[kiratp]

How do you launch a dev tool with a “contact us” call to action?

It’s like Mistral is choosing to fail here.

Edit: I can't even tell if its a CLI tool, an IDE plugin or a standalone IDE!

Edit 2: oh man! it's at the bottom of the page

Edit 3: "Mistral Code Enterprise is currently only available with an enterprise license." :D

[efsavage]

The higher up the food chain you can go the more effective this is. Someone who thinks that negotiating is part of their job and/or persona is more willing to call the place they think they can get a deal on rather than the fixed price offering.

Whether they're correct is a separate question, but it's an effective strategy if you're targeting that buyer.

[closewith]

I think unfortunately Enterprise Call Us sales tactics are actually extremely effective.

[theyinwhy]

Are they? I never look at such software again unless forced by my boss.

[haswell]

I worked for enterprise software companies for a number of years.

I’m not personally a fan of “call us” pricing, but it is indeed effective, and the companies that sell software this way do so because they prioritize establishing human relationships between a salesperson and the buyer.

In the long run, this leads to more sales/upsells.

[YetAnotherNick]

Also not only just establishing human relationships, sometimes software might not be available at all for plug and play and require client level tuning to be effective. Even in cursor, setting up a good .cursorrules seems to have quite a big effect.

I don't think "call us" is an effective inbound sales tactic though, but Mistral does have folks in sales who can do outbound sales.

[haswell]

This is a key point. A customer that buys $100K+ worth of software is automatically a future debook risk if they can't/don't implement it successfully and start seeing value right away.

The high touch approach ensures they're getting support at every step of the way and increases the chances that they'll use the software and renew later.

I'm not sure how many of these factors are in play for Mistral, but to your point, it's easy to imagine some scenarios.

[b112]

No, they specialize in knowing how to extract every single penny from you they can. Find out how big the company is, and bleed them as best possible.

If you're too small, they won't even talk to you.

That's what besoke pricing is.

Knowing your client happens regardless of showing pricing or not.

[haswell]

This is a fairly cynical way to frame this. There is absolutely bad behavior in the enterprise software space, but that is certainly not universal, and is not inherent to the "call us" approach.

> If you're too small, they won't even talk to you.

This is often true. Some of the software I worked on was extremely expensive to host, and there was indeed a minimum threshold that was many multiples of $10K.

It's not that the company didn't want smaller players to use the software, but that smaller players just weren't large enough to benefit from the minimum buy-in, and selling the software at a lower cost for those smaller customers would have just been pure loss. Over time, they were able to lower the minimum threshold due to improvements in the architecture and economies of scale, but the point here is just that these minimums often exist for good reasons.

> Knowing your client happens regardless of showing pricing or not.

It really does not. Many software companies have a minimal relationship (if any) with their customers. For some customers and some product types, this is perfectly fine. But when a company is buying software that will cost the company millions/year, having a direct line to a real person who in turn can arrange conversations with product management, customer success, etc. is table stakes, and is often not possible or available with smaller vendors.

You can dislike the model, but I'd suggest digging in to some of the why before dismissing it too reductively.

[GuinansEyebrows]

> This is a fairly cynical way to frame this.

dismissals of negative reactions as 'cynical' rarely acknowledge the fact that a 'cynical' response is often no more cynical than the cynicism of the target.

bespoke pricing is a cynical tactic, no matter how you dress it up. it provides a legal shroud, and i've no more patience in me to give the benefit of the doubt to any profit-motivated enterprise that can't at least be upfront about what they want to charge for their services.

[nickpsecurity]

I think your argument is supported by the fact that many companies, in and outside of AI, have pricing upfront. That's for cloud platforms, OS's, frameworks like Sciter, shrink-wrap, semi-custom with value adds ("starts at..."), per-token pricing on models, etc.

Then, some companies wont give the slightest hint of pricing unless we talk to their paid salespeople. It's definitely a game to extract more money out of you. While they may or may not, they often ignore low-volume customers who could easily buy the product if it was on an online store. Your skepticism is warranted.

[haswell]

> While they may or may not, they often ignore low-volume customers who could easily buy the product if it was on an online store. Your skepticism is warranted.

Setting aside any qualms about how the pricing is published, if a business chooses a strategy in which they focus on large customers and choose not to take on small customers, why is this an issue? Especially when the market is filled with alternatives?

The support model, predictability of yearly renewals, per-customer overhead, etc. look quite different when selling to larger customers vs. small/low-volume customers.

[Kiro]

You're not the target audience.

[tootie]

If you're buying actual business critical software, you always want a signed contract. Even if they have transparent pricing and a checkout form. Most of these services will reserve the right to terminate service if they detect any violation of terms. A signed contract usually precludes them from doing that.

[aerhardt]

I buy Enterprise software too and unless there is a good reason (there are no other alternatives, or I have complex requirements), I'll also quite often negatively factor being dropped into a sales funnel, with all it entails.

[closewith]

A form of pre-qualification, so.

[GuB-42]

That's the idea, they are trying to have your boss force you to look at such software.

[almost]

Yes, but how likely were you to spend tens of thousands of dollars or more on software?

[bdcravens]

Presumably their market is different than the typical developer or low-level manager armed with with a shadow IT company card.

[fazkan]

yup, got lost as well. Is it like a VS-code, continue alternative?