Ask HN: What is the most expensive off-the-shelf software you have seen?

Adobe wanted £24K for a ColdFusion maintenance licence. We were code frozen into an old version and didn't actually need any support or upgrades as we were migrating to a new and different platform. They also wanted another £24K for the dev instance we retained in case any issues turned up with our old code. Adobe had changed licensing terms and so dev instances needed full licencing too. This instance was spun down for most of the time.

In effect, they wanted £48K for nothing.

Yes, Lucee was in our future, but I left before that came to be.

About 3yr after leaving that company, Adobe tracked me down via LinkedIn and my personal Web site and messaged me using my personal email address to put them back in touch directly with someone at my old job who could pick up licence negotiations.

I told them to phone Head Office - they said they'd done that but had not received a return call. I very politely told them to fu....go away as it was not my problem.

dijit · 2 years ago

What’s Luci (for the uninitiated)?

linker3000 · 2 years ago

My typo. Should have been Lucee (corrected)

https://docs.lucee.org/guides/updating-lucee/migrate-from-ac...

politelemon · 2 years ago

This I believe, it accepts Cold Fusion Markup Language.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucee

What is the definition of "off-the-shelf"?

Above a certain price/importance threshold, the vendor will have engineers assigned to fine-tune the software to each customer's needs. Does that still count as one?

Hendrikto · 2 years ago

> What is the definition of "off-the-shelf"?

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/off-the-...

> Above a certain price/importance threshold, the vendor will have engineers assigned to fine-tune the software to each customer's needs. Does that still count as one?

No.

barrkel · 2 years ago

It's definitely blurry, because as the price escalates companies will want a human in the relationship for multiple reasons: price discrimination / market segmentation, onboarding (perhaps with professional service for configuration) to make sure you get bedded in and don't quit early, product management conversations to inform feature development, temperature checks to get early warning signs of churn, etc.

Deleted Comment

bob1029 · 2 years ago

If we are including ready-made B2B products, your high score will probably come from some obscure semiconductor, healthcare, banking, insurance or logistics vendor. Much of the cost is then about consulting & configuring more than any specific code pile.

Top of my mind right now would be the EDA tools used by semiconductor designers.

Hendrikto · 2 years ago

That is not off the shelf.

tikhonj · 2 years ago

Before Microsoft released the Z3 SMT solver under an MIT license, you could buy a commercial license for it for $9999 from the Microsoft online store, just like you'd buy a copy of Windows or Office, or, for that matter, an XBox.

Of course, that's nowhere near as expensive as lots of other enterprise software, but it was as "off-the-shelf" as you could get short of your local Fry's or Best Buy. No "call us for details" pricing, per-core licensing, recurring subscriptions and support contracts... just old-fashioned software sold directly as a product.

Unfortunately, I can't find screenshots now, so I'm just going off my hazy memories and the details might be a bit off :P

Zealotux · 2 years ago

The Bloomberg Terminal costs $27,660 a year (or $24k a year per user), and it's difficult to disrupt because most users are attracted by the built-in "social network" and access to a lot of premium data and features in one place.

GianFabien · 2 years ago

You have to remember those terminals are used by people who earn USD1M+ with bonuses. Which in turn means that they have to make their employer at least USD10M+ per person. Their expense accounts for entertaining clients, in a month exceeds the annual cost for the Bloomberg terminal.

curiousgal · 2 years ago

lol I don't mean to be dismissive but that's not necessarily true. A lot of people have bbg terminals, even back office personnel with relatively modest salaries. They need it for their work as well.

marban · 2 years ago

Also, keep the hardware connection in mind; even though it's no longer as dominant as before.

namdnay · 2 years ago

yes I think that per seat BBG is probably the most expensive off the shelf software

Fire-Dragon-DoL · 2 years ago

What is it?

mrjay42 · 2 years ago

Half serious/Half Joke

- The Sims 4

Total cost is around 1200$ (with ALL DLCs, packs, etc.)

https://www.thegamer.com/the-sims-4-base-game-all-dlc-cost/

taspeotis · 2 years ago

I think the train simulators have that beat.

Oh yeah! Train Sim would be above 9K€ (source: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/bsyd5i/tot...)

Now that I think of it...DCS, the flight simulator -> buying the whole thing, would cost a little above 3K€ (source: https://steamcommunity.com/app/223750/discussions/5/38759693...)

Also, Star Citizen, the biggest pledges (you don't technically NEED to pay with real money, you could try to farm the content ingame) -> anyway, it's probably around 10K€ or 20K€ total. But that's going to be contested by some who will claim that you're not buying content, you're pledging money to the game. Fact is: you pay for a ship, you get the ship -> pledge or not, that looks like buying to me. (Source: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/pledge ; https://robertsspaceindustries.com/store/pledge/browse/game-... )

b112 · 2 years ago

Cadence software has various per-seat licensing schemes with a license manager. One can check out tokens to get enough for specific tasks, or in some cases needs specialized licenses.

Not sure about today, but there were licenses for highly specialized stuff for ONE seat @ $150k/year. Most were $30k/year.

lll-o-lll · 2 years ago

Creo Design Engineering Professional

$29,400, floating license (Annual).

Engineering 3D Cad modelling/design tool. I learned it when it was called Pro Engineer at University.

v9v · 2 years ago

Similarly, some versions of Siemens NX (another CAD program) can go up to $45000 according to this reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/SiemensNX/comments/ws66tm/whats_the...

flohofwoe · 2 years ago

Autodesk Maya is currently about $1900 per year and seat, with some more esoteric Autodesk products going much higher:

https://www.autodesk.com/products

UE5 has a seat-based subscription model in the same ballpark:

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/license

jack1243star · 2 years ago