If you're trying to start an actual business, it's very very difficult to get people to pay for your solution when a large incumbent can just pay people to use their competitive (potentially sub-standard) product by burning through mountains of, (sometimes not even their own), money. Or once you start to gain some traction, deplatform you from social/search, or bury you in frivolous lawsuits. It can be done, it's just not very straightforward (unless you also already have your own mountains of cash, or are very well connected). But, business is business, so sink or swim?
Otherwise, it's much easier to ride someone else's huge marketing budget (Apple App Store, WordPress plugins, ChatGPT etc.), which doesn't change the competitive landscape and gives those incumbents even more power (merchants/developers/creators touched by the platform's Midas finger become dependent on the platform because it's their income, then their users buy further into the parent system, etc.).
I do, actually, because I want my local natural foods co-op to stay in business.
But your point still stands. The alternatives aren't actually comparable, because they're for-profit entities, and I don't want my food budget going to them.
I do regularly; I don’t know if it’s the most expensive, but it’s absolutely not the cheapest. However, it’s a small market just a few blocks walk away and a small business and I value the proximity of it to my home so would like to see it continue to exist.
I think the decision should be reframed as: am I trying to spend as little as possible, or maximize value, which aren’t always the same thing.
(a) i do (ie intentionally buy from the most expensive store) (b) i don’t know if it’s the most expensive but it’s absolutely not the cheapest. (i.e. maybe i don’t, in fact)
> a small market just a few blocks walk away and a small business and I value the proximity of it to my home
This indicates that the alternatives are not completely equivalent.
cost = travel + item
In which case a corner store is, in total, more cost effective.
That said I do pay more for organic locally grown produce. Personal choice because those local tomatoes are banging
Otherwise you end up hopping between services that start out free, no strings attached and then turn to crap.
There’s more to the comparison than price.
But in this case if you don't agree with the price increase, as OP further justifies, I think it's totally fair to just go elsewhere.
Since they have to maintain files and lisp support out of band, they're really not far off from running dev containers, which defeats the point of Replit.
Edit: clarity
1. Since you say it is an open market with alternatives, I don’t see why you seem to take issue with the blog post author taking one of the alternatives.
2. I thought the author did have some issues with the product. Like lack of persistence of uploaded files, price going up, and the support for the author’s current main language, Lisp, being not as good as for Python.
I don’t see how it’s a bait and switch to increase prices to a sustainable level if it wasn’t previously there. If you like a SaaS product you should hope their business model is aligned for durability exclusive of burning VC cash in my view.
If the product doesn’t meet your needs, fair game. Complain away it’s good feedback the vendor needs to hear to improve. Vote with your dollars like this author did.
Sure, but that doesn't make their actions not bait[ing you with a low price and lots of features] and switch[ing plans to remove some of those features and raise the price].
It's still a bait-and-switch move, IMO. You might choose to tolerate or accept it in the interests of the company being sustainable, making it a "bait and switch that you're OK with".
> Replit changed its paid tiers by raising the price of my plan and removing some features.
That’s a healthy and fine market outcome. What was worth it before is now no longer worth it to some buyer. Neither the ex-buyer nor seller should be surprised or upset here, as the points of view of both are entirely rational.
> so my vendor can be profitable
But this is a ridiculous notion.
I generally find superior value from sources that are less singularly profit motivated such as worker-owned organizations or public goods providers
Maybe people get upset with higher prices paired with fewer features.
Or are you ok if food companies reduce the package content and raise the price at the same time?
It's for profit, you know?
In the absence of a source showing all of their financials, this isn't a particularly helpful comment. Beyond that, if they raise the price too much and go out of business, their customers are certainly not better off.
Do I have a say on how they should/shouldn't invest their money? I imagined. So I can't really sympathize with points of views such as this. Are tech companies entitled to eternal growth?
Why shouldn't i switch to any other provider as soon as I'm unsatisfied with current one?
This seems like really really dumb line of thought that leaves you to be exploited by service providers. It's basically mental vendor lock-in.
It's up to service provider to find out the profitable business model, and you don't need to integrate deeply with such unprofitable service providers.
I think the best moral argument I can come up with is trust/loyalty and viewing it as a relationship, but that's not emotionally persuasive with large companies like we have in tech I think.
>>> why would I, an user, should care at all about anything that my service provider does internally?
I suggested, "morals".
In short, I responded to a question asked but you seemed mistakenly to think I was responding to the context in general.
In any case, let's go reductio ad absurdum, if your service provider employed child and/or slave labour then you may feel that enriching them with your custom was not appropriate.
There's a whole industry [0] devoted to choosing manufacturers according to their morals and socio-political positions; I thought the response was self-explanatory.
As far as paying a company that doesn't meet your needs any longer. I've done this when I approve of the company as a general source of good (benevolence). But only on a couple of occasions. I'm sure it's a very weak signal.
Yes, with large for profit companies I'm not going to do this. There is a situation where you might - to retain rights that are given to customers. Some people pay for the cheapest insurance to get access to discounts (UK) afforded to customers. There might be a situation where retaining customer rights was like having a company on retainer which probably comes into your trust/loyalty category.
Do not push 'morals' to the end user of service.
Make a system that enforces companies to not break them in the first place.
He doesn’t want the product at the current price. It’s a bad value for him.
You’re requiring the consumer to want management’s goal. But product survival is not a buyer’s goal. The buyer has limited money, and wants his own profitability.