Sublime Forum

**tamj** · August 28, 2019, 2:49pm

Originally, did you buy ST for yourself AFTER using it at the day-job ?
I ask as ST looks like a no-brainer proposition for an employer (double/treble code output for $80 a head) but, I believe, is not something a coder would buy without experiencing measurable performance gain, as you would in a job situation with all those KPIs and all that.

**facelessuser** · August 28, 2019, 2:52pm

I evaluated it at work and at home. And yes, my employer probably would have paid for it (I know of some who actually went that route), but I wanted it for personal use. At the time, the price was somewhere around $40 - $50, so I just bought it myself and use it at both home and work.

**tamj** · August 28, 2019, 3:53pm

@frou

Leave it to those inside Sublime HQ and on the payroll to worry about this stuff.

I’m just considering it, not worrying about it.
Wish I had the “problem” of STHQ revenues and profits to “worry” about

**MAN** · August 30, 2019, 7:04pm

I think the $80 price is supportable if updates/improvements were thrown in without charge rather than having to repurchase a new version. Just my opinion.

**ntenney** · August 30, 2019, 8:40pm

I believe that is already the case with Sublime Text. If you by a 3.x license, you are eligible to receive all updates and improvements to that series. You won’t have to pay until they release a 4.x version.

**tamj** · August 30, 2019, 11:29pm

You won’t have to pay until they release a 4.x version . . .

… which could be as soon as the New Year

**facelessuser** · August 30, 2019, 11:54pm

No, this isn’t how Sublime works. When 4.X builds start appearing, you will get dev builds a long time before the official 4.X release. Sublime releases multiple cycles of dev builds and public betas before an official release, all of which your 3.X license will cover. When the official 4.0 release finally lands, then you would have to upgrade. That is how it has worked for every version in the past.

**tajmone** · August 31, 2019, 9:40am

This is an interesting thread, and a constructive one too (I’m sure that SHQ team can appreciate all this passionate users’ feedback).

I’ve seen mentioned here that the price issue might affect many potential customers, and the argument “If ST can’t earn you $80 …”, or that there’s a line between good and amateurs programmers in relation to the price.

I’m not sure about those arguments, for there are surely many excellent programmers living in countries with an inflated currency (for whatever reason, from embargos to calamities or post-war recovery). So, undoubtedly, for programmers living in those countries $80 might be a huge price to pay — also, the exchange ratio for the Dollar and each other currency is not always proportionate in every country, so $80 could be a lot if you have an unfavourable rate exchance, or peanuts if you enjoy a stronger currency, it’s a relative consideration after all.

Surely, we can see that medical drugs have different prices in different countries, depending on their economical strength — some drugs can cost over €20.000 in Europe, and just $1000 in Asia. So, there are many context in which price changes according to coutnry are deemed an acceptable practice.

Of course, ST/SM licenses being sold online makes it a different matter altogether, and possibly prevent a per-country price policy. But, if I remember correctly, shelf-software products did have different prices in differen countries — at least in the pre-online purchase era. I remember that Windows boxed CDs had different prices in different countries, the difference in price being so huge as to not being possibly tied to localization only — e.g. Arabic editions of Windows were more expensive that English Win, but diffrently priced in the gulf (rich countries) and in North Africa (less richer). Probably currecny exchange played a role too, but that wouldn’t explain why buying Windows in Egypt was cheaper than buying in Saudi Arabia (whic had a stronger currncy than the Dollar), so my guess is that it had more to do with sales expections.

As for the argument “more sales = more users support on SHQ side”, I’m not quite convinced of this argument. First, no one is ever asked if he own a license when posting to the Forum — and there is no special customers’ area either. While I was trying out ST (about a year period) I posted questions and no one asked me if I had a license or not. Again, SHQ has a relaxed approach toward its users (licensed or not), just like with the unlimited trial time and features.

I think that these are good strategies, and I’m convinced that many non licensed users might have contributed good quality packages to the ST echo system too. Also, unlimited trial prevents the proliferation of cracks and warez, which ultimately get exploited for PC infections and other malignant purposes. Last but not least, a free-raider (cracker or unlicesed alike) is never a lost customer, for there isn’t enough commitment on their side to buy a product if it wasn’t freely available or crackable — but they still count as user base, possibly contributing to a software popularity.

