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Ask HN: Fair price

1 points by c-smile ↗ HN
This is about my Sciter engine ( http://sciter.com )

Sciter has 3 price models for the license: INDIE (3 employees), BUSINESS (20 employees) and ENTERPRISE.

Customer: company producing portable medical devices ( ultrasound scanners with displays, each device is about 5,000 euros or so ). Their stuff is around 100 people.

They want to buy Sciter's INDIE license with the reasoning that they have just 2 programmers.

I am happy that team of just 2 programmers can create as firmware as associated desktop software with the Sciter. But somehow it does not sound fair.

How you would decide what to do in such cases? Sell them INDIE license or insist on at least BUSINESS?

8 comments

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ebbv
Shouldn't be too surprising they're going to try to pay as little as possible. You should charge what you think that you should charge, especially if you have reason to believe they can afford it.
sharemywin
You could give them a discount $1000 off the first year. That way you continue to get $620/yr.
sharemywin
but, if there aren't reasonable alternatives or your the cheapest stand your ground.
sbierwagen
Enterprise purchasing people are always going to try to get the cheapest license, because that's their job! Just tell them licensing is based on total headcount, not number of programmers.
sharemywin
you also may want to update it your site for the future.
davelnewton
IMO the pricing page should put the employee information in the pricing boxes; I had to scroll to see anything at all relating to size.

Your licensing is clear (delta the discoverability thing). You explicitly state it's the number of employees, not the number of developers. I don't see how it's even a question.

You have to weigh the potential loss of a single customer, who might move to something like Electron, vs. keeping your pricing model intact.

The idea of offering a first-year discount isn't unreasonable.

c-smile
Problem is that they have sent me a message and I replied that this is about number of employees, not number of programmers, etc.

And they are keep asking for INDIE. Sigh.

davelnewton
So, you either say "That's not what it says", or you work a deal.