
Ask HN: Who is the target audience for ~$1000 software? - earenndil
I see a lot of software that&#x27;s priced at about $1000.  Stuff like photoshop (formerly at least), hex-rays[1], ICC[2].  Who is the target audience for these products?  Individuals&#x2F;enthusiasts will be hard-pressed to come up with the money, while large companies will be able to afford it and could even buy 10 or 20 without a second thought.  So who is expected to buy it?<p>1: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hex-rays.com&#x2F;<p>2: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;softwarestore.intel.com&#x2F;SuiteSelection&#x2F;ParallelStudio
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zxcmx
People who use the software professionally to make money.

There is a market segment between enthusiast and enterprise where people pay
real money for software which supports their freelancing and consulting. Hex-
rays and (and formerly photoshop) fit in this category. Similar things might
be wireless site survey software, antenna/ EM modelling, CAD, all kinds of
engineering software really. "Pro versions" of security software, landscaping
software, you name it.

~~~
giancarlostoro
This right here. This is why I bought all the JetBrains IDE's as a personal
license, aside from my student graduation discount, all these IDE's allow me
to be seriously productive at work. I do not regret buying JetBrains at all,
had it been a thousand dollars I would of probably have thought twice, but the
value it returns to me is worth it honestly. I'm definitely more productive
with the JetBrains toolset.

~~~
diamondo25
Exactly the same for me. Although I do not use all tools at the same time, I
still feel the money was worth it.

I have thought to do the same with Visual Studio, but VS Community Edition +
ReSharper is basically VS Ultimate.

For HexRays... Its a really high price, and its software I don't make full use
of, so i just keep working on the older, leaked versions instead.

~~~
giancarlostoro
I don't use every tool, but I still find it worth it. I mostly use PyCharm,
WebStorm, DataGrip (if you do any SQL work give it a try!) and of course
ReSharper. I don't see Rider as "ready" yet, seems to not support opening up
some of my .NET Core solutions still. Hoping it becomes stable and usable like
regular VS.

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avighnay
It should be quantified whether we are talking about $1000 one time or $1000
per month or $1000 per year and for how many users;

$1000 one time (multiple users) - this is an investment quite affordable by
small scale enterprise ($2M-$5M annual revenue) even in developing countries

$1000 one time (per user) - this is usually for the medium and large scale
enterprises. But actually really affordable if the expected ROI is large,
typically will apply to any software that deals with direct revenue generation
e.g. Sales enablement

$1000 per year (per user)- this falls under the radar of even professional
individuals if the software delivers something really critical for them. E.g.
Adobe CC single user license

$1000 per month (per user) - this falls under the reach of medium and large
scale enterprises depending on how many users need the software

$1000 custom built software - if you get yourself a custom built software for
$1000 by paying a freelancer or a really low profile dev shop, then it is
jackpot especially for an Enterpise. I assume/hope this is not what you had in
mind.

All this is typically is for enterprises and I firmly believe the enterprise
demand for software is why the software industry is as large and as
sustainable as is today.

We should all thank software that are priced $1000 and above, they are in a
way the reason for our existence (as software professionals/companies)

Strive to build such software and don't hesitate to price it as such.

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joshvm
It comes down to how much time you save using the software. If software A
costs $100 but takes 20 hours to do the same thing that B (costing $1000) can
do in 2, then it's a no brainer. It's a interesting price point, because for
my work, $1000 is expensive, but reasonable if it's necessary software. $5k
isn't an option unless it can provide serious value, and above that is pie in
the sky. (Until they work for a company, most people don't value their
labour).

Typically $1000 doesn't get you fantastic support, you might get a year of
email/phone, but don't expect much.

A one off payment of $1000 is nothing compared to some SaaS's that advertise
hundreds of dollars a month for premium tiers, or tens/hundreds of dollars per
user per month.

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ChuckMcM
People for whom $1,000 for a tool is a reasonable amount of money, sometimes
even a bargain.

People designing things will buy a CAD package which can cost anywhere from
$1,000 up to $50,000. Complex solvers like antenna simulation or computational
fluid dynamics can command big prices. FPGA design software. Simulators.

The are lots of things $1,000 should get you when you pay that for software.
It should get you a phone number that someone will answer during working
hours. A support ticking system where a bug report will always be resolved to
either a fix or a workaround.

Think of it this way, if you buy a piece of software that costs $1,000 and
using it you can do work for a company that generates $100,000 in revenue?
Then that is a not a bad investment.

~~~
derefr
The question is not why there are any software products priced at _more_ than
$1000; it's why the _centre of the pricing distribution_ for many types of
software is _exactly_ $1000. Why does a CAD program cost $1000 instead of
$800, or $2000, or even $10000? (CAD _workstations_ certainly can cost $10000,
so I don't think that's a stupid question.)

If this is "freelancer-tier" pricing, and freelancers don't have to worry
about a price-point beyond which they must fill out requisition forms, then
software priced for them _should_ just cost however much they're willing to
pay (i.e. some percentage of how much money it makes them), which should vary
with their revenue, rather than always ending up at a similar global price-
point.

And if it's _not_ "freelancer-tier" pricing; if it's something else—then what
is it?

~~~
jdietrich
$1000 is the purchasing limit in most large enterprises - anything over $1000
needs specific authorization. Buying a product at $999 is completely
frictionless, while buying a product for $1001 involves multiple meetings and
reams of paperwork. In enterprise purchasing logic, $999 is indistinguishable
from free and $1001 might as well be $50,000.

Clever software marketers have realized that a $999/mo SaaS product fits under
that limit just as well as a $999 boxed product.

