This is right on. When I saw the pricing I had major sticker shock but after looking at this post and seeing the homepage it seems like certain organizations might find value in it.
I've heard similar feedback, and it's entirely possible the pricing is wrong and I may have to adjust, however for a certain type of company I think the value is there. Based on the number of companies signing up for the trial, it's looking good.
Something I wrote earlier to explain the thinking behind the price:
An hour of work of a salaried Senior Software Engineer costs on average $56 across the US [] (and quite a bit higher in Silicon Valley for example). If you're a consultant selling your AWS expertise, based on my own experience you will be charging at least $200 for an hour of your time. If Cloudcraft helps you do your job better, helps you coordinate with your team (for example by you creating a Green-Blue deployment blueprint that everyone will finally understand), win you client as a consult, impress your boss in presentations, it's great value for you. If it saves you more than an hour, it's only good value. And I'm absolutely sure we can save you more than an hour if you work in a team on AWS every day!
Let's compare that to some other SaaS costs that my small business pays:
We pay $75 for a performance monitoring agent per host (with MANY hosts) through New Relic, because it helps us pinpoint performance problems better than anybody else, and saves us engineering time.
We pay $49 per month per team member to PagerDuty to send us an SMS if the site goes down. So far it has happened exactly once. I'm a very happy user of this service!
We pay $40 per team member for a shared email inbox (also known as help desk software :), because it helps us coordinate who is answering a question, keeps a record, and saves us time.
Cloudcraft is currently priced the same as a single m3.medium instance in AWS. We think we'll be able to create you more value than that. If you disagree, if you're just learning AWS, if you're on the free AWS tier, etc. I think the Free plan is pretty awesome: you can create the exact same thing as with Pro, only with a smaller scale.
The last posting of cloudcraft was only 4 months ago. IIRC, hacker news penalizes anything that was popular within the last year. Posting a different page bypasses that.
Also, a lot of the feedback on the last post was discussion about possible pricing models, the OP probably posted this page as a response to that.
Cloudcraft dev here. I just found out it's on HN when seeing the influx of traffic :) Wasn't planning on posting it again, but thank you original poster.
Tens of thousands of really cool architecture diagrams have been made with the tool so far, from pitch decks (marketecture, as you call it) to teams just planning their usual deployments.
If you've produced any kind of static diagrams in the past, this is functionally (IMHO) so much better because you can connect the nodes to your live AWS environment resources and get richer contextual information (example screenshot https://cloudcraft.co/graphics/email2.png) right there as you work on it. I hope to build many more AWS specific tools to help devs on top of this canvas.
It's quite a bit for an individual. It's hopefully not too much for company that employs professional software developers or for someone working as an AWS consultant.
It is still expensive even for companies compared to other much more essential services such as GitHub, for example. Honestly, I wouldn't pay more than $4.99/user/mo. Okay, $9.95 the most, but not a penny (literally) more!
And there's plenty of software that allows you to do exactly that. This is a niche market tool for a specific segment, not trying to compete with paint.exe
Photoshop and Illustrator are definitely not direct comparisons, that's like saying you can spend $100/year on Microsoft Word or you could just use nano for free.
If the free version of nano only let you work on documents up to a certain, fairly limited size, and there was a paid version of nano for $100 that removed this limitation, then your analogy would hold.
You can use Cloudcraft for free and create exactly the same type of diagrams as with the paid plans, for as long as you like. There's no watermarks, missing components, etc.
If it saves you time and money, or you think the additional features add value, you could consider subscribing. But it's fine if you don't.
But many of us would like to, though. Obviously you wouldn't want to take $9/month from people who would gladly give you $49. But on the other hand, active customers paying $9/month seem infinitely more valuable than free customers.
Free for tiny diagrams. I am a software architect working on AWS, and it was too small for the very first diagram I tried to create. I am their target market. The free version is no use to me. $49/month isn't worth it. Honestly, for $49/year I'd still hesitate because of usability issues.
Dear Cloudcraft Pro developer: This is the most exciting thing I've seen today. I've been wanting a tool like this since I started using AWS.
However, the "Pro Solo" pricing strikes me as being way out of whack. It's as much as the "all apps" Adobe Creative Cloud plan. It's a 6X multiple of licensing all Office apps for a year, and just under the cost of licensing all JetBrains products for a year.
Please provide a reasonable (say, $99), yearly "Solo Designer" plan for "infinite grid" planning and illustration, so that I may happily give you my money instead of using a free version with mysterious canvas size limitations.
Thank you CharlesW, that's really good feedback. It's entirely possible that the pricing is whack. I like the suggestion of a cheaper yearly plan.
