[HHad3]

The application looks and feels nice, but the per-device pricing/licensing model seems severely outdated to me. I will not make a purchase unless named licenses, which enable me to use the application on all devices and operating systems I use (with reasonable limits if DRM is needed for some reason), are available.

[ramraj07]

I moved my entire team to this program because of how simple (and reasonably hard to screw up) it is. It's also incidentally one of the cheapest non-buggy tools you can use to access redshift. Even if you buy multiple licenses it's cheaper than navicat et al.

Also to note that their free version is still _very_ usable, I survived on that itself for many months spending hours in the tool.

[oefrha]

You can also get TablePlus though a Setapp[1] subscription. (Unfortunately Setapp is also licensed on a per device basis, but you get 2 Macs out of box and you could buy extra seats at $5/mo/seat.[2] I think named licenses are hard to offer because a lot of people abuse them by sharing with coworkers and friends.)

Having used TablePlus for a couple months with both Postgres and SQLite, I only have positive things to say.

[1] https://setapp.com/

[2] https://setapp.com/news/setapp-launches-extra-seats

[jfim]

For Mac apps, one can simply bind the license to the user's name, with some allowance for edit distance (and a few automated name changes), which can solve the casual license sharing. Adding a "Licensed to John Smith" message during load time also helps with this.

[annoyingnoob]

I tend to agree. I'm not sure about all devices but a license being install-able on somewhere between 2 to 5 devices seems reasonable.

I'll be a paying customer but I need a little flexibility. I use more than one computer and some other devices - I don't need an SQL tool on all of them but definitely on more than one.

[DevX101]

This is an odd hill to die on. I'd bet 90%+ of engineers have a single computer they code from at home (even if you have multiple computers) and another at work. It's perfectly fair to pay for a separate license for each of those use cases. I'd prefer this to some $10/month SAAS model.

[heyoni]

No it’s not. I have a desktop and 2 laptops. My desktop has 3 OSes, Mac windows and Linux. Why the hell would I buy this, and then have to think really hard about which one I’ll use with it?

I probably feel too strongly about this. Last week I setup a nytimes cooking subscription and then immediately canceled it when I realize I had to leave it on auto pay or else it wouldn’t work.

[dahdum]

Just having a desktop and a laptop is enough to kill this product for me, I’m not paying twice when it’s only me using it. It shows disrespect for the user, or at least ignorance.

No other paid software I use does that. Sketchup, Sublime, Jetbrains, and Office for instance.

[fphhotchips]

Office is a mixed bag for this. I have a Visio Pro licence that only allows a single installation. Driving me insane.

[ineedtosleep]

Disagreed. I have a MBP, a Linux desktop and a Thinkpad running both Linux and Windows. My one subscription to a Jetbrains product covers all of them provided I don't run the program at the same time across multiple machines.

Believing that most engineers only have one computer IMO seems out of touch with reality.

[brandonmenc]

> My one subscription to a Jetbrains product covers all of them

And also includes their database tool, DataGrip.

[zo1]

> And also includes their database tool, DataGrip.

Which is awesome by itself. I use it regularly and only have minor issues with some of it's behavior, but the experience is worlds-ahead than what I've encountered previously at that price point.

[Aeolun]

DataGrip is quickly becoming unusable to me due to it’s inability to show me a tables/field encoding.

I really have no clue how anyone thought that was an unnecessary feature.

[OOPMan]

Have you considered filing a ticket on their issue tracker? I find Jetbrains are pretty responsive...

[therealdrag0]

Can you elaborate on what that is? I haven’t ran I to that before.

[Aeolun]

Like the other response on this says. Tables in MySQL (and individual columns, and databases) have an encoding associated with them, this determines what characters you can store in them.

Right now I cannot modify that in Datagrip, but worse, I cannot even see it without a raw query.

[elbear]

I'm assuming they're taking about character encoding, as in utf-8.

[monocularvision]

The point was that the pricing of this product is _not a subscription_ so perhaps the pricing makes sense. Your response is to describe a subscription product. I am not sure I understand what you were trying to say.

[zarkov99]

I have a laptop, a home computer, a work computer and I have all my tools on all of them. I bet that is more the norm than not. The license should be associated with the person not the device.

[stephenr]

I have a single license for TablePlus right now. I do have another machine, but it's effectively a "spare" / "travel" machine, so I don't use it a lot.

