Ask HN: What is the most expensive off-the-shelf software you have seen?
I’m curious what is the most expensive off-the-shelf software you have seen?
I expect the answer to be some obscure B2B CAD program? Or perhaps an RDMS?
I realise it can be hard to compare due to difference in pricing models - pay per seat, pay per month, pay one off - but I think we can still have a good discussion.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 131 ms ] threadThe systems that I have personally worked with have all been in the $5M+ range. But that is just for the software licenses. There also are an army of very well paid consultants tasked with customising the system to the clients requirements. And then there is the enterprise hardware from IBM, HP or Sun (now Oracle).
Not sure about today, but there were licenses for highly specialized stuff for ONE seat @ $150k/year. Most were $30k/year.
For example, Palantir
Of course big companies sign huge deals for discounts, but that is the same for Snowflake, Databricks, etc.
Above a certain price/importance threshold, the vendor will have engineers assigned to fine-tune the software to each customer's needs. Does that still count as one?
Top of my mind right now would be the EDA tools used by semiconductor designers.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/off-the-...
> Above a certain price/importance threshold, the vendor will have engineers assigned to fine-tune the software to each customer's needs. Does that still count as one?
No.
There's also Photoshop, Resolume, and TouchDesigner, which are expensive, but nowhere near "the most".
... And let's not forget the the $30k workstation needed to run it too.
Creo has come down relative to it's ProE days and is priced similarly to SW(?), and I believe NX still starts at double to triple per seat.
ANSYS (specifically Fluent) and similar simulation tools have eyewatering per-seat prices, though I'm a little out of date to know if they're less horrible about multicore licences etc.
I don't think that people understand how expensive Oracle gets. Larry Ellison is the 9th wealthiest person in the world (US$137B). You don't get that kind of wealth by selling cheap software.
And the actual real value it provides. Oracle, the database is actually useful. It's possibly the best (or close to) in the market if you've got a large amount of data and need its feature set.
https://www.autodesk.com/products
UE5 has a seat-based subscription model in the same ballpark:
https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/license
$29,400, floating license (Annual).
Engineering 3D Cad modelling/design tool. I learned it when it was called Pro Engineer at University.
In effect, they wanted £48K for nothing.
Yes, Lucee was in our future, but I left before that came to be.
About 3yr after leaving that company, Adobe tracked me down via LinkedIn and my personal Web site and messaged me using my personal email address to put them back in touch directly with someone at my old job who could pick up licence negotiations.
I told them to phone Head Office - they said they'd done that but had not received a return call. I very politely told them to fu....go away as it was not my problem.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucee
https://docs.lucee.org/guides/updating-lucee/migrate-from-ac...
Another that comes to mind was when I was forced to buy “Mindmanager” and was shocked at the cost. Even the base licence was something like €1600/u/year; but the extensions are required, and paid.
Theres a bunch of “top” items of things, gitlab ultimate and sourcegraph being €99/u/m come to mind, which are off the shelf, and actually useful even for frugal people like myself.
Under what circumstance would you be forced to buy a mind-mapping software? Sorry, I am really curious about this now.
- The Sims 4
Total cost is around 1200$ (with ALL DLCs, packs, etc.)
https://www.thegamer.com/the-sims-4-base-game-all-dlc-cost/
Now that I think of it...DCS, the flight simulator -> buying the whole thing, would cost a little above 3K€ (source: https://steamcommunity.com/app/223750/discussions/5/38759693...)
Also, Star Citizen, the biggest pledges (you don't technically NEED to pay with real money, you could try to farm the content ingame) -> anyway, it's probably around 10K€ or 20K€ total. But that's going to be contested by some who will claim that you're not buying content, you're pledging money to the game. Fact is: you pay for a ship, you get the ship -> pledge or not, that looks like buying to me. (Source: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/pledge ; https://robertsspaceindustries.com/store/pledge/browse/game-... )
Of course, that's nowhere near as expensive as lots of other enterprise software, but it was as "off-the-shelf" as you could get short of your local Fry's or Best Buy. No "call us for details" pricing, per-core licensing, recurring subscriptions and support contracts... just old-fashioned software sold directly as a product.
Unfortunately, I can't find screenshots now, so I'm just going off my hazy memories and the details might be a bit off :P
Enterprise software can easily get into 10s of millions per year for licensing plus implementation and consulting fees.
Or if you’re talking pure licensing on a per user basis, easily $10k-$50k per user annually.
This is unlike most other enterprise software. A lot of it has really expensive per user licenses, but if you’re only buying the full Adobe licenses for a couple of employees then it’s not really that expensive, at least not on the over all IT budget.