Sublime Forum

Pricing for Sublime 2?

#1

Hey I noticed Sublime 2 build 2020 has started popping up the nag screen on OS X. I’m excited to purchase Sublime once it is ready to go, but I’m not sure I’m quite ready to pay for it while it’s in Alpha. I’d like to wait until it’s a bit more mature and don’t particularly want to deal with the nag screen in the meantime. I was also thinking in the back of my mind that with software getting cheaper lately, and if you were planning on competing in the app store, that there’s would be a good chance it wouldn’t be $59 anymore.

Are you planning on keeping the pricing the same? Is the licensing system even set up yet if I were to buy a license? Are you planning an introductory sale or something? Can we shut off the nag screen while in alpha/beta and maybe use a package expiration or something instead?

0 Likes

Unindent (Shift + Tab) deletes the selection
#2

Sublime Text 2 has always had a nag screen, it just doesn’t show very frequently.

I don’t anticipate the price going down, if there’s any change to the price it would be upward.

0 Likes

#3

What are your thoughts on the way software prices have been trending since Apple introduced the App Store? I have no idea if the low prices are actually making developers more money or less money, but I suppose the idea is that lower prices stimulate higher sales volume. Case in point, since the App Store arrived, I’ve been buying more applications than I ever have before. It’s hard to come up with a good excuse to not shell out $5-$10 on an app.

I’m not saying you don’t deserve $60 for each sale of your amazing product, and I’m going to try to convince my boss that we should purchase a business license. However, as far as individual sales goes, I think slashing the price might just make you more money in the end — but, what do I know? :neutral_face: I just know I’d be the owner of a license by now if it cost less than what I paid for my recent OS X purchase. :wink:

0 Likes

#4

I’d say the price point is just about perfect. The same as TextMate and is of similar quality. I couldn’t see the price being any higher though. With compatibility with most of TextMate’s extras it’s ok at $60. Any higher and you’d have to start comparing it to the likes of Coda (which is $100) but is a much more cohesive product than Sublime. The feature set of Sublime would have to be significantly buffed and better integrated to start bumping the price up imo.

0 Likes

#5

I think the pricing is fine. I never paid for an editor before Sublime but I just fell in love with it since the first time we used it.

0 Likes

#6

I bought the ST after about two weeks of heavy working with it.

If you are a programmer, probably your average income is over $1500 (or 1000e if you are in EU). So I guess $60 is a reasonably price.

Worth every penny.

0 Likes

#7

Ill buy a liceense too, its a corect price for it, but not now. I`ll wait to see if will add some future that i realy need for.

0 Likes

#8

Sublime is worth way more than what Jon is charging. I’d honestly understand the price going up after it’s out of beta.

0 Likes

#9

I agree, Sublime is worth MUCH more than what it’s price is. It’s well worth purchasing, even if ST2 is still alpha/beta. It’s extremely usable and will only get better.

0 Likes

#10

I don’t really see how.

Sublime is simply a product just as any other. At it’s current price point it’s best compared to TextMate. If it weren’t for Sublime’s compatibility with TextMate the price would have to be considerably lower as for the same price TextMate’s resources would dwarf it’s own. However, seeing as it is compatible with TextMate $60 is a fair price and even has a leg up being cross platform.

Start upping the price however and you have to start comparing to the higher priced products like Coda, which is $100. Right now ST2 has a very small repository of plugins and not to mention is still quite rough around the edges. Given, it is still in beta, even if you take those two things out of the equation it doesn’t even compare to the cohesiveness of Coda. Also, I don’t believe any of the major features Sublime is lacking, when comparing it to Coda, are even planned to be implemented before release.

So then say you’re going to shoot for some middle tier between TextMate and Coda, Sublime really doesn’t offer much besides cross platform support. At that point you’d just be charging people a premium to use the editor on the OS of their choosing. It’s good business, but personally to me it’s a bad vibe and I’d personally just find an alternative that comes at a fairer price or is free. To me it just comes off as it being more about the money and less about the product, which I understand people need money, but as a consumer I’m looking to buy a product not give you money. It doesn’t give me a ton of faith in your product if you’re just out to get my money rather than get it through supplying a solid product.

Just my 2 cents at least.

0 Likes

#11

$60 for near-constant updates, a young but energetic (and resourceful and helpful, natch) community, a very responsive developer, and the ability to add practically anything you could ever want through the application of API documentation and python. Hell of a bargain if you ask me. Plus it’s damned pretty. :wink:

0 Likes

#12

As a web developer Sublime is the app I spend more time in. I actually purchased it a long time ago before 1.4 turned stable and it’s some of the best spent money ever for me. I could spend 59$ on a night out with the lads, so why not on my main work tool?

I’d say instead to give Jon the opportunity to focus on his work and keep rocking at what he’s doing. I don’t think there’s many editors out there that could challenge VIM or Emacs in extensibility, portability and not suck at usability (especially on non US keyboards) or look and feel. Sublime rocks at ALL these things!

0 Likes

#13

Personally I love the Swiss army knife that come with Sublime Text, the possibility to play with a huge tool-set of possible customisations. The flexibility of the editor is remarkable, and the editor itself is really good looking. Lately I’ve been trying out the Soda theme, and it is really great looking. I like the search and replace functionality and multi selection features of the editor. I must admit as well that I am really impressed with the huge number of updates that are being pushed, and the involvement with the community from the developers. If the program should be priced based on the work put into it, the price tag should be gigantic. But then the developers wouldn’t really sell any copies.

My problem is that while I think it is a good overall editor, I can’t really find out which tool it replaces. I’d prefer an IDE for coding any day, these general purpose editor often presents interesting possibilities, but do not have the tight integration with any specific language than an IDE has. Code insight, debugging functionality, even language specific documentation, these are tools that really increase productivity.

