Ask HN: What software do you actually pay for? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What software do you actually pay for?

24 pointsburtonator45 comments

Hey HN.

I'm curious what apps / software you pay for.

This community is interesting and we all use a bunch of Open Source and free software but I'm curious to see what apps you actually pay for.

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The reason I ask is that we're in the monetization phase of my app and it's also Open Source:

https://getpolarized.io/

It's basically a PDF and document management repository. It's kind of like Mendeley/Zotero meets Kindle+Github.

I'm kicking around some ideas including just make it flat out free and just focusing on growth to charging for some premium features like cloud sync.

One of the things we're struggling with is many of our users are from the HN community and they aren't really open to using something like cloud sync as they don't trust cloud.

For what it's worth:

I pay for software when it has value to me, and your product does have value to me. I haven't used it much yet (see below), but I really like what it can offer.

I have paid for:

iOS: GoodReader, Working Copy, OmniFocus, Anki, and Scrivener (these are also among my more frequently used apps). I've paid for some games over the years but mostly board game ports to iPad (because carrying around boxes of games is a PITA). The rest of the apps on my iPhone (iPad isn't handy) are communication apps, media consumption apps (that I may pay a subscription for), or apps for a specific business (like a bank or airline). My iPad will be similar except it'll have the games.

macOS: I've paid for HeroLab, Scrivener, OmniFocus, YNAB4 (of the apps still on my laptop). I have also, in the past, paid for Parallels and some other things but they're not installed and I haven't missed them. I have also bought video games, but none presently installed. The rest of what I use is generally open source. I have Anki and would pay for it if the author sold it.

I would get more value from Polar Bookshelf if you had an iOS offering as that is where I do the bulk of my PDF reading (or Android, I do have a Kindle Fire I use for reading though less frequently). If it were available there, I'd happily pay for it. But I don't need cloud sync. I have sufficient cloud storage already and plenty of room to host the files I'd add to Polar (actually, most of what I'd add I actually have but haven't read in my Dropbox account already).

It's been more than a decade since I paid for any software, Mathlab for Linux. It was a requirement for a class I was taking - Ironically, I never did have to use it. Octave proved more than adequate. Before that... well... I think the only other software I ever paid for was a shareware game (Commander Keen) when I was a kid in the early 90's. Generally I'm always surprised when I hear a reference to commercial software thinking "That's still a thing?!"

Commercial software succeeds when the product sells itself as the best possible version. Looking at macOS, where you're forced to buy a legitimate copy to engage with all the features, you might think "why not just use a free OS" but that sells commercial software short of all the other things it offers other than just "this is software you've seen before".

I do believe it's closed-minded to think all alternatives to commercial software are exactly the same as the commercial version and therefore there's no reason to buy commercial. Paid software still has a reason to exist and many customers to bat.

You find paying for software to be unusual? How can that be?

Having not run DOS/Windows since 1995 I haven't needed to. I can't imagine dealing with an OS without the kind of enormous and comprehensive software repository of Debian or pretty much any distro.

Right, but there’s a massive global economy of trillions dollars of software being bought every year. The people that run this site invest in companies that sell software. I just can’t comprehend how you wonder if buying software “is still a thing.”

Are these really the best possible version of the software? You can be an engineer and get away with using a hacked-together clone of some popular software program, but is the money really going to set you back farther than a good copy will set you forward?

Desktop one off purchases: Clients for MySQL and SQLite (prettier and easier to use than free alternatives). Snagit for screenshots

Desktop subscription based: Devexpress Winforms and ASP.net component suite (best Windows component suite on the market - leaves free alternatives in the dust). Add in Express components for building office add-ins (could not build my core product without it)

Both of these combined cost me about €1,000 a year. Well worth it too as they make my software far superior to all the competition that use free components.

SaaS: Hotjar for website heatmaps and session cams (HUGELY VALUABLE!). Linkedin Premium for help contacting potential partners (HUGELY VALUABLE!). Feedbin, RSS reader. Mailchimp

[All of my own products are desktop apps that consumers pay $60-$150 for. Sales are up.]

>Devexpress Winforms and ASP.net component suite (best Windows component suite on the market - leaves free alternatives in the dust)

Question (for the Mac people here): what's the Mac equivalent of that?

MacOS (kinda, it’s free, but the hardware isn’t...)

IntelliJ IDEA

Sublime Text 3

Microsoft Office

JProfiler

VMWare Workstation

Postbox Email

Little Snitch

1Password

Dropbox

I’m happy to pay for good software and support. Especially for things I rely on like IntelliJ. Not only has it been better than Eclipse for years but it keeps getting better because there’s a whole company full of people whose business it is to make it better.

If there’s a bug I can report it and reasonably expect a fix. With pure OSS software you often just get some fuck head telling you “PRs welcome”. I get it. I have my own open source projects in addition to my day job. Sometimes I just want to be able to expect support for the things I need and not try to learn every codebase of every piece of software I use so I can fix a bug.

One of the first pieces of software I paid for was 4DOS[0] - such a joy to use and so empowering. No other command-line experience has ever come close (preps lightsaber..;-) Of course, this was a long time ago.

There was also Photodex's ProShow Gold[1] - imho, the photoshop of photo2video software. Powerful yet so easy to use (after a day of testing). I bought it because I found that this type of creative work helps me relax, etc... Lots of similar software (I about tried them all over the years) but nothing came close. Worth every penny. Not WINE-friendly (I found after transitioning):-(

Company issued but honorable mention: Azure RP[2] for prototyping, wireframing and planning. This was years ago but I never worked with a piece of software that was able to communicate so much, so quickly to everyone involved in a project. Very powerful at the time. Many competitors in this space today. fyi: Have not touch it in many years - it may be completely different now...