If I happen to need TP next time I'm using that machine, the cost of adding another seat to the license is offset by some fraction of an hours billable work, and lasts for a year.

What's always missing from these type of discussions is the consideration that just maybe, offering it as per-seat rather than per-person is why the price is what it is.

Would you prefer it it was per-person but cost $99 for a licence, with a year of updates?

Sure, that gives you the warm fuzzy feeling, and benefits anyone with > 2 machines, but it doubles the price for those who only need one seat under the current scheme.

I'm lucky enough to be paid pretty well for my skills and experience, and I (or technically my company) can maintain some software and release it as open source. But I'm also very aware that high quality fully native developer tools are quite few and far between, and the number that are also cross platform is miniscule. There is significant competition from things built using "cross platform runtimes" (Electron, Java). So when one comes along that is as good as this, they could charge twice what they do and I'd pay happily - but not everyone can justify/afford that much on developer tools.

[thibaut_barrere]

I do not find that model outdated at all. Actually a good bunch of apps I use have that model (e.g. Alfred App, Ableton Live...).

Also, TablePlus seems to be selling well (at least from what I see around me), so I am not personally of the opinion that they should change their model!

[fredoliveira]

I'm confused. I have licenses for both Alfred and Ableton, and both of them run on all my devices just fine. Ableton in particular allows a limited number of authorizations, but handles my laptop and desktop.

[johne20]

I am totally fine with the license model. I have been using TablePlus for over 2 years. When I first tried it I had a few questions/issues and the developer responded immediately and made changes based on feedback. (the email thread is 42 msgs :)).

I have been using it daily for pg, mysql, occasionally for redis and sqllite, it works great and gets continuous improvements. I wish this company all the best, great product, great support.

[surfsvammel]

I totally agree. I have a license but would have liked to use it also on my workstation, not only my laptop.

[skinnymuch]

Like some others have said. Getting it via Setapp is great. The prices aren’t far from one another and Setapp offers other apps. Setapp has the device limitation too, but since it’s basically the same price, add a few more seats if needed.

Setapp lets you use apps on as many devices as you want. But like streaming services these days, you can only have apps through Setapp actively running based on the seats you have. Though if you have say 2-3 seats for Setapp. And launch Setapp and some apps on a 4th comp. whichever comp has to get off Setapp to give space, you can usually keep apps open. Just can’t re-open them until a seat space is available again. M

[nerdbaggy]

What is your opinion on a license that is for unlimited computers but can only be used by 1 computer at a time?

[alexdumitru]

That would be much better for me.

[oefrha]

If you’re a fan of always-online DRM. You must be a first...

[nerdbaggy]

A lot of them just are on the local network. Like Jetbrains software will throw a license error if both are on the same internal network, but will be fine if they are on separate networks.

[oefrha]

Okay, that’s a much smaller concern.

[Kudos]

I asked them about that a year ago and they weren't interested in changing the model then.

[heyoni]

Go with data grip then. I’m pretty sure it can be installed on every machine. At least that’s what I do, and I see no reason to switch other than their lack of official support for non-relational databases. It’s otherwise solid software.

[reaperducer]

It's worse on the iOS version. It's a $3.99/month subscription.

No thanks. I don't rent software.

[nerdbaggy]

If you have 2 computers just buy 2 licenses?

[Kudos]

I don't condone pirating software, but this is the kind of licensing that makes me understand it to a degree.

[jolmg]

Right, it's not like their cost of production is proportional to the number of computers the software is used in. It's like trying to buy a vacuum cleaner and being charged per room you plan to use it in.

[satyrnein]

It's not proportional to number of users, either. Zero marginal costs mean pricing is always at least a little arbitrary.

[Nullabillity]

Yup. I'm starting to think that Kickstarter (and similar group-buys) is the only way to fund software that actually makes sense.

[jolmg]

> pricing is always at least a little arbitrary.

Whatever both buyer and seller agree on. I think in general buyers can agree that, by the nature of software and the existence of the internet, if people share their bought software like they would any other object, then the seller risks not being able to make any profit at all. Since sharing software is copying software, there's no equivalent of "returning" what was borrowed. It's a compromise most buyers can understand.

However, charging per machine of the same user seems to cross the line, no? Sellers are pushing, and I think it's valid here for buyers to push back.

EDIT: Could we have the courtesy of including explanatory replies with downvotes? Simply downvoting seems like the equivalent of replying, "No. Shut up."