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Comment by candiddevmike | Hacker News Reader

$7 a month, that's pretty steep. How'd you come to that number for a less featureful version of Google Workspace?

The right calendar, notes and task manager is worth way more than $7 per month to many people.

For comparisons to other productivity software systems, it's actually comparable to Evernote at $7.99 USD/month, with similar functionality (except the drag-and-drop from tasks to a schedule).

In contrast, Todoist is around $4 USD/month, which matches Notion's Personal Pro plan.

> it's actually comparable to Evernote at $7.99 USD/month

No, it's not remotely comparable to a product that's had millions of customers for years and years, after basically creating this industry. Most Evernote customers pay $70/year. And for that matter, Evernote regularly has sales to get new users at $42 for the first year.

Ah, the tired old arguing over if something is comparable or not. People. If you define something as binary (on or off), you have to set a threshold. Don't expect others to share your definition. But feel free to bicker away.

There's nothing to argue about in this case. Trust is incredibly important when you're asking people to give you their personal data. Evernote has an established track record, and this is a Show HN. Evernote is objectively better in that critical area.

> There's nothing to argue about in this case.

You realize that after this sentence, you proceed to argue your case...

Despite my poking fun at your phrasing, the remainder of your comment does make a decent argument.

Industry insiders and experts can tell you the history of who did what and when. But "comparable" is in the eye of the beholder (i.e. the potential customer). Does the customer anchor on Evernote? Maybe. Maybe not.

I tend to think "almost certainly not." I have not once thought of Evernote as an all-inclusive productivity, calendaring, and organizing tool. But that's just me.

It remains comparable in absolute terms ($7 versus $7.99). Users can therefore be conditioned to think it's not that expensive. Despite its respected legacy and heavy marketing over the years, it's not exceptional enough at its current state (after its switch to Electron) to say that no other productivity app can charge around that price.

If the app had mobile apps and better privacy assurances that your calendar information and tasks won't be used in advertising, the pricing would not be outrageous at all.

We had to start somewhere, so just picked a number we're comfortable with. Getting pricing right will take some time.

I just signed up for a trial. If it can replace my trusty notepad and paper, I can definitely justify $7 a month.

Thanks! Let us know if you have any feedback during your trial

You're just starting out, your costs can't possibly be that high. Maybe in two years you could charge $7 a month, but you're going to lose business doing it now. You also have no levers to turn to increase the price really, as anything close to $10 is nuts.

gotta love random driveby pricing opinions from people who have never used the product lol

> who have never used the product lol

this is non-obvious

obsidian charges $10/mo just for syncing! I hope you've yelled at them too.

Obsidian is free and you can sync using whatever method you'd like. The $10 is if you want them to sync your vaults for you, all while being end-to-end encrypted. I've paid for sync since beta (I'm locked in at a lower price) and I partly do it just to support the devs making such a good product.

so why don't consider $7 as a support for Emery guys doing great all-in-one day planning tool?

Don’t lower from $7. If anything, raise it much higher.

This is as someone who also worked on a productivity app and priced it at $5/mo.

It’s a mistake you only make once. The economics will never work.

It's always easier to lower prices than to raise them.

This is the common "wisdom", which tends to make me skeptical.

But I do agree in the following sense. Once customers form opinions of a product and its pricing, those opinions tend to change relatively slowly. So managing expectations around pricing at launch is important.

There are many ways to tweak pricing expectations. Off the top of my head, some include: (a) "pre launch" pricing (used by Emery); (b) offering a family of products or modules or whatever, each of which is priced separately, implying that major additions will be an additional cost; (c) varying support levels; (d) varying usage levels; (e) extras such as security & encryption that enterprises will pay for; ...

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