Comment by masukomi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by masukomi | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I feel like $29 for "use it forever" is pretty reasonable for something that would likely qualify as a "game changer". How many sales would they have to make at say $5 to pay for all the time they spent developing it + all the time they will spend maintaining it as apple changes things out from under them?

If we assume a $5 price, and a standard US contract rate of ~$100hr (cheap for US contracting actually) and we ignore the cut taken by credit card companies and such (ha!), then we're talking 20 sales to pay for 1hr of development. I don't think they made this plus the site with < 20 hrs and I assume they'll be spending at least 1hr doing email support so 400 sales just to cover their time making it. Or 420 sales to break even... for an extremely niche product.

Still think $29 is too expensive?

It's a bit surprising how consistently the amount of work that goes into developing an app and then maintaining it is underestimated, particularly with how there doesn't seem to be any price point other than free that won't prompt reactions of "that's too expensive". As someone who's more inclined towards developing little desktop utilities than some kind of SaaS it's dissuading.

For clarity $29 is "use it forever" but with updates for only 1 year. If only for security patches, best to keep software updated, so for most it becomes $29 annually.

Also:

> you can use Homerow without a license. An unintrusive prompt will show every 50 activations.

So you can try before you buy.

> Still think $29 is too expensive?

For only one machine, yeah.. the 29 is fine but I need a new license for every machine?

This also suggests the app needs be online too .. Will be getting it but it feels strange to me. That's all.

for many apps recently, the pay $$ "use X forever" has evolved to mean "pay $$ for version X and use it forever", then bring a new paid version of X every year or so.

I'm all for monetising projects - just can't see a one-off $29 making them much, it's a niche product (as you say).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com