One of the things that we’re noticing in web development is a pickup in the changes in subscription software packages. In general, these are price increases, although they are often structured as subscription structure changes, or feature add-on pricing (for features that essentially existed at the previous price before), that sort of thing.
As we continually say, costs do keep going up in web development. Every feature, every requirement, every regulatory process, they all add costs, and as they develop, will add costs upon those costs. There is no free lunch for long on the Internet. And price increases aren’t new.
But in addition, part of this cost increase seems to be a greater desire by “the money people” to start recouping. There have been a lot of online property acquisitions in the past few years, many of which have kind of flown under the radar. They become more visible when the price increases happen..
For example, Wild Apricot. It has had 2 price increases in the past 2 years. It has also essentially been acquired twice in two years.
For example, Trello. Atlassian purchased Trello in 2017. They announced a rather substantive price increase this year.
Again, this isn’t new. But it does seem to be increasing.
I could keep going, but the point of this is a word of warning – the online service pricing that you may be taking for granted in budgeting could come back to bite you. Has your provider been acquired by another? Expect change – and we don’t mean money in your pocket. Service features, subscription structures… and pricing are all on the table.