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by thayne 1926 days ago
They way I wish it worked, although I haven't seen it really successfully implemtented is that instead of paying for a support contract, you could pay for support in a more a la carte manner. Such as say, pledging money to a bug or feature, and the dev team prioritizes based on how much money is pledged for different features and bugs, perhaps with some expiration so customers don't end up paying for a bug that isn't fixed until years later when it no longer matters.
2 comments
doopy1 1926 days ago
I think those economics don't stack up against a monthly subscription on an annual contract, unfortunately.
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thayne 1926 days ago
The two don't necessarily have to be mutually exclusive. Support subscriptions might still make more sense for enterprises. But an a la carte system allows individuals and small companies to influence prioritization and "vote with their wallets" without having to be able to afford a pricy enterprise support contract.

Support subscriptions could even include an annual/monthly/whatever number of credits to vote for issues, possibly at a discount compared to a la carte.

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KajMagnus 1926 days ago
I think you're right. And that it'd take rather much time & inconvenience, for the customers, to in effect "micro manage" payments for individual features, and agree internally about if to spend money on this feature or that feature

At the same time, maybe for some rare & "really big" features, it could be worth the extra administrative work, to pay for that particular feature

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KajMagnus 1926 days ago
Sounds like crowdfunding of new features / bugs, repeatedly, in the same software project — instead of crowdfunding a new project just once?

I wonder if there's any SaaS that specializes in this. Like, Kickstarter but for new features, preferably on the company's own sub domain? So as not to distract people with unrelated projects, when they visit the "features crowdfunding" page. And the audience would come from the company's website (but not from the "Kickstarter for features" company's website).

Or I wonder if Gumroad would think this sounded interesting.

> with some expiration so customers don't end up paying for a bug that isn't fixed until years later

Good point

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