You can also just buy the software to evaluate it. This way you have unlimited time to see if it fits or not. That's what people do in other industries.
Sourcegraph is $99/u/m and has major network effects. For a moderately sized org this is quickly an entire developer salary.
Snyk is similarly priced, unfortunately “just buy” is a really easy way to:
a) pay more than something is woth
b) have multiple products doing the same thing. (for example, I have Miro and figjam and Mural in my company because each do something slightly better and teams have chosen the tools that work best).
That means we often double pay on licenses for ostensibly similar software.
For any other dev tools companies, I’d strongly recommend having lower prices so that every dev at your customer can use it (if that’s relevant for your product). If you start seeing customers be really picky with who gets a license, it’s probably priced too high.
I was entertained a while back when I saw you getting accused for using sockpuppets, but am I correct in thinking that you're probably just using the API to monitor for name mentions?
Edit: To be clear, I think this is great and that more companies should do this.
B) You can buy software and evaluate and decide not to use it and cancel the license.
> Plumbers and HVAC specialists have tools worth tens of thousands of dollars.
And how many of their tools are annual subscriptions? And do their tools have residual value e.g. sell the business as a whole?
But physical tools wear out when used professionally, so they are an ongoing cost. Not to mention all other material that are simply spent when used by people in physical businesses.