from Hacker News

Pivotal Tracker will no longer be free in 6 months

by cap10morgan on 1/20/11, 3:19 AM with 41 comments

  • by rubyrescue on 1/20/11, 3:30 AM

    I've asked about this on HN before (whether others feel the same way). It makes me feel safer to use pivotal knowing they're going to charge for it.

  • by dotBen on 1/20/11, 4:31 AM

    I'm a huge fan of Pivotal Tracker and I'm delighted they are going to be charing a reasonable rate for this valuable service. Also delighted they are keeping it free for open-source, non-profit and individual use.

    However I read that they are going to require you to pay for the upper tiers to use JIRA sync and other such features... wasn't JIRA support built into Pivotal Tracker by the community/3rd party or is this now their own implementation?

    It would be wrong, imo, if they were charging a higher tier to use a community built plugin.

    (why anyone would want to use JIRA is another matter, however)

  • by joshowens on 1/20/11, 4:41 AM

    As a recent PT convert, I am really starting to get into the workflow their app allows. It is certainly much better than basecamp or lighthouse.

    That being said, they put a heavy penalty on having clients on board as part of the process. I have three projects, five part-time coders, five clients, and 1 virtual assistant to keep it all running. I have to pay $100/month to keep going?

    I don't need Jira or Zendesk, so why should I pay $50/month? I could probably setup two $7 accounts and one $18 account and be fine - but then I have to deal with the pain of logging in and out just to do work?

    I would happily pay $25-$30 a month, but $100 seems off the mark to me.

  • by aditya on 1/20/11, 1:43 PM

    Heh. Fascinating how they used to say that they could afford to keep Tracker free because their meat and potatoes was "software consulting":

    How can you afford to offer such a service, completely free? What is your business model?

    Pivotal Labs is a software development consultancy, we get paid to build software, from web applications for startups to large-scale enterprise systems. We built Tracker to support our own projects, and now share it with the agile community, but it is not a primary source of revenue for our company.[1]

    Wonder what changed?

    [1] http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:V05_lTO...

  • by damoncali on 1/20/11, 4:08 PM

    This is a little self serving, because I make/sell a PT competitor (http://trackjumper.com), but I'm curious - how much is a bug tracker worth to you?

    I'm charging $20/month for unlimited everything (users/projects/storage/etc), and can't shake the feeling that some customers find this to be a hefty price tag and others would pay $200 or more.

    BTW - I'm glad they're charging - it's a great product and they deserve to make some scratch from it.

  • by taylorbuley on 1/20/11, 3:36 AM

    Ah, the Ning approach

    Pricing starts at $7 for up to three collaborators, so does that mean individuals and up to two others? Looks like they'll stay free for public projects, but I don't see any mention of individual accounts save on the pricing page's "free for individual use (no collaborators), with up to 2 private projects."

    @rubyrescue: agree with you 100%

  • by rudd on 1/20/11, 4:19 AM

    Interesting timing, as my team was about to start using Pivotal Tracker for our project. Hopefully this encourages them, and the fact that they'll have to pay $50/month after July doesn't scare them away. Not really a big price tag, but any money over free is the hurdle.

  • by xinuc on 1/20/11, 3:40 AM

    oh boy,

    Have been a very loyal user of pivotal tracker, I have 11 projects with 12 collaborators. The smallest plan I could choose is $50 per month. That was shocking me a bit, before I knew I can archive my old projects :P

  • by KevBurnsJr on 1/20/11, 4:05 AM

    Some of their math seems a bit off?

    "Choose a plan with annual billing on or before February 19, 2011, and receive an additional 20% discount for the first year. That’s 18 months of use for the price of 8."

  • by tomjen3 on 1/20/11, 6:32 AM

    Its a great thing that they are starting to charge for their service, but I wish they would charge a certain amount per user with an option to pay for each additional service the team would need.

    I just hate paying for more users than I would need or, integration with JIRA.

  • by peterarmstrong on 1/20/11, 4:49 AM

    Great! I wish they'd been charging for it earlier; it would have been easier to use on some client projects...

  • by toadi on 1/20/11, 8:22 AM

    That was a long beta test before going life.

    They have a good tool and don't have problem paying a reasonable price for it.