We’ve seen this with music files, during the Napster era, which ultimately turned out to be a good vehicle for small musicians groups who managed to obtain fame (the only ones who complained where the big corporations, who claimed to have lost sales, which is not a proven statement for we don’t know if those free-ride downloaders would have ever spent money to buy music).

In the end, software protection will only harm legitimate users, and rarely stop software crackers.

**iamntz** · September 1, 2019, 12:02pm

There is a small thing you all seems to avoid: it’s a free market afterall and it regulate itself. There is that „offer/demand” ratio that nobody seems to remember. There is a demand for $80 Sublime? Well, then it will be an offer.

It’s too steep for some? Fine, use the free version until you get the money. It’s too bugy? Use another editor.

Now, for the developers out here: how would you think if your boss will say to you: „Yo, Johnny, I think your salary is too high, what about I half your hourly rate? And I’ll just double the amount of work, so you’ll have the same income!”.

PS: there are almost 17 millions users on Package Control. Assuming that 1% of them had bought the editor, I’d say it’s still a good income for STHQ.

**ihodev** · September 1, 2019, 12:32pm

Sublime Text is too cheap for you guys!

**tamj** · September 1, 2019, 1:37pm

No, this isn’t how Sublime works. When 4.X builds start appearing, you will get dev builds a long time before the official 4.X release.

@facelessuser I sure hope you’re right !

@tajmone

As for the argument “more sales = more users support on SHQ side”, I’m not quite convinced of this argument . . .

Sure. It all depends on what the legal and moral/commercial obligations are for supporting a paid-for product. If a software house sees it as morally/commercially compelling to provide support for something they received money (in good faith) for, then the support overhead has to increase with the number of users. If the software house does not accept these obligations and the law is not clear on them, they will just provide minimum “support”, i.e. a listening post to hear of major bugs in the package and will fix these just to stay in business and keep the cash coming in.

I think that these are good strategies, and I’m convinced that many non licensed users might have contributed good quality packages to the ST echo system too.

You gotta be kiddin’, man !

@iamntz

All you are saying is that the current proposition runs in the current marketplace and that this is legal and, for many current ST users, an acceptable deal.

However the core of this discussion is whether a price reduction would be a better deal cashwise for both ST and potential users who may be put off by the present high price.

I’ll say one thing that I assert is generally true: VS Code, although much heavier and slower than ST, is getting a lot of those who can’t afford ST.
And there’s a few things in VSC that Sublime Text would do well to adopt. Like the compact sidebar toggle displays and their debug.

**jfcherng** · September 1, 2019, 1:25pm

Actually there is a 2019 version. VSC goes even more popular for sure.

**iamntz** · September 1, 2019, 1:36pm

See? They don’t like ST (price, functionality, whatever), they use another tool. That’s exactly how a free market works. I’d say the current cash flow is OK for STHQ, ergo there is no reason to change the price structure.

Right now you all compare ST with VSC or some other free editors. But try to compare ST with other paid products and see where it stands.

Ultraedit is $80 anually.
Textmate is ~$70 (mac only)
Coda is $99 (mac only)
BB Edit is $50 (also mac only)
Jetbrain editors are ~$10/mo each (although we enter on IDE realm) and this is the home user price. For business use you need to pay $20+ monthly.

Fun fact: ST used to be cheaper. In $50-60 range or so.

**tajmone** · September 1, 2019, 2:53pm

I don’t know, it’s just a guess. Package Control stats report >16M users, and almost 5M packages. If everyone of those 16 Million users was a licensed users that would be $80*16k = $1.280.000.000 in revenue (approximately), which would make ST authors multi-billionaires (something they’d rightly deserve, but I doubt these figures match licensed users only, surely there are some free riders among them).

But I like to think that some unlicensed users might have contributed some packages, why not?

**tajmone** · September 1, 2019, 2:58pm

The comparison is not fair IMO, for most of the products you have mentioned are well documented (via offline Help or online documentation) — something that unfortunately is not true for ST. Documentation doesn’t come free, so you should keep it into account when comparing products, instead of just looking at features and performance.

