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Comment by tardoe | Hacker News Reader

I clicked on this really fast because this would be nice... but I really have to complain about the pricing model. $49 "once" is a scam when it only comes with 1 year of updates but an extra year of updates for $29 (60% more!!). Exactly how many features can one add to a Home-brew UI in the space of 2 years? There's no detail on what's in the roadmap to warrant such a price (on the website) nor is there the option of a trial. I shouldn't have to email for a refund (as advertised) if I feel like $50 was a rip-off. Honestly, if this was $10-20, I would already have paid.

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That’s quite a common pricing model isn’t it?

You get a perpetual licence with an option for continuing to get updates after the first year.

If it was a monthly subscription there would be lots of complaints too.

Maybe it is a bit expensive but I do think we should reserve the word “scam” for actual scams :) The pricing is at least extremely clear, even if you don’t agree with it.

I agree a trial would be nice. I wouldn’t buy this without being able to try it.

Thanks for you observation. We understand the price might seem a bit high (for the current state of the app), but the last thing we wanted for it was to be a "scam". The whole website design with the pricing always upfront was chosen exactly to convey a sense of transparency... maybe it's not as effective as we thought.

We would really like to offer some sort of trial. Can I ask you if you would prefer a perpetual one where just the basic features are unlocked or a time-limited one where you have everything availble? Maybe we can even do both... after the time-limited trial the app locks all the advanced/non-essential features. We're open to ideas here.

It's not a 'lifetime license' for macOS if it comes with only a year of updates, because macOS regularly breaks backwards compatibility.

I'd prefer to see, $49 for version 1. Then an upgrade price in a few years when they release version 2.

My biggest issue is 49$ for... a UI like this isn't homebrew itself lol, its just a GUI for something you rarely need to interact for 49$ really?

We're aware of the possible issue you're pointing out. Since we're relatively new to macOS development do you have any idea on how others deal with this? There are a lot of apps out there with the same pricing model. Sketch for instance did this for years. They should have found a solution, right?

What you could do is have one version for all buying customers, but you have a feature state depending on the purchase date. Customer X buys Version 1.1 on 2024-04-20 and receives all new features until 2025-04-19. after that, bug fixes and new versions are delivered, but new major feature additions require a license renewal after the cutoff date. So, it would be decoupling major features from the app version. I have seen some Apps doing that, for example Halide.

Sketch is a tool used by people 8 hours/day (or at least was). Therefore, their pricing is more accepted by users/customers. In your case, it's not really a tool that one will use daily.

Sletch is a complex app that is used by professionals for 8h a day and costs $99. Your app is not comparable to that, just the pricing model. In relation to Sketch, your app is crazy expensive. I would have bought it for $19.

Agreed, the plethora of overpriced non-essential apps with shit pricing models that cream "one-off" and "as-a-service/updates" models really irk me. I just flatly refuse now.

Try making a living as an indie developer and then bitch about pricing.

As others have noted, the up-front honesty and realistic pricing are a lot more refreshing and encouraging than some race-to-the-bottom pricing that guarantees the dev is not paying attention or is going to be forced to find other ways to feed their family.

If you aren’t prepared to compensate someone for the value they’ve created that’s fair, but claiming it’s somehow their fault is not being honest.

Thanks ;)

This is the first place where we received such negative feedback. Even if we're a bit surprised, I think some of them might be quite useful and interesting. However, some of them are just not even worth responding, to use kind words ahah

It really feels like a solution in want of a problem.

I'm already in the terminal!

I'm sorry if the website didn't convey the right idea, but we know that this is not, at least right now, a "painkiller". This is just something nice to use. Not targeted to somebody with the wet dream of macOS being a tiling window manager... We're developers ourself, we love the terminal, and we recognise its strengths. If you're already satisfied with that you absolutely don't have to purchase Brewer X. Friends as before ;)

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