I'm curious what apps / software you pay for.
This community is interesting and we all use a bunch of Open Source and free software but I'm curious to see what apps you actually pay for.
I'm curious what apps / software you pay for.
This community is interesting and we all use a bunch of Open Source and free software but I'm curious to see what apps you actually pay for.
30 comments
https://getpolarized.io/
It's basically a PDF and document management repository. It's kind of like Mendeley/Zotero meets Kindle+Github.
I'm kicking around some ideas including just make it flat out free and just focusing on growth to charging for some premium features like cloud sync.
One of the things we're struggling with is many of our users are from the HN community and they aren't really open to using something like cloud sync as they don't trust cloud.
I pay for software when it has value to me, and your product does have value to me. I haven't used it much yet (see below), but I really like what it can offer.
I have paid for:
iOS: GoodReader, Working Copy, OmniFocus, Anki, and Scrivener (these are also among my more frequently used apps). I've paid for some games over the years but mostly board game ports to iPad (because carrying around boxes of games is a PITA). The rest of the apps on my iPhone (iPad isn't handy) are communication apps, media consumption apps (that I may pay a subscription for), or apps for a specific business (like a bank or airline). My iPad will be similar except it'll have the games.
macOS: I've paid for HeroLab, Scrivener, OmniFocus, YNAB4 (of the apps still on my laptop). I have also, in the past, paid for Parallels and some other things but they're not installed and I haven't missed them. I have also bought video games, but none presently installed. The rest of what I use is generally open source. I have Anki and would pay for it if the author sold it.
I would get more value from Polar Bookshelf if you had an iOS offering as that is where I do the bulk of my PDF reading (or Android, I do have a Kindle Fire I use for reading though less frequently). If it were available there, I'd happily pay for it. But I don't need cloud sync. I have sufficient cloud storage already and plenty of room to host the files I'd add to Polar (actually, most of what I'd add I actually have but haven't read in my Dropbox account already).
I do believe it's closed-minded to think all alternatives to commercial software are exactly the same as the commercial version and therefore there's no reason to buy commercial. Paid software still has a reason to exist and many customers to bat.
Desktop subscription based: Devexpress Winforms and ASP.net component suite (best Windows component suite on the market - leaves free alternatives in the dust). Add in Express components for building office add-ins (could not build my core product without it)
Both of these combined cost me about €1,000 a year. Well worth it too as they make my software far superior to all the competition that use free components.
SaaS: Hotjar for website heatmaps and session cams (HUGELY VALUABLE!). Linkedin Premium for help contacting potential partners (HUGELY VALUABLE!). Feedbin, RSS reader. Mailchimp
[All of my own products are desktop apps that consumers pay $60-$150 for. Sales are up.]
Question (for the Mac people here): what's the Mac equivalent of that?
IntelliJ IDEA
Sublime Text 3
Microsoft Office
JProfiler
VMWare Workstation
Postbox Email
Little Snitch
1Password
Dropbox
I’m happy to pay for good software and support. Especially for things I rely on like IntelliJ. Not only has it been better than Eclipse for years but it keeps getting better because there’s a whole company full of people whose business it is to make it better.
If there’s a bug I can report it and reasonably expect a fix. With pure OSS software you often just get some fuck head telling you “PRs welcome”. I get it. I have my own open source projects in addition to my day job. Sometimes I just want to be able to expect support for the things I need and not try to learn every codebase of every piece of software I use so I can fix a bug.
There was also Photodex's ProShow Gold[1] - imho, the photoshop of photo2video software. Powerful yet so easy to use (after a day of testing). I bought it because I found that this type of creative work helps me relax, etc... Lots of similar software (I about tried them all over the years) but nothing came close. Worth every penny. Not WINE-friendly (I found after transitioning):-(
Company issued but honorable mention: Azure RP[2] for prototyping, wireframing and planning. This was years ago but I never worked with a piece of software that was able to communicate so much, so quickly to everyone involved in a project. Very powerful at the time. Many competitors in this space today. fyi: Have not touch it in many years - it may be completely different now...
These three really stand out, though I have purchased some others over the years. All three are part of the creative process and produce something at the end (script, video, a prototype) - all of which I find engages me.
In the end (personally) it's about how much software will enrich you. There's also a limit on how much I'm willing to spend (usually under $100).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4DOS
[1] https://www.photodex.com/proshow/gold
[2] https://www.axure.com/
Maybe I’m just drawing a blank. I’d be curious to know if anyone pays for command line tools.
- IDE (IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate) [Yearly Subscription] - HyperVisor (Parallels, VMWare Fusion+Vagrant VMWare plugin) [Yearly Subscription; Per-Version purchase respectively]
However I still use a couple of apps that I paid for once and continue to use:
- Time tracking/Invoicing (Billings Pro, soon to be replaced as they don't support their self-host server any more) - Diff (Kaleidoscope) - Diagrams/Wireframes (OmniGraffle - haven't actually upgraded to a version that supports Mojave yet though) - 'Office' suite (Pages/Numbers)
Most recently, I paid for the Mac version of Soulver (https://www.acqualia.com/soulver/) because I got the iOS version for free and I really liked it. I regularly purchase apps on my phone if they solve my problems and are high quality.
Email provider
Standard Notes
Sublime Text 3
Password Manager
Games
kanbanflow
Balsamiq
movies / TV / Audio subscription and purchases (sort of counts these days)
used to pay for GitHub
used to pay for Windows (linux now)
I donate to a bunch of foss projects too, but those don't really count since its not a 'purchase'
Fman and Standard Notes are really great products btw, solo devs too.
edit - formatting
Paid for sublime text around 3-4 years ago, used it for 1-2 solid years, now a days am on VIM + TMUX but don't regret having paid.
Paid for PyCharm, used less than 1 month, regretted paying for.
And that's about it.
At work we use loads of SaaSy things: Azure, Pingdom, BrowserStack, Segment, Office 365, AWS, Zendesk, JIRA, etc. etc.
- I pay for an account at sr.ht
- I host my site and other things via prgmr
Sublime Text (But I changed to use Visual Code last year)
MacOS
IntelliJ
Oxford Dictionary (English to Chinese, mobile app)
Daijirin (Japanese dictionary, mobile app)
Now I can easily send files, notifications, etc from phone to laptop and vice versa. Plus it has an advantage that I get google drive backup of everything done everyday!
The backup feature does sound nice. I back my messages up to google drive, though.
IntelliJ... love it. Can't live without it.
Slack... of course.
Github.
Lots of web apps like Typeform.
Office
JetBrains IDEs
AWS and Azure (most of the price covers hardware, but some of it certainly goes to the software on top)
G Suite
Slack
Atlassian products
Actual Multiple Monitors
Sync.com
Github - I used to pay, but not anymore. Since, private repos are free now.
Slack.
Joyent for cloud VMs
- Jetbrains All Pack
- LittleSnitch
- Git Tower
- iStats
- VMWare Fusion
- Beyond Compare
- Office 365
Omnifocus
Keyboard Maestro
Quiver
Quickbooks
- Sublime Merge
- Alfred
- Daisy Disk
- Github
- Office
- AWS