their users, or treat their tool like a serious business. (More like a cashcow.) Their software is horrible. There are 6 different ways to view the single table of incoming messages, and it's nondeterministic which one you will come to at any given time. And the first time you accidentally send an internal message to a customer, instead of your team - sin…

I need to setup a helpdesk system next week. Any recommendations?

Our key requirement is to be able to reassign incoming tickets and have simple notification to the person it was reassigned.

Re: Zendesk raises their prices 60%-300%, users predictably revolt

#44

Post by nocman »

Is it just me, or do they have a terrible home page (as far as telling you what their products do)? I had never heard of them before this post, and from the name my first thought was that it was some kind of computer desktop sharing service. I think I figured out from the HN posts that it is helpdesk software. I think that's a pretty major failure on their part.

Re: Zendesk raises their prices 60%-300%, users predictably revolt

#45

Post by rfrey »

ahoyhere wrote: post #24

Anybody here successfully raised prices without a major blowback? I'd love to hear how you did it (as opposed to these clowns).

David Weekly from PBworks relates his pricing pivot experience: at 10:10 in the vid.

http://www.justin.tv/startuplessonslearned/b/262673321

Re: Zendesk raises their prices 60%-300%, users predictably revolt

#47

Post by koenbok »

tyrelb wrote: post #2

Alternatives: http://www.activecampaign.com/help-desk-software/ http://www.kayako.com/ http://webhelpdesk.com/ http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/default.jsp http://tenderapp.com/ http://www.cerberusweb.com/ http://www.thevisionworld.com/ http://www.autotask.com/software/service_desk.htm

Anyone tried out http://www.assistly.com yet?

Re: Zendesk raises their prices 60%-300%, users predictably revolt

#48

Post by mattmaroon »

patio11 wrote: post #41
mattmaroon wrote: post #36

I don't understand why they're charging more per user as you scale. I don't know that I've ever seen a service like this. More typical would be $12 per mo per agent from 1-3. $10 from 4-20, etc. What's crazy is their service is considerably more expensive than hosted Exchange servers (which give you volume discounts, not increases) though Exchange probably costs a lot more to run. We use Zendesk and like it, but if w…

I don't understand why they're charging more per user as you scale. Price discrimination between business types. An enterprise is not a collection of 1,200 one-man companies.

I don't know that there's much of a difference between a company with 3 support guys and one with 4. But regardless, like I mentioned, hosted exchange will service a fortune 500 company at a lower price per inbox than they will service my little group of 11.

Re: Zendesk raises their prices 60%-300%, users predictably revolt

#49

Post by lanstein »

tyrelb wrote: post #2

Alternatives: http://www.activecampaign.com/help-desk-software/ http://www.kayako.com/ http://webhelpdesk.com/ http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/default.jsp http://tenderapp.com/ http://www.cerberusweb.com/ http://www.thevisionworld.com/ http://www.autotask.com/software/service_desk.htm

Autotask only worked in IE as of a couple years ago. Avoid it like the plague.

Re: Zendesk raises their prices 60%-300%, users predictably revolt

#50

Post by javery »

ahoyhere wrote: post #24

Anybody here successfully raised prices without a major blowback? I'd love to hear how you did it (as opposed to these clowns).

At TekPub we raised our monthly subscription from $15 to $19 and we didn't get one complaint. We warned the users ahead of time and told them anyone currently paying $15 would keep paying $15 as long as they kept their subscription going.

It's really not that hard.

Post reply on HN