
What has changed in Postman's new pricing? - awwstn
https://capiche.com/q/what-has-changed-in-postmans-new-pricing
======
mynegation
Discussion from a day ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22002560](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22002560)

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dang
Yes. Although that thread is getting cold, I've moved the comments thither, so
the discussion stays in one place.

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awwstn
@dang, I'm curious: why is analysis and clear explanation of a pricing change
considered a dupe of a sugarcoated company announcement that buries the lede?

It runs contrary to a fairly common occurence on HN, where a piece of news is
on the front page, and then analysis of that news is on the front page
subsequently. For example:

Mandrill's official announcement post:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11170713](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11170713)

Analysis allowed on HN:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11203056](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11203056)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11328631](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11328631)

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dang
(I was busy answering your email when you posted this, so maybe it's easiest
to just include that response here.)

The articles aren't 100% identical, but it's unquestionably the same story,
and when HN has had a major discussion about a story recently, follow-ups
count as dupes unless they contain significant new information [1]. Commenters
in the original thread were well aware that the pricing has gone up. Indeed,
that was the only significant thing about the story, so I don't think there is
significant new information today. One way we check that is to look whether
the comments are saying the same sorts of things as previously, or whether
they are focusing on something new. In this case the discussion seemed much
the same.

Front page slots are the scarcest resource HN has [2], and optimizing for
curiosity [3] requires minimizing repetition. Follow-up posts on controversial
topics often get a lot of upvotes, but because they're mostly repetitive, it's
an important function of moderation to downweight them. I'm sorry your article
got caught in that mechanism. I know it sucks to get downweighted off the
front page.

I completely agree with you that their announcement was unclear, and in fact
was having a conversation by email about this with some users yesterday. You
can see one artifact of that conversation here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22003612](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22003612).
HN's title rule calls for keeping original titles except when they're
misleading or linkabit. Bland corporate press releases that are designed to
bury the lede are misleading [4], so we tend to change them. If you want to
suggest an accurate title, we can still change it. The only reason I reverted
"Postman announces 50% price hike starting Feb 2020" is that at the time, I
had no easy way to be sure that that was true.

I hope this helps explain things a bit, and sorry for the disappointment.

Edit:

I haven't had a chance to look into the details of what happened with those
old posts you've linked to. It's possible that that case differed
significantly from this one. But it's also possible that we just missed the
duplication. We don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted to HN,
so we miss a lot. For that reason, it's impossible for moderation to be
consistent [5]. Our principles are consistent, but the practice isn't. If you
or anyone see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, the
most likely explanation is that we didn't see it [6]. In that case you can
help out a lot by bringing it to our attention at hn@ycombinator.com.

1\.
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20significant%20new%20information&sort=byDate&type=comment)

2\.
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20scarce&sort=byDate&type=comment)

3\.
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20curiosity%20optimiz&sort=byDate&type=comment)

4\.
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20misleading%20corporate&sort=byDate&type=comment)

5\.
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20moderation%20consisten&sort=byDate&type=comment)

6\.
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20likeliest&sort=byDate&type=comment)

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awwstn
Fair enough.

I don't agree with your assessment here. But, I respect how tricky your role
is, and I can't argue with the overall results of your approach to moderation
considering how often I come back to see what's happening on HN. :)

------
basseq
(Cross-posted to
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22013580](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22013580)
per @dang above.)

I don't know anything about Postman, but this is an interesting case study on
price increases.

No one likes price increases, but they happen. So long as you have a strong
ROI use case, you can navigate those discussions with your customers. E.g.,
"You were getting a 50x return, but listen, we're running a business over
here, and a 45x return is still pretty darn good."

The challenge in Postman's case appears to be that they ALSO reduced the
bundle components. So you compound the perception from "paying more" to
"paying more _but getting less_ ". That's worse optics.

What I'd offer you think about is _this may be a perfectly rational and even
optimal customer solution_. It's unifying two different pricing actions: price
increase and product bundling. The logic being that many customers weren't
using all the users, API calls, documentation views, custom domains, and
integrations that were previously included in, say, the Pro bundle.

So as opposed to increasing price by—I'm making up numbers here—12% and
leaving bundle elements the same, they increased price by 10% and cut features
by 2%. The end result is exactly the same, but is actually _better_ for most
customers because they will get the same level of features they needed and not
have to pay that additional 2% for features they weren't using anyway.

~~~
dang
I appreciate that you took the time to include helpful links, but please don't
cross-post. Copy-pasting lowers the signal/noise ratio here. If you want to
refer to what you posted elsewhere, please use a link to do it, and perhaps
add some new information that's specific to the new context.

(In this case, of course, that's not necessary because the entire thread has
been merged!)

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20copy%20paste&sort=byDate&type=comment)

~~~
basseq
Of course. I started commenting before the merge, but posted after it, and
didn't want this comment to be orphaned. Re-posted in the "correct" thread,
and left this comment for traceability only.

~~~
dang
Thanks. That degree of circumspection is unusual and if everyone practiced it
we'd have no worries at all, so I'm sorry for the criticism!

