

Why do people pay for webapps? - akshat
http://akshat.posterous.com/why-do-people-pay-for-webapps

======
jfarmer
"Are there not sufficient free open source tools to monitor your server and
mail you when it goes down? Why would some of those big ticket customers ever
pay for something like this?"

You're trading money for (someone else's) time. I could build pingdom for my
own services, but I don't want to. I'd have to build it, scale it, maintain
it, and monitor it.

I'd rather pay someone else to do it for me, and I'm technical.

~~~
megamark16
Not to mention that for website availability monitoring you may want tracking
from multiple geographical nodes (east coast, west coast, midwest, etc). Add
on reporting, compliance related information storage, etc, and you're talking
about a service worth paying for (to some people).

~~~
christofd
Good list.

------
rubberbunny
$10, or even the $40 plan, is a negligible cost to even a 1-man operation, and
to a "big ticket" company, it might as well be free. So don't even take into
consideration the cost. Keep in mind "open source" software isn't actually
free, you have to pay an engineer to install and maintain it, learn how to
configure it, fix it when it breaks, etc. Those costs are easily higher than
$40/mo even if someone's only spending 15 minutes a month on it.

What Pingdom seems to be offering is a (basically free if your business isn't
being funded on a credit card) service that requires very little time and
know-how to maintain. Clients probably chose it because their time is more
valuable than the monthly cost of the service. Contrast that to open-source,
which is perfect for those who'd rather spend extra time than extra money.

~~~
omouse
Some "open source" software also charges a fee. It's Free as in speech, not
free as in price.

~~~
rubberbunny
This is true, in my context I was referring primarily to software available in
your favorite distribution's repository.

------
cedsav
You probably underestimate the added-value that (most) webapps provide over
open-source tools or the code-it-yourself approach.

We pay for Pingdom's service because:

* our time is precious, we'd rather not do it ourselves.

* we don't want to be monitoring our monitoring tools to make sure their work.

* they provide a lot more features (reporting, API), which we actually need and use.

~~~
cschep
I think you're right on with reporting. So many people need data laid out for
them to hand to their boss, or just so they can understand what's going on.
Getting data to tell your story, or the "real" story at all, can be worth a
lot of money.

~~~
cedsav
Very true. We show our uptime report to our customers. That in itself is
probably worth more that what we're paying Pingdom.

------
ajdecon
Webapps which duplicate the functionality of open-source tools can make money,
but I think they have to position themselves well. Basically I think people
will pay for this type of webapp if:

* The web app is substantially more convenient than the desktop open-source app,

* It is important/useful that the app in question be available anywhere, not just on the user's computer, or

* It is much simpler to use than the free app and provides a service useful to people not used to open-source tools.

~~~
adriand
Also:

* this is the first time they have ever heard of the service you provide (and they don't subsequently search for free versions), or they aren't aware that free versions exist. For example, although I am a blogger and a web professional, I did not know that externally hosted backup tools for blogs existed. This might make advertising difficult, however, if you are using Adwords, since your competitors will make themselves known.

* you have convincing sales copy, your site is well-designed & high quality, etc. (i.e. you're good at sales)

* what you provide is higher quality than free alternatives (more stable, more reliable, has support, etc.)

* what you provide is differentiated from your competition (e.g. through superior features)

------
maxklein
If the service saves me a bit of time and headache, then yes I will pay for
it. For your blogVault, do what I suggested in your comment: Allow me import
ALL my historical writings (of which I am sure there are about 10.000 pages of
floating around on the internet), and I'll pay you what you want. I want my
writings on paper, not on websites that shut down and throw away stuff I spent
a lot of time coming up with.

------
nroach
This is a great question. I've asked myself as much and I think it comes up
any time someone decides to sit down and write an app.

To me, the short answer is that pople can be enticed to pay for webapps when
the app delivers value and solves a problem. Open source tools all too often
solve a problem, but do so in a way that fails to deliver value.

For certain customers, there's a difference between " I can do this myself "
and "It's worth it for me to do this myself". Open source solutions usually
fall into the first category. Paid apps allow customers to answer no to the
second question.

I went into a bit more detail on my blog at
<http://nathanroach.posterous.com>.

------
ggruschow
I'm not paying for the app. I'm paying someone to care.

------
potatolicious
Is there really a Pingdom equivalent in FOSS land? I'm not sure - I do not use
it, but I've seen many cases where open source advocates claim they have
"equivalent" software, but in reality they just have base-level libraries that
are half-way there.

e.g., a DOCX-parsing library is not the same thing as a MS Word competitor.
Having the libs to do something is not the same as having a turnkey solution
ready to fly.

A better thought is this: why is that people are willing to _pay money_ to
_not_ use free, open source software? It's either a triumph of marketing, or a
strong commentary on the quality of your open source project.

------
smokey_the_bear
My start up went through several stages of site monitoring. First I'd set up a
script that curled a couple URLs and emailed me if it didn't work. I wanted
slightly more sophisticated monitoring and I wanted text messages. So I tried
to install Nagios. It was a pain and I never got it set up.

Then SiteCanary posted their launch here. I signed up that day and never
thought about monitoring again. It's worth every penny (and it's really
cheap). I'm sure I'd otherwise be spending at least an hour a month on
monitoring.

------
mgrouchy
Lets continue with the pingdom example. I work for a small startup and the
reason why we would pay for a webapp to do these things is because it is not a
part of our product or one of our core competencies. So settings up and
managing these things is a waste of developer/sys-admin time, and in the long
run, it turns out to be cheaper to just outsource it.

Its the same reason we pay for github rather then set up our own git server,
and the list goes on.

------
zaidf
You are underestimating the mental and actual friction caused by open-source.
Paid services bring a peace of mind that your server won't crash, some setting
won't mess up etc. To a technical guy, those things may seem super small. But
(1) little maintenance things add up (2) they are worth not having to deal
with _especially_ if you can pay just a few bucks for the peace of mind.

------
akshat
Are we allowed to post links to our own blogs?

~~~
lawn
Why not? As long as it's relevant and contributes to the discussion I see no
problem at all. But do say what the link is and why you're linking to it.

