> I'm just surprised that people really want to shave less than $100 off of the tools they provide their team.
The problem is businesses don't just buy 1 tool for their team, they probably buy dozens, and if each one costs and additional $90 per team of ten that adds up quickly. Save money where you can especially when the results are the same.
A perhaps more salient example is one we faced last year: do we switch from Eclipse to IntelliJ? Nearly all of the Java developers we asked preferred IntelliJ. That's ok, no problem ... but we're facing switching 300 people from a free IDE to one that costs several hundred dollars, for internal appdev (not a product company, so all of the above hits the SG&A opex spend ... which the street always wants to be minimal). So, 300x$400, the 150X$400 MSDN subscriptions we have for the MS guys, plus ~1500 MS servers, plus about 300 RHEL servers, plus .... The point is, it all add up, and as Patrick (patio11) has noted several times, large companies much prefer bulk, one time POs to subscriptions. Being able to forecast and accrue for both Capex & Opex is extremely important in many large, thin margin companies, especially ones that are not IT-centric.
Your servers are the lion's share of your opex, so buy the licenses. That said, if Eclipse is working for you, I'm surprised the CE edition of Intellij isn't fine, too.
Of course, if the results are the same, you should decide on price.
But software isn't a commodity product. Each one has strengths and weaknesses. I'm just surprised at the amount of price sensitivity considering a difference of 30 seconds a day between one tool and the other more than makes up for the price difference.
Realistically this tool will be very rough around the edges because its new. All new apps are never polished, and this might not even still be around in 6-12 months. There will be feature requests, bugs to work around, other deficiencies (and some efficiencies as well). $9 per user is a lot to ask for something that is unproven when there are competitors that have a track record for less. Im just being honest this are all things that go in when I consider buying software for my team. And reiterating that this would be only one of many tools I have to buy to keep the wheel on the bus.
This is exactly how I feel. From the marketing, it seems to be exactly what my team needs. But I've got a 50 person team and we're all currently limping along using trello. $450/month is a big spend for something unproven. We're currently leaning heavily towards JIRA, but I haven't pulled the trigger yet.
The problem is businesses don't just buy 1 tool for their team, they probably buy dozens, and if each one costs and additional $90 per team of ten that adds up quickly. Save money where you can especially when the results are the same.