Ask HN: Why aren't more ONCE-style products being built?
I want to see more ONCE-style products (once.com), but nobody seems to be building them (except me). Is it because people don’t know how, or because they don’t believe in this distribution model? Has anyone tried something similar?
2 comments
Most non-free software is marketed to companies these days, except for games. Most of it is to support putting non-software products in front of people.
So in that framing, a company can pay for recurring prices for software, and this benefits (obviously) the seller. It benefits the buyer because no software is useful forever. If a company makes a very expensive one-time purchase of Slack, they may have wasted their money if they get acquired and everyone is moved to Teams instead. So it makes sense for a company like Slack to charge a "low" price for each user per month.
And no individual consumer would purchase slack for 9-18 dollars per month. No, they are interested in buying a new toilet seat - that can only exist because large companies making toilet seats needing software like slack to internally discuss if they should add padding to all their toilet seats.
So in that framing, a company can pay for recurring prices for software, and this benefits (obviously) the seller. It benefits the buyer because no software is useful forever. If a company makes a very expensive one-time purchase of Slack, they may have wasted their money if they get acquired and everyone is moved to Teams instead. So it makes sense for a company like Slack to charge a "low" price for each user per month.
And no individual consumer would purchase slack for 9-18 dollars per month. No, they are interested in buying a new toilet seat - that can only exist because large companies making toilet seats needing software like slack to internally discuss if they should add padding to all their toilet seats.
Wouldn’t it be cheaper to just pay for a ONCE-style product like Campfire? It’s not that expensive compared to what companies spend on Slack. Then when the time comes, you can switch to Teams (having saved thousands in the meantime).