The fixed canvas is how the software has been since day one, tons of great diagrams have been created anyway. It wasn't intentional as much as a technical limitation at the time that took significant re-engineering to overcome. It's possible that it's not the correct move to reserve it for the paid plans, we'll see.
I don't get the pricing, really. Remove the free plan, offer a 1 month free try for paid users and lower your first paid plan. $50 a month is nuts for individuals.
People seem to be all up and arms over the $49 starting price point, but honestly this is their first attempt at pricing. Pricing is hard.
$49 for a company is nothing, and a lot will pay this. However, I somewhat agree that the starting price of $49 for individuals feels a bit high. Perhaps there is a room for an individual vs business plan?
By the way, huge supporter of CloudCraft. I use it to send clients architecture overviews when going through security audits.
Sick of absurdly-priced applications like this that want to charge you a huge monthly fee for something trivial? Contribute to Dia [0], a reasonably good diagramming program that could use some love.
32 comments
[ 28.5 ms ] story [ 83.9 ms ] threadSomething I wrote earlier to explain the thinking behind the price:
An hour of work of a salaried Senior Software Engineer costs on average $56 across the US [] (and quite a bit higher in Silicon Valley for example). If you're a consultant selling your AWS expertise, based on my own experience you will be charging at least $200 for an hour of your time. If Cloudcraft helps you do your job better, helps you coordinate with your team (for example by you creating a Green-Blue deployment blueprint that everyone will finally understand), win you client as a consult, impress your boss in presentations, it's great value for you. If it saves you more than an hour, it's only good value. And I'm absolutely sure we can save you more than an hour if you work in a team on AWS every day!
Let's compare that to some other SaaS costs that my small business pays:
We pay $75 for a performance monitoring agent per host (with MANY hosts) through New Relic, because it helps us pinpoint performance problems better than anybody else, and saves us engineering time.
We pay $49 per month per team member to PagerDuty to send us an SMS if the site goes down. So far it has happened exactly once. I'm a very happy user of this service!
We pay $40 per team member for a shared email inbox (also known as help desk software :), because it helps us coordinate who is answering a question, keeps a record, and saves us time.
Cloudcraft is currently priced the same as a single m3.medium instance in AWS. We think we'll be able to create you more value than that. If you disagree, if you're just learning AWS, if you're on the free AWS tier, etc. I think the Free plan is pretty awesome: you can create the exact same thing as with Pro, only with a smaller scale.
[] http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Industry=Software_Develo...
Also, a lot of the feedback on the last post was discussion about possible pricing models, the OP probably posted this page as a response to that.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10722942
And what a pricey codpiece it is? $50/mo for the solo plan? To make diagrams? Seriously?
If you've produced any kind of static diagrams in the past, this is functionally (IMHO) so much better because you can connect the nodes to your live AWS environment resources and get richer contextual information (example screenshot https://cloudcraft.co/graphics/email2.png) right there as you work on it. I hope to build many more AWS specific tools to help devs on top of this canvas.
$49/month for all of Adobe creative cloud including Photoshop and Illustrator, or for one isometric diagram tool.
If it saves you time and money, or you think the additional features add value, you could consider subscribing. But it's fine if you don't.
But many of us would like to, though. Obviously you wouldn't want to take $9/month from people who would gladly give you $49. But on the other hand, active customers paying $9/month seem infinitely more valuable than free customers.
However, the "Pro Solo" pricing strikes me as being way out of whack. It's as much as the "all apps" Adobe Creative Cloud plan. It's a 6X multiple of licensing all Office apps for a year, and just under the cost of licensing all JetBrains products for a year.
Please provide a reasonable (say, $99), yearly "Solo Designer" plan for "infinite grid" planning and illustration, so that I may happily give you my money instead of using a free version with mysterious canvas size limitations.
The fixed canvas is how the software has been since day one, tons of great diagrams have been created anyway. It wasn't intentional as much as a technical limitation at the time that took significant re-engineering to overcome. It's possible that it's not the correct move to reserve it for the paid plans, we'll see.
I really don't get cloud plans like these.
$49 for a company is nothing, and a lot will pay this. However, I somewhat agree that the starting price of $49 for individuals feels a bit high. Perhaps there is a room for an individual vs business plan?
By the way, huge supporter of CloudCraft. I use it to send clients architecture overviews when going through security audits.
I can see how the price might seem high for individuals. But for companies who really on AWS for ops, the price can vertainly be justified.
It's a classic case of "price your product/service based on VALUE it provides".
[0] http://dia-installer.de/