Discussion of Roam-like Knowledge Managers

Posted by Luhmann
Apr 19, 2020 at 11:46 PM

A couple of thoughts and comments on Obsidian pricing:

1. The reason for publishing the pricing model is precisely so that people don’t waste time on something they won’t use once it goes live. I personally wish many more apps were as open and transparent about their planned business model early on. They are not charging for what you see now, but telling you what they plan to charge for the final product.

2. For a large number of use cases this app will basically be free. One shouldn’t be surprised at a business model like this from the developers of Dynalist which also has a very generous free tier, and then jumps quickly to a very expensive pro tier. I have debated this with them in the past, arguing for a middle tier, but I don’t think anyone knows what the right answer is to make a living selling software these days and they seem to be doing better than most.

3. I personally also would like to use the publishing tool but can’t afford it at the current rates. Am talking with them about ways to make this particular feature less expensive. There is already discussion of a branded version that would be cheaper if you don’t mind it telling the world that the site was built using Obsidian in small type somewhere.

4. Because the app uses plain text Markdown files it is also possible that one could publish using other tools without relying on Obsidian’s paid service. (The same way one will be able to sync with Dropbox without paying for Obsidian’s sync service.) There is already discussion on the forums about possible ways to do this, and the developers are perfectly happy to make changes that will make such solutions easier.

5. As with Dynalist, there might be a lifetime discount for early adopters. And there is discussion about possible academic discounts as well.

Paul Korm wrote:
> The pricing is insane. Simply arrogant. They have barely provided
>much more than a toy model so far. “Publish” is essential for me for these
>apps, but $240 annual is beyond realistic.