| clarifications question based on premises: - many people use Sublime for free - many people don't pay bc the asking price is $80 and bc VS Code and <insertEditorHere> are free - many people would pay if price was lower what I'm curious to know: - for people that do pay, are they paying for personal use or bc their company pays? --> this is what I'm really getting at, whether Sublime's revenue stream comes from corporate or fans of the project what I'm not assuming - that $80 is expensive is an absolute sense [as Toast_25 points out, bargin for product value * usage] but rather comparatively expensive (vs. other v good and completely free editors out there) - that Sublime is making an incorrect business decision (I suspect they'd have more people paying if contributions via Paypal or Patreon were available but also suspect this would have minimal revenue impact, esp. if they maintained the current sales price) - that Sublime owes a cheaper price to its user based (esp. given that it's providing an awesome product for, again, free) |
IMO if you want to get paid for building an editor it's an excellent business decision to set the price above "peanuts" level - it's still good value for money as a professional tool that you have had months to evaluate for free. Recurring subscription fees might make both corporate users and hobbyists hesitate. For corporate users the problem is wasted money for underutilized subscriptions and license management hell, for hobbyists it's the fact that some people (like me) might go several months without hacking on a side project and when an user suspends a subscription it's always a risk the user won't come back.