~~~
troydavis
At least from having sold to a small subset of them, the “most” in “$1000 is
the purchasing limit in most large enterprises” isn’t accurate.

Yes, almost every large company has different purchase requisition approval
processes based on the amount and often the type of expense, but they vary
widely between companies and roles. There’s nothing magical about $1000 vs
$500, $250, $0, or $2500. I’m not even sure $1000 is the mode; at least from
my small sample, $0 and something larger ($2500 or $5000) are more common.

Also, in nearly all cases I’ve seen, large companies determine the approval
process for anything with a monthly fee differently (generally using the total
1-year expense). If it ever existed, the “clever exception” is long gone now
that companies buy a lot of SaaS.

Finally, usually larger enterprises are using SAP, Oacle ERP, Coupa, or a
similar “Procure to pay” (yes, that’s what the category calls itself) product,
and they have really complex approval rules by ledger category, not just
amount.

(My own theory is that patio11’s otherwise-good blog post simplified things so
far that many readers thought the specific thresholds it gave were a lot more
common than they ever were.)

~~~
vram22
What does "Procure to pay" mean?

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CyberFonic
In my experience government departments will buy $1000 + software packages
when sold by slick salespersons, especially near the end of their annual
budget cycle, when they chose to spend remaining funds so as to not have their
budget cut. I have seen dozens of unopened boxes in many IT department
offices.

~~~
onion2k
_I have seen dozens of unopened boxes in many IT department offices._

Most enterprise software is installed over a network and managed with a
license manager. An unopened box is not a sign that the software hasn't been
used.

~~~
xapata
Not in the old days.

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melolife
Individuals in roles with $1000 of purchasing authority, thereby avoiding
procurement processes for larger purchases.

~~~
sideshowb
This. Many companies have a cut off around $1000 and purchases above that need
more authorization.

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twobyfour
If you make $50k/yr (as a freelance headshot photographer in a small town)
using Photoshop, a $1000 license plus a $500 upgrade every two years is worth
your while. (I'm not up to date on the current subscription pricing but assume
it's analagous.) Many people make much more than that per year using such
software.

In my current job at a small business, there are things we spend $10k/mo on to
make $1M/mo in revenue. Even if we were only making $100k/mo, those costs
would not be prohibitive (though we might be looking at reducing them
further).

Basically, you have to spend money to make money. If what you spend will allow
you to make more than you're spending (and more than you'd make without it),
it's worth it. The term many use for that sort of spending is "investment".

~~~
vram22
Great realistic comment.

To reinforce it, there's that saying that some people know the cost of
everything and the value of nothing.

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djsumdog
ArcGIS is another one (although the OSS qgis alternative is picking up steam).

Adobe now chargers a much more affordable per year subscription. Honestly I'd
rather pay the $300 ~ $600 for a version that doesn't expire, but that's just
me.

To answer your question: mid-level enterprise customers that need a very niche
product.

~~~
toomuchtodo
How close is qgis to parity with ArcGIS? And can qgis interpret openstreetmap
data?

~~~
voltagex_
I haven't used ArcGIS but I can answer - it's nowhere near MapInfo or even
FME, but it's still very very useful in its own right. QGIS really needs more
development effort, especially to work within corporate firewalls - I think I
can still crash certain versions if they get a 407 back from the update check.

~~~
vetinari
FME and QGIS are not directly comparable.

FME is an ETL tool, using it just for the Data Inspector part would be a
waste. In this scenario, QGIS would be also more comfortable and user
friendly. On the other hand, QGIS cannot do what is FME's primary use -
transform data.

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webreac
When an individual pays that much, he will not admit he has lost his money on
a shitty software. He will spend all the efforts of learning how to get all
the benefits of the software, then he will pretend (sometimes to himself) that
the software gives valuable features that justified all this money and time.

The same phenomen occurs for cars. People are always less critic when they
have payed a lot.

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IvanK_net
Another example, wich is quite popular yet expensive, is MatLab (the licence
costs over 2000 USD). [https://www.mathworks.com/pricing-
licensing.html](https://www.mathworks.com/pricing-licensing.html)

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p0nce
Hex Rays and ICC are unmatched. Once you have worked with ICC backend you'll
miss it a lot when using say, LLVM. Same story for IDA, I don't think any
competitor does something at this level. Photoshop is being displaced by
nimbler competitors.

~~~
earenndil
The one time I used icc (I got it for free, and wanted to play with it, and I
had an application for which perf was relevant), it had significantly worse
performance than clang, which trailed just behind gcc. In what way is it
unmatched?

~~~
p0nce
I used it for years. The auto-vectorizer is unmatched imho. It has a very
systematic way to turn loops into incredibly tight code. I use LLVM 4.x and
this is very far from ICC.

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muzani
I'm working with someone making software in that range. They target retailers,
saving them easily hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. The idea behind
the pricing was to make it seem like they are naive for charging so little.

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helen842000
Even small companies use software that costs multiple thousands of dollars a
year.

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jk2323
Linux OCR is priced like this. Unfortunately.

[http://www.ocr4linux.com/en:pricing:start](http://www.ocr4linux.com/en:pricing:start)

This pricing is prohibitive expensive for most private users.

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gesman
Target easy buyer. Many corp has $500 approval-required-threshold.

So if your software cost $499 - then you may make more sales that if it would
cost $1000 a pop.

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Feniks
Enterprise and professionals.

And then there's the large group that pirates the software, but those are
potential future customers.

