Jumping from free to $50/mo feels like there's a 4.99/9.99 plan missing somewhere. Just because you have 3 people on your team doesn't mean you can casually spare $50 a month, that's a lot of money to the vast majority =(
Especially since a project going from one to three, and in the rare case four or five, folks is pretty common, but hitting 10 team members is a serious project milestone. At 10, you're probably also starting to look at funding. These plans are missing a tier =S
(people seem to be falling over themselves trying to read this as someone who works for a company that can afford this service complaining there should be a plan that lets them pay less for it. Instead, take a moment and remember there's an entire unpaid open source ecosystem out there, with devs who can't afford Zapier, don't have 50/mo to spend on automation for a project that gets used, sometimes by billion dollar copmanies, but no one is paying them for, and who might still want to pay for a service like this at a tier above "free". Does that mean "trigger.dev must add a tier"? no of course not, but it would be great to understand why there's nothing between free and business plan pricing)
^ this here is the reason why I never want to build SaaS products for developers.
If you use and benefit from a product that saves time for 3 (usually the most highest paid) employees in the business (developers), you either need re-evaluate how much value this product provides or re-evaluate your business plan.
Professionals drawing a paycheque, or folks working on a product? Sure. Open Source that no one pays for even if the users inclulde multimillion dollar companies because "it's open source, why should we pay anything"? No.
The problem with $10/month plans is that replying to a single support email relating to them can swallow your margin for the month and result in a net loss on that customer.
You have to sell SO many of those plans for them to become worthwhile.
It's a lot easier to sell 100 $50 accounts than it is to sell 500 $10 accounts, and you end up with customers that are more likely to increase to even higher tiers in the future.
You work for a billion dollar company, are you speaking from your perspective as a software engineer or... something else? Price sensitivity as an individual is understandable but when you're talking about a team I struggle to understand why there's a meaningful difference between $5 and $50. For a business, if software is valuable enough to use, it's valuable enough to spend $50 on. Plus, $50 is below the threshold most businesses have for discretionary purchases.
I'd implore the OP not to get distracted by this sort of feedback: any serious business user will be more than happy to spend $50/month on a service like this. Trying to cater to people who are this price sensitive is a recipe for an unprofitable nightmare.
Maybe, and this might be confusing, folks didn't always work where they do today, and have experiences based on "I don't have money but I work on a project with 5 others that the world seems to use a ton, but no one's paying for". "A team" and "a business" are not the same. Running a business? Pay for team tier. Open source project that just has more than 2 people organized in a team? I'll let you think of that one.
And of course, "it's open source, just install it on your own host" is a perfectly valid response, but "you have money, what are you complaining about" is maybe a little ridiculous given that people can voice concerns for an entire class of folks, not just themselves. $50 is a lot of money for a lot of folks in open source.
The situation you’re describing is exceptionally niche and one in which you can simply reach out to the company and ask for accommodation: there’s thousands of open-source projects sponsored by for-profit companies by granting access to paid services for free (your employer is one of them, Fastly sponsor a bunch of projects by giving free CDN).
Asking a company to sell their services to everyone at a huge loss because a minority of open-source projects can’t afford their service is more ridiculous.
It's literally the situation I was in before so: why are you trying so hard to gaslight what is a perfectly valid question? They probably have a good reasons for there not to be a middle tier: if so, cool, but it feels missing so hopefully they read HN comments and can explain why the first paid plan jumps straight to $50.
A challenge many startups face is undervaluing their service. You started out by saying that their service was too expensive — “that's a lot of money to the vast majority =(” — which is the sort of complaint that induces founders to think they need to lower their prices. They don’t. Most startups should be charging more. $50 is nothing to the customers that Trigger want to attract in order to succeed.
I have no beef with your point about open-source developers having very limited budgets, but it’s very important to contextual your feedback. You specifically talked about teams of multiple people, it was unclear you intended to describe a very niche situation.
Thanks for the clarification. I took your comment as a personal assault from the phrasing, accusing me of being a hypocrite because I happen to draw a paycheque these days. Thank you for explaining that wasn't the intention.
Especially since a project going from one to three, and in the rare case four or five, folks is pretty common, but hitting 10 team members is a serious project milestone. At 10, you're probably also starting to look at funding. These plans are missing a tier =S
(people seem to be falling over themselves trying to read this as someone who works for a company that can afford this service complaining there should be a plan that lets them pay less for it. Instead, take a moment and remember there's an entire unpaid open source ecosystem out there, with devs who can't afford Zapier, don't have 50/mo to spend on automation for a project that gets used, sometimes by billion dollar copmanies, but no one is paying them for, and who might still want to pay for a service like this at a tier above "free". Does that mean "trigger.dev must add a tier"? no of course not, but it would be great to understand why there's nothing between free and business plan pricing)