> Highcharts is extremely inexpensive compared to the other costs that go into a commercial product
Yes but Highcharts is extremely expensive compared to other alternatives which are free. Unless you're in the .NET world, no one really pays for libraries and frameworks anymore since the open source alternative is either better or just good enough.
At some point in the decision process you should be weighing the cost of buying software/support vs. the cost of developing it in-house. Highcharts is not expensive compared to developing something similar yourself, unless you have the luxury of a loose schedule and are being paid at something like $10 an hour.
I think the reason these "cost concerns" are being expressed is that a programmer isn't trained to weigh these things objectively. It's like going directly to a surgeon with an ailment and asking their recommended course of action. Their expertise is surgery, so their resolution is more likely to involve a knife.
What you keep ignoring is that highcharts is way better than those alternatives, and that many people really like the simplicity of paying people for great products.
That's one of those "It depends" situations. I've reviewed most of the charting libraries that have been posted in this thread and although yes they have come an extremely long way from 4 years ago when we picked Highcharts; all of them would still need a lot of work from our end to add extensions to be able to build all the charts we have in our products using built-in Highcharts options. But like I said it depends, a startup might not want to pay that money but that $3000 for 5 dev Highstock license is way less than the salaries needed for 5 devs to write the custom extensions in order to use something else to meet our needs.
Not sure which part isn't true in 2014 - that highcharts is way better than the competitors or that some people like the simplicity of paying money for things? For me, the first is less true than it was 4-6 years ago but still true and the second is more true than it was 4-6 years ago.
Yes but Highcharts is extremely expensive compared to other alternatives which are free. Unless you're in the .NET world, no one really pays for libraries and frameworks anymore since the open source alternative is either better or just good enough.