Good documentation is key to a product, and it costs money and time to produce a good documentation and keep it always up to date. The fact that there are plenty of good tutorials for ST, and even unofficial guides and third party books, doesn’t compensate for the fact that the official documentation boils down to a few web pages.

Having to constantly search the forum for vital information (with the risk of coming across obsolete info and examples) is ultimately time-costly on the end user side, whereas a clean and always updated documentation is a real time-saver.

**tamj** · September 1, 2019, 6:20pm

I don’t know, it’s just a guess. Package Control stats report >16M users, and almost 5M packages. If everyone of those 16 Million users was a licensed users that would be $8016k = $1.280.000.000 in revenue (approximately), which would make ST authors multi-billionaires (something they’d rightly deserve, but I doubt these figures match licensed users only, surely there are some free riders among them).*

Flawed reasoning behind your guess.

In a situation of free contribution the Pareto distribution will apply. In other words the vast bulk (80% - 90%) of the packages will be provided by a small minority (10% - 20%) of the userbase. Taking an 80/20 skew, this means that > 99% of packages were provides by 7.9 million users. Taking a 90/10 skew, 99% of packages were provided by just 3 million users. While today’s price is $80, it was less than that in the past, maybe an average of $40. So over 11 years, ST has drawn in revenues of ~ $120 million - $320 million. Or between $11 million - $30 million a year. ST claims it has just 10 employees. If so, they must be on a basic salary of at least $100,000 a year plus bonuses related to company performance - maybe 100% of their salary again. (Company directors/owners on a much higher deal of course.) So ST management is doing okay but not so much as to be VC category just yet.
On a very practical level, how much of those 5 million packages are worth anything to ST’s userbase ? Strip out the unworking packages, the garbage no-use stuff, the repetitions of existing packages, the unmaintained packages and the elegant but too specialised to be any use to anyone else and you’re left with a very small package base indeed. Whatever this percentage of useful packages is, I’d say it gets smaller from those who contribute less - if only because the latter have less practice/skill in coding. Does this component of the package contribution make any material difference to ST’s popularity ? How much time will ST’s 10 employees spend on editing these 5 million packages ?
So much for packages.

**tamj** · September 1, 2019, 6:48pm

Can’t compare with the Mac only software.
Neither can you compare ST with a huge mammoth IDE like IntelliJ: they are two very different beasts that evolved to satisfy two wholly different purposes. IntelliJ’s chassis is designed around an IDE for major languages like Java and C++ while ST is simply a handy and light text editor that’s useful for script language coding, mostly for web applications. UltraEdit doesn’t look like it could even hold a candle to ST .

But again you are avoiding the main point - would the cash burn associated with a sudden increase in user numbers and a whole new consumer profile outrun the cash inflow from them ?

**iamntz** · September 1, 2019, 8:17pm

The short version is no, it will not. The long version is: even if the inflow will increase, it will also increase the users that are… costly (can’t think of a better term): those who sends support emails & those who will ask for refunds. So basically even if the price per user decreases and cash flow increases, the cost of doing busines might increase.

You might got those 17M users wrong. They are editor installs, not users. I.e. if you have 2-3 working machines, Package Control will count you three times. If I had to guess, I’d say that unique users are less than 5M, with about 10% being paying customers. (These are ONLY guesstimates, I’m probably waaaaay off, so maybe not cherry picking on numbers )

What packages are available on Package Control is not relevant.

**FichteFoll** · September 2, 2019, 12:54am

Yeah, those 17M users should be inflated. I don’t know the exact metric that is used for this number, since afaik PC doesn’t log IP adresses and doesn’t do any form of fingerprinting to dedupe same-user actions, such as package installations.

However, the number of ~5K (not M) packages is accurate. Including those that are still listed but have been deleted from Github or only work on ST2 and are abandoned (at least 0.5k).

**tamj** · September 2, 2019, 10:39am

The short version is no, it will not. The long version is: even if the inflow will increase, it will also increase the users that are… costly (can’t think of a better term): those who sends support emails & those who will ask for refunds. So basically even if the price per user decreases and cash flow increases, the cost of doing business might increase.

No and yes. You are talking out of both sides of your mouth here.

Reason For Sublime Text $80 Price: I Think I Have It