Codebender is closing down

Well, if you start with a movement predicated on sharing, and then say that "everything you keep public will be free", you're not exactly picking a good start.

I wish more startups would charge for their product, instead of offering a $#*!@!# free tier that then proceeds to kill them more often than not. Yeah, yeah, "growth hacking", blah blah.

It's not that users don't want to pay, it's that startups turn down money so they can roll the dice for hypergrowth and acquisition.

Re: Codebender is closing down

#8

Post by cyberferret » Tue, Oct 18, 2016, 5:05 AM UTC

Dang! Sorry to hear this. I had a CodeBender account a while back when I had time to play with Arduino devices. Haven't had the time lately, but from all I remember, it was a great online IDE for such devices.

I wish the team all the best. I didn't expect that the site would cost ~$25K/month to keep up. That is a huge cost to be borne out of their own pockets, or from the modest investment money they had.

Re: Codebender is closing down

#9

Post by karmajunkie » Tue, Oct 18, 2016, 5:21 AM UTC

sotojuan wrote: post #4

Is it true that makers don't "want" to pay for software or is it because they're so used to software being free?

Makers aren't interested in paying for software because they don't generally make money off what they make. The key to any business is proving value. For makers, they're already used to providing sweat equity, so to speak. The thought of a little more probably isn't troubling, but paying more money (over and above their investment in hardware and software they weren't able to get to free) is very possibly what pushes it from hobby to detrimental to their fiscal health.

I don't know codebenders, so I'm out on a limb here with respect to their business. But for any business in this market, you need to figure out a way to be some kind of Kickstarter, not just major their lives a bit easier. Enable something they couldn't do before you came along. Help them turn their hobby into a business, or at least make it a zero-sum game by making a tiny profit off what they're doing. Even that isn't a guarantee but it'll put you a little closer to the goal.

Re: Codebender is closing down

#10

Post by mankash666 » Tue, Oct 18, 2016, 7:02 AM UTC

That's a generous transition plan for current free users. Well done!