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Comment by netr0ute | Hacker News Reader

$119 is only affordable if you're got a high-income job, which billions of people on planet Earth don't.

$119 perpetual is an insanely good price for three absolutely fantastic applications. What are you smoking? What's a fair price to you? $10?

On one side you've got people complaining about these anti-consumer software subscriptions from the likes of adobe. Then on the other side you've got people like yourself that are for some reason complaining that there's still a company offering fantastic software on par with Illustrator for a fantastic perpetual price.

Affinity Designer is £35 right now. That's insane.

The mind boggles.

You haven't been to poorer countries where the equivalent of $10 is a lot, so good luck getting a market for $119 software there.

The same price gets you Creative Cloud for 2 months. What exactly is the point you think you're making? Because people earn different amounts in different countries is not a revelation to anybody here, nor to Serif.

The poorer countries where the equivalent of $10 is a lot are probably not part of the market anyway, considering that having a computer is a prerequisite to benefitting from this software. Anyone who can save enough for a computer can probably save $119, even if that's not cheap by any means.

$119 for getting 'professional software' which potentially can add $119/month to the household income.

These are not selfie correction software.

I've been to Cambodia and Mozambique. I'm not sure what the point is you're trying to make.

In those circumstances, you're not even going to be able to afford the hardware to run it. There's no point to be made along this line.

Cynically: why would one want a market there then?

If one could sell software there in such a way that only people in that market could buy it at that price, the answer is obvious... software has effectively zero marginal cost per copy.

So if you could practically limit your market at a specified price in such a way that that offer doesn't spread to other markets, then every copy you sell in such places is still beneficial to you.

There are less cynical answers to the question, but you asked cynically.

Well keeping on the cynical train. Parts of the world experiencing desperate poverty often not so coincidentally experience substantial inequality with the folks needing a professional tool not being so different economically from better off areas. If 90% of your market has no problem paying why would you not charge full price?

Next how do you keep Jane in Seattle and Bob in Houston from buying the poor market version? You can't really restrict it by language or locale people use all sorts of languages/settings in different parts of the world. Desktop computers don't have location and people could trivially block the app from having access to location AND network data. You don't want your offline software failing for lack of phoning home.

An argument could be made that Jane and Bob could well pirate it too but friction matters. Lots of folks can figure out how to pirate but fewer of them will actually do it if they have to visit the skeevier corners of the net, risk malware, and feel like a criminal instead of clicking on a different locale on your website and feel like they are cleverly getting a good deal. One weird trick to make a substantial portion of your revenue go away.

I would say that compared to software like Adobe that costs $600 a year or $3000 over a 5 year horizon it's already very inclusive.

How about a non-cynical answer. Software does not have effectively zero marginal cost per copy. It does have zero manufacturing cost per copy, however support is quite an expensive on-going cost. When you have a presence in multiple markets, you need localized support for different languages, and that is even more expensive. When you have different costs in different markets, you encourage users in more expensive markets to try and game the system, to minimize their costs. This sets up a potentially adversarial relationship with your users, and is mostly non-productive.

In the end this is a professional software suite, and running a business has some fixed costs. By comparison, Adobe's suite would cost much more per year.

They must have PPP enabled, so price depends on the country. I see "regular price" as 169.99$, but now on sale 40off for $99. It really is great value for the money. I hope they stay on this path. I don't mind paying for the upgrades every couple of years.

There’s always GIMP, Krita, and Inkscape. Imagine if a few million of those billion people worked on them.

I get that people can’t because they have to earn a living, but so do software developers.

The number of people who cannot afford this but also own the required hardware and need the full package of all those licenses is probably not high.

These are pro level apps. Honestly can't think of a single bundle of 3 pro level apps that you can license on Windows, iPad and Mac for anywhere near that price.

I bought all 3 apps at 50% discount earlier this year. I paid 9,900 yen for it. The new universal license cost 15,800 yen. That's 50% price increase for me. I don't need apps for other platforms.

I can afford it, and I will probably buy it. But I can't help but compared to what I paid not even a year ago.

I just bought photo a month ago at $50 and was annoyed at first that suddenly I have to pay more if I want the latest version, but then at $100 and I get a universal license to all three products, I’m still way ahead of having an Adobe subscription.

If you only bought a month ago, drop them a line, there's a good chance they'll discount further for you.

Open source software like Gimp and Linux are free and can be run on your $50 single board computer instead of paying $500 for a laptop that requires a $139 OS license and a $119 software license for Affinity.

While it's certainly nice that those options exist, they are also entirely unsuitable for any kind of professional work. I assume the target user you're thinking of is looking to do some occasional, light-weight editing. And even this user will be frustrated with the irritating UI and workflow of software like (and in particular) The Gimp.

For me, it's close to unusable — and I am someone whose first computer was a TI44/4A. I'm a die-hard terminal shell user. Even Adobe Illustrator didn't really click for me. The Affinity suite made immediate sense.

There's value in usability.

> There's value in usability.

That value costs money. A parent poster posited someone for whom ~$100 was a lot of money. You speak of professional work. I don't think the intersection of these two groups exist. Casual users with no money can use krita gimp darktable and be reasonable satisfied. Demanding professionals even in poorer parts of the world can use the wages earned to easily pay $100.

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