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mLuby

Why is the pricing per user? Is that what your costs are most dependent on? I bet not.

I'd argue $5/user is just teaser pricing on its way to PagerDuty's $21+/user.

Regardless, cool project—happy to see more competition.

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Heii On-Call https://heiioncall.com/ has flat pricing regardless of team size.

To be pedantic, it's free for individuals / teams-of-one, so I guess you could write:

    def price_per_month(team_size)
      if team_size == 1
        0
      else
        32
      end
    end

Disclosure: I helped build it :)

EDIT: thanks to those of you signing up to try Heii On-Call! Let me know if you have any questions.

wait, if you remove everyone from your team it costs $32 ?

Shhh… that’s our secret business model! Infinite revenue per user :P

If you ever start a business selling anything at all, the very first thing you will need to realize is that you never base prices on how much something costs.

You base prices on what people are willing to pay.

Like most business advice this sounds good as a one-liner, but isn't super accurate. There are lots of businesses that need to evaluate price elasticity and substitution which is more than finding the right point on the demand curve.

There are also plenty of companies that run into trouble with excessive “value-based“ pricing, aka. The Innovator’s Dilemma, as Pager Duty is now.

Since when does anyone set or scale their price on their costs?

Presumably when someone says that such a model frustrates them. But perhaps not.

There’s a big gap between $5 and $21… for now. That I have no doubt they’ll spend all their time building features so they can increase prices to close that gap.

A big argument against LVT that people (often landlords, but many "socialists" too) is that rents will simply rise to reflect the extra cost to the landlord

Same with increase interest rates

It's certainly widely believed that "price = cost + %profit" rather than "price = level at which maximum profit will be achieved after factoring in market segregation"

I mean, LVT or not, that is probably true. If the price increase affects the entire market, landlords will exit the market until equilibrium is restored (or renters will increase their willingness to pay a higher rate).

If market price < cost + desired margin, some sellers will exit, reducing supply and increasing market price.

LVT also only applies to commodities, of which software isn’t really.

> landlords will exit the market until equilibrium is restored

Thus a increasing the supply of properties being sold, and thus lowering the price for those who want to buy, allowing more to buy, reducing the demand for places to rent. Win-Win.

With LVT (or higher interest rate on a variable rate mortgage) the parasitical landlord can't simply stop having a tenant, as they're still liable for the costs. They have to offer something more than the intrinsic cost of land they occupy to make it productive enough for someone to pay them.

> LVT also only applies to commodities, of which software isn’t really.

There's a strong argument that copyright (specifically that used to prevent people from using it) would count as "Land" in the economic sense - it drives rentseeking and monopoly behavior - https://progressandpoverty.substack.com/p/possibility-space-...

An interesting debate, but somewhat offtopipc

It is interesting re: copyright, but rarely are software IP rights enforced via copyright. Patents are more likely.

On the pricing page I'm explaining that I think it's the fairest option. If you have a small team, you probably have "less money" than a huge team.

Keeping the "I want it for 5 because my indie project makes no money" people happy is less lucrative than the "We are paying $1000/person in on call allowances, so what is $21 - nothing!" people.

You base your salary solely on living expenses?

My employer sure does. Unless you're telling me that devs in major US cities are actually 2x better than rural US coders, who in turn are multiple times better than devs in poorer countries.

You've reversed the relationship. As the employee, you're the seller. You're selling your time. It seems that you've priced yourself based on cost of living, because that is what the market will bear.

Your employer couldn't care less about your costs of living. He is a buyer and will gladly pay exactly zero dollars for your services. Unfortunately for him, that's not something you and your friends will accept. The price is hiked until both parties can live with it.

People in different situations accept different levels of compensation. Cost of living only becomes a significant factor under competitive pressure. If you were the sole programmer for the region you would be paid millions. I'm sure you personally, being an upstanding citizen, would lower your fee to match your costs of living as to maximize your clients' profitability. But you are rare. Most will accept the highest bid.

All I'm saying is that nothing is fundamentally based on "cost" unless under pressure. If it earns you say 500 bucks, you take the 20 dollar hit. It doesn't matter to you if it costs them 1 cent to produce. Until a competitor comes and drops the prices.

Also note that this "value"-thing is complex. Programmers that live close by and are sufficiently adjusted to the culture of the company have more value than cheap, capable, but remote workers that don't "get" you. Rural programmmers are indeed no less capable than devs in major cities, but it never was just about being capable.

This is an easy take to have on the labor market when you have bargaining power. The fact that highly paid professionals buy so readily into the moneyed class discourse disturbs me.

Here's hoping you don't get displaced by automation and suddenly discover yourself providing zero marginal gains to them. I mean, would you then sit quietly and starve?

I will be replaced and when it happens it wil be for the exact reasons I laid out above and there is nothing I can do about it.

Do we disagree about something?

It’s not “a take”, it’s how markets operate. Am I missing something?

Yes you are missing the fact that work units are not fungible and it is not trivial for a company to calculate the marginal value of employees.

The discourse of "we are paid what we are worth in the labor market" is deeply flawed due to these reasons. So when people buy into that discourse, which advances the capital owning class interests (take what we give you that's your market value) it's both sad and harmful.

Collective bargaining and regulations play a big role in compensation levels and often political capital counts for more then some abstract and impossible to calculate market value of your skill set or work output. So please disabuse yourself of the notion that you have a fair market value as a worker and that you are paid that value. This is pure political fiction.

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