These three really stand out, though I have purchased some others over the years. All three are part of the creative process and produce something at the end (script, video, a prototype) - all of which I find engages me.

In the end (personally) it's about how much software will enrich you. There's also a limit on how much I'm willing to spend (usually under $100).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4DOS

[1] https://www.photodex.com/proshow/gold

[2] https://www.axure.com/

I just had the realization that I can’t remember ever paying for a console application (at least not since the 1980s and I can’t remember any in particular) and I can’t think of any that are currently for sale. Every command line tool I use, and I use a lot of them, is free software.

Maybe I’m just drawing a blank. I’d be curious to know if anyone pays for command line tools.

Indirectly sure, I’ve certainly racked up costs from using the AWS cli

As far as "work" is concerned, there's only really two 'ongoing' software costs for me:

- IDE (IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate) [Yearly Subscription] - HyperVisor (Parallels, VMWare Fusion+Vagrant VMWare plugin) [Yearly Subscription; Per-Version purchase respectively]

However I still use a couple of apps that I paid for once and continue to use:

- Time tracking/Invoicing (Billings Pro, soon to be replaced as they don't support their self-host server any more) - Diff (Kaleidoscope) - Diagrams/Wireframes (OmniGraffle - haven't actually upgraded to a version that supports Mojave yet though) - 'Office' suite (Pages/Numbers)

Aside from a few things that were already mentioned here, I just started paying for sr.ht from sircmpwn. I’m a bit weary to completely replace my Github account since it’s in alpha but otherwise it’s been a great service.

I pay for software pretty often. Most of of it is $10-15 max unless it's professional tools. That's not a lot of money for me.

Most recently, I paid for the Mac version of Soulver (https://www.acqualia.com/soulver/) because I got the iOS version for free and I really liked it. I regularly purchase apps on my phone if they solve my problems and are high quality.

I don't need to pay. If FOSS doesn't exist for what I need, I may try to write it by myself.

What was the latest product that you wrote for yourself?

Fman (2 pane file manager by solo dev)

Email provider

Standard Notes

Sublime Text 3

Password Manager

Games

kanbanflow

Balsamiq

movies / TV / Audio subscription and purchases (sort of counts these days)

used to pay for GitHub

used to pay for Windows (linux now)

I donate to a bunch of foss projects too, but those don't really count since its not a 'purchase'

Fman and Standard Notes are really great products btw, solo devs too.

edit - formatting

I paid for 1password last year and still use it. Very convenient.

Paid for sublime text around 3-4 years ago, used it for 1-2 solid years, now a days am on VIM + TMUX but don't regret having paid.

Paid for PyCharm, used less than 1 month, regretted paying for.

And that's about it.

I have used 1password for years, until they started pushing their cloud subscription for android app. Switched to KeePass, don't need wine for linux anymore, and regret not doing this earlier.

Speaking of paying for software, does anyone have an email / calendar client they would recommend for Ubuntu besides Thunderbird, Evolution, or 'Calendar' ?

Last thing I purchased for myself was probably the RubyMine by Jet Brains.

At work we use loads of SaaSy things: Azure, Pingdom, BrowserStack, Segment, Office 365, AWS, Zendesk, JIRA, etc. etc.

Thought I'd comment about the services I've been using recently...

- I pay for an account at sr.ht

- I host my site and other things via prgmr

TablePlus. Amazing Postgres gui for those of us humble beings who haven’t mastered the art of psql yet.

AWS, Digital Ocean

Sublime Text (But I changed to use Visual Code last year)

MacOS

IntelliJ

Oxford Dictionary (English to Chinese, mobile app)

Daijirin (Japanese dictionary, mobile app)

I pay for pushbullet, so I can text from my computer and get notifications mirrored to my laptop.

I use whatsapp web for that. Just created a group with only myself (add 2 people and remove one after) and pinned it on whatsapp.

Now I can easily send files, notifications, etc from phone to laptop and vice versa. Plus it has an advantage that I get google drive backup of everything done everyday!

I prefer to use SMS. I don't want to use whatsapp, because I don't fully trust it, and I think it will kill my battery life.

The backup feature does sound nice. I back my messages up to google drive, though.

Also.. here are the apps that I actually pay for myself ;)

IntelliJ... love it. Can't live without it.

Slack... of course.

Github.

Lots of web apps like Typeform.

- Office - DaisyDisk - IntelliJ - iA Writer and VMWare Fusion

Windows

Office

JetBrains IDEs

AWS and Azure (most of the price covers hardware, but some of it certainly goes to the software on top)

G Suite

Slack

Atlassian products

Actual Multiple Monitors

Sync.com

IntelliJ

Github - I used to pay, but not anymore. Since, private repos are free now.

Slack.

Sketch, Adobe Creative Suite, VPN.

Intellij Spotify Google One

GitPitch for presentations

Joyent for cloud VMs

None. :P

Sketch, iStats, Paste

On the top of my head I personally pay for:

- Jetbrains All Pack

- LittleSnitch

- Git Tower

- iStats

- VMWare Fusion

- Beyond Compare

- Office 365

I think one trend I'm going to notice is that a LOT of these apps are going to be older apps. I think people have trouble paying for NEW apps as they might go away...

Thanks.. Git Tower and iStats both look interesting. Have you tried Git Kraken?

I haven't but that is because I am happy with Tower.

Backblaze

Omnifocus

Keyboard Maestro

Quiver

Quickbooks

- Sublime Text

- Sublime Merge

- Alfred

- Daisy Disk

- Github

- Office

- AWS

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