Personally I’ve played around with ST2 for writing Latex documents (using the LatexTools plugin), I haven’t really found any Latex editors for windows I liked, I’ve tried Texniccenter and WinEdt but none of them really felt any good as editors. ST2 gives a good feeling when writing in it, it is unobtrusive in many ways and I like that. But again it has its problems, some of which I am sure are only there because the software is still in its beta phase. But some again seems to be fundamental design decisions.

I am not impressed with the spell checker, while it is a widely used spell checker, used in many other programs, it is not good for doing any serious writing. It catches some spelling mistakes, but is not capable of finding grammatical errors like say Word is. And while I’m not aware of any other Latex editor (at least for Windows) that has that possibility I still think it is a pity. Further more there doesn’t appear to be an option to change the colour of the misspelled words, making them hard to read on dark background colour themes.

The project support, is to put it mildly lacking, projects are close to not existing in the editor, and it is in no ways targeted towards team usage, which I often personally find relevant. Project files includes system specific settings, absolute paths, etc. A solution could be using relative paths, and separating system specific settings to a different file, like most other editors do.

These are some big concerns, especially the project file implementation. But having said all this I still like the editor, and even though I only use it for Latex out of lack of better alternative, I do think I will have a hard time letting go of it, and I will probably purchasing a license, whether these features find their way into the editor or not.

Valve did a survey once (you know the guys behind Steam, that they make lots and lots of money on), I can’t exactly remember when, and while searching the web before I couldn’t find a link to it, but again I didn’t search thoroughly in anyway so I’ll have a look later. What they tried to find out, was how a reduced price of a product influenced the sales of the product, and more importantly the overall money made on the product.

What they found out was that, the lower price was the more they sold, this is in itself not surprising, the surprising part is, that the total amount of money made on a product went up, when the price went down. There were simply that many more that bought the product. As far as I recall they didn’t discover any lower limit (other than the obvious free one of course :smile: ). Now Steam games, which they observed this behaviour on is of course different in many ways from a general text editor like Sublime Text, and the target audience is different. But it does provide an interesting point. The higher the price is, the more consideration it takes before buying a product.

Sublime text needs to adjust its price based on the alternatives, and as it is mentioned it is to be compared to text mate, so a price in that area is in my opinion fitting. But I think the price as it is, is fine, but in the upper limit of what I find acceptable for my use. If the price go up any further there will be other alternatives for most usages.

0 Likes

#14

@Barium, you should really try github.com/Kronuz/SublimeLint if you’re looking for code insight, syntax highlighting and language docs. Those give all but the debugging capabilities you mentioned for coding. And not just in a “patchy” way, for the most part they’re as advanced and usable as in any full blown IDE. :wink:

I believe the ability to build plugins like these and many others in such an easy way, and the willingness and warmth of the core developer as well as of the plugins maintainers, to the point that I had hardly ever seen even in open source projects, really increases Sublime Text value greatly.

0 Likes

#15

[quote=“Kronuz”]@Barium, you should really try github.com/Kronuz/SublimeLint if you’re looking for code insight, syntax highlighting and language docs. Those give all but the debugging capabilities you mentioned for coding. And not just in a “patchy” way, for the most part they’re as advanced and usable as in any full blown IDE. :wink:

I believe the ability to build plugins like these and many others in such an easy way, and the willingness and warmth of the core developer as well as of the plugins maintainers, to the point that I had hardly ever seen even in open source projects, really increases Sublime Text value greatly.[/quote]

Well I’ll have to try them out then :smile: but which IDE are you comparing them to? being used to work with IntelliJ IDEA I usually find it hard working with other IDEs since they simply lack most of the features of that.

0 Likes

#16

@Barium, I’m comparing with Komodo IDE. Which is what I previously used after trying them all at one time or another. Komodo was faster and lighter than most, and that’s what I liked about it… However Sublime Text is way much lighter and better. I use it to code in Python mostly.

0 Likes

#17

I guess I’ll just continue to use Notepad++. Or I could download the 2126 build from a torrent and see if I can get by with that. $60 sure is a lot to get rid of a nag screen.

0 Likes

#18

You’re using it wrong.

Sublime is worth far more than what Jon charges for removing the nag screen. You get updates almost every other day. You get continuous support from both Jon himself, who I think reads almost every bug report and suggestion personally, and the community.

To state in public, where the sole developer reads everything, that you’re willing to torrent his masterpiece to stop removal of the nag screen, you don’t even deserve a reply IMHO.

0 Likes

#19

60 bucks is nothing compared to the cost of switching to a new editor. N-O-T-H-I-N-G!

If you’re a using it each day and your decision is influenced by 60 freaking bucks you’re doing it wrong. You either believe that ST2 increases your productivity or you don’t. If it dose -> switch, If it doesn’t -> don’t.

I live in a second world country and it still took much less time to earn $60 than it took to evaluate/learn even half of ST functions.

If I count all the time it took to develop plugins that are necessary for me to use ST2 @work the cost of the switch is closer to $3000 than $60. And worth every penny! :smile:

0 Likes

#20

As many of you have stated, Sublime Text 2 is turning out to be truly amazing. I heard about it a few weeks back in an IRC channel I hang out in while working on my Java coursework and PHP group project at university and wanted to see what the fuss was about.

It really is an amazing editor and I’m grateful for the large amount of effort that goes into it, but I am concerned that the pricing, for students in particular, may be a little steep. However I’m sure that over the summer I will purchase a full license when the money is available, as I will no doubt be depending on this more and more.

0 Likes