undefined | Better HN

0 pointsSpivak1y ago0 comments

Right but on-prem doesn't mean you escape SaaS pricing. It'll still be $10/user/mo but now you have to run it too. A lot of times you'll pay a premium on the hosted price to get an on-prem version.

Software pricing is a reflection of the fact that it's not a consumable good and the humans that make it have ongoing expenses like rent— not necessarily that it's hosted. Even in the bits in a box days the business was built around recurring revenue, you could choose to not buy the next version but it implicitly relied on most people not doing that.

0 comments

1 comments · 1 top-level

Retric1y ago

That depends heavily on how competitive the sector is. Restaurant POS software covers a the largest array of different companies and businesses models I’m aware of. SaaS is generally quite expensive in that market.

In the bits in the box days, quite a lot of the world was skipping version numbers. That was a huge reason for SaaS pricing in the first place. Worse boxed software generally needed some improvement to justify upgrading, SaaS is heavily optimized for rent seeking.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse