Sublime Forum

Why buy ST2 is so expensive?

#23

[quote=“SeanWcom”]

[quote=“castles_made_of_sand”]@SeanWcom

Surely you mean $96, 000 a month right?[/quote]

Hey, if he WERE making that much money, more power to him. I’m all about getting paid for hard work. But, $96,000 per month would mean that he’s selling 1,600 copies of ST2 per month. That’s over 50 licenses per day. I’m not saying he isn’t - but that does seem like a bit much.

Ultimately it doesn’t matter. The issue at hand is the cost of the editor. I don’t think it’s expensive but as someone else pointed out, it’s all relative, so we’re in the world of opinion which we could argue about all day. :smile: Here’s a thought: Call of Duty Black Ops 2 raked in over 500 million in 24 hours (at $60 bucks for the standard, non-collector’s edition). That’s over 8.3 million copies sold in 24 hours. That’s 8.3 million people who don’t think $60 bucks is a lot to spend on a game. Why should it be a lot to spend on any other software? And we’re back to opinion. :smile:

I do want to mention that I’m not intending to criticize anyone for their opinion, so I apologize if I came off that way. :smiley:[/quote]

If the stats at wbond.net/sublime_packages/community are accurate, there are 838990 users of package control. Granted, not every package control user has paid for ST2, not every paying user use package control and there are many who have paid but have since switched to another editor. But as an exercise lets say that the numbers are totally accurate, that 10% of the Package Control users have paid for a license, that the editor has been in development for exactly 5 years and that it has always cost $59. That gives us (8389900.159)/(5*12) ~= $82500/month

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#24

What Package Control would benefit from is an API method for seeing if Sublime has been registered or not :smile:

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#25

But that is indeed pure speculation… if ST was such a lucrative business I don’t think Jon would keep working as a solo cowboy.

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#26

Unless… he enjoy what he is doing ?

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#27

Hiring people doesn’t mean you don’t get to work anymore… it means you get to finish your ideas faster.

If you choose your team wisely: 3 brains + 30 fingers > 1 brain + 10 fingers

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#28

Man, I wish you were right! Hiring more people usually means managing more people, letting you less time to code.

In theory, your math it’s good. In practice you will see that 3 brains + 30 fingers it’s not always better than 1 brain + 10 fingers. Been there, done that (although with only one brain plus at once :smile: ). Such a team you speak about it’s so rare that i think it’s a myth :mrgreen:

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#29

[quote=“iamntz”]Man, I wish you were right! Hiring more people usually means managing more people, letting you less time to code.

In theory, your math it’s good. In practice you will see that 3 brains + 30 fingers it’s not always better than 1 brain + 10 fingers. Been there, done that (although with only one brain plus at once :smile: ). Such a team you speak about it’s so rare that i think it’s a myth :mrgreen:[/quote]

As I said, it depends on how you choose and manage the team. I agree it’s not always the case, that’s for sure. If the leader is not respected, and if there are conflicts between team mates, then it’s pretty much a fail.

That’s enough off topic for now…

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#30

Sure! Not that the rest of the project was very on topic! :mrgreen: :ugeek:

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#31

[quote=“iamntz”]

Sure! Not that the rest of the project was very on topic! :mrgreen: :ugeek:[/quote]

Topic? Topic?!? This is the internet! We don’t need no steenkin topic!

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#32

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#33

Someone already stole my bit. :smiley:

I mean, you can more or less assume that any medium or large business is gonna have bought licenses and, given that, if we say maybe 1 in 20 people are using a licensed copy then we’re looking at a few million dollars in revenue over the lifetime of ST. That’s extremely speculative but to say ST isn’t very profitable was probably conservative to say the least.

Anyway, I didn’t mean to be so abrasive in my first post, I was just very tired at the end of a nightmare week.

The price of ST probably isn’t unreasonable at all for some people, but for non-professionals like me all of the products listed in this thread are quite steep!

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#34

Jon is the quintessential mad scientist toiling away in solitude.

Doesn’t care much for distractions.

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#35

I find ST2 to be expensive also, but not in license costs. The $60 is peanuts compared to the investment in changing my workflow, and the opportunity costs from that.

I’ve been using ST2 since October and I’m still not sure if it’s for me. It has its quirks, but I can live with them because it also has great features. The biggest thing keeping me on the fence has been the development lifecycle. It’s not OSS – fine, I don’t want to flog that horse again – but that does mean visibility into the product’s development progress is that much more important to me. Especially since it’s a one-man show. Yet there hasn’t been a blog post from the author since late July, and not even a “nightly” build since September.

This, to me, is why ST2 is expensive.

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#36

Completely agree.
OR (let me put this way): I don’t think that the price for ST2 is so high… or, at least, the productivity you get back pays for the cost of the product.
BUT, should I but ST2 today, with the above mentioned “problems”??

Don’t get me wrong: I’m loving ST2, but some “life signal” from the developer would be appreciated… :wink:

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#37

Very good point. I only recently discovered ST and I was on board all the time I thought the development speed was still high. I could ignore the flaws, expecting them to be ironed out within a reasonable timespan, but I haven’t scraped together the money for a license because I don’t want to line up behind the wrong product too soon. For an unpaid developer like me, it’s a substantial price to pay for something I might later regret.

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#38

memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=2
Last visited:Fri Dec 21, 2012 11:22 am

it’s alive :wink:

:arrow_right: btw, i’m considering to buy ST2, but i’m waiting for some news. If today I buy ST2 , and tomorrow it’s launch of ST3 gonna be sad.

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#39

Yea, however 10% conversion ratio in case when the product can also theoretically be used for free … I would not be that optimistic

Take a look at youtube videos, usually only 1% of people seeing the video rate it … and that costs 1 second and $0

As written by Seth Godin…

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#40

[quote=“NoxArt”]

Yea, however 10% conversion ratio in case when the product can also theoretically be used for free … I would not be that optimistic

Take a look at youtube videos, usually only 1% of people seeing the video rate it … and that costs 1 second and $0

As written by Seth Godin…[/quote]

That result wouldn’t have separated unregistered users because it’s highly unlikely he would’ve had access to the data needed, so it’s a poor analogy given that all Sublime users can be considered “registered”. What’s more, people like me don’t rate YouTube videos, generally speaking, because it’s pointless but I do sometimes buy proprietary software. Different strokes and all that.

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#41

Sublimetext is too expensive? I say no. Coda will cost about 64 euros, a sexy interface is that it was already - I bought Coda and I’m not really happy with it. Unlike Sublimetext. FTP support, because I have Transmit.

For a professional developer of the award sets eh represents the lowest hurdle, the price for the license sought is purely with an hour of work and still have money for a good lunch for disposal.

For recreational users Sublimetext may be too expensive, because that would not make any money, but you’re not forced to buy one license needs to take the “buy me” message be content.

In my understanding, it certainly looks like that when I use a tool which gives me an advantage, then I should also be willing to pay the price. Otherwise, I have to look for other alternatives (of which there are plenty).

I also pay for the current state of the software, I do not buy a lifetime of updates. I can not expect every day JPS developed a new update so that my update addiction is satisfied. Sure it would be nice if once JPS clearly expresses the future because it is surprising, even if since September no new nightly update came out.

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#42

[quote=“sfuchs”]Sublimetext is too expensive? I say no. Coda will cost about 64 euros, a sexy interface is that it was already - I bought Coda and I’m not really happy with it. Unlike Sublimetext. FTP support, because I have Transmit.

For a professional developer of the award sets eh represents the lowest hurdle, the price for the license sought is purely with an hour of work and still have money for a good lunch for disposal.

For recreational users Sublimetext may be too expensive, because that would not make any money, but you’re not forced to buy one license needs to take the “buy me” message be content.

In my understanding, it certainly looks like that when I use a tool which gives me an advantage, then I should also be willing to pay the price. Otherwise, I have to look for other alternatives (of which there are plenty).

I also pay for the current state of the software, I do not buy a lifetime of updates. I can not expect every day JPS developed a new update so that my update addiction is satisfied. Sure it would be nice if once JPS clearly expresses the future because it is surprising, even if since September no new nightly update came out.[/quote]

Well said.

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