The Dirty Little Secret of Software Pricing

The Dirty Little Secret of Software Pricing

Everyone has to pay for support. This is a common example of questionable cost justification. Companies claim that you pay support fees for everyone because larger teams generate more support load. That sounds reasonable, but it's not true. In reality, support costs are roughly inversely proportional to the number of people at a site. Large sites develop experts who answer internal questions and submit great bug reports. Licenses cost money. Another tactic is to imply there's a "cost" of providing you a license. Runtime, development, source, and use licenses may carry big price tags, but, let's be real; that piece of paper costs nothing. It's just something to count. We price by what you use to cover our product costs. Bundling is another trick leveraged, often implicitly justified because "more software costs more." However, since shipping costs are zero, it doesn't cost ...

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