I get the task pricing motivation: you want folk to pay for how much they use, not a flat rate, because if they are freelancing why spend a flat fee for variable use. One of the reasons I don't use Lightroom is that I only take lots of photos a few times a year, and I feel stupid paying for a month in which I don't use it.
*However*, this alternative is pretty weird. Think about it from the perspective of a software developer. Would you really want the granularity of your tickets dictated by a pricing model?
I remember when I set up integration between GitHub Issues and some external ticket system, I've introduced infinite loop and issues being created on both sides. I'm glad that I didn't pay per task.
On the whole it's also conflating different incentives. You don't typically associate your costs with _how_ you're using your tools, at least you don't want to. It creates a bad (or perverse) incentives to change how you work in order to minimize costs, you're rewarding your users to use your product less.
I have seen an at least 10x variance in how people document their work in tickets. So 1 or 2 cents per "story" for some becomes 10 to 20 cents per "story" for others.
For me that just feels like a weird external factor. If it doens't bother you more power to you.
The project looks cool, but I'd strongly recommend against the per-task pricing.
This makes budgeting & forecasting difficult to impossible for a lot of teams, and creates wrong incentives. It is better to have a per user pricing, and then allow them to use as much as they want.
Threw me off at first as well. I was thinking of tasks per month. But this seems to be just pay as you go top-ups. Makes sense from a freelancer perspective. If I have work, I top-up my account. If there is none, I don't feel pressure like from all the other monthly subscriptions.
Pay as you go is better for all but the heaviest of users. The low cost per task and topping up a balance make it one less thing to think about, one less monthly fee, and will almost certainly result in cheaper cost per month.
It's the same reason why I use api keys from all of the LLM providers rather than pay monthly fees to any one individual company. It's $5-10/mo vs. ~$80/mo.
I love this pricing model as a potential customer. The cost is so little that it wouldn't be a deterrent. This is way better than another subscription.
There's a lot of problems trying to run a business with this model though IMO (forecasting, recurring expenses, etc.). I hope it works out for them though!
I like the pricing - I think its interesting. But I think the author should just give the option to do one or the other. Unlimited at $10/month or per task.
I have found Jira to be quite a useful, lightweight project management tool for freelancing - but I have three principles: 1. Design my own workflow, 2. Make the Kanban the “Workflow Board”, 3. Everyone reviews the Workflow Board, every day, and pushes their issues from left to right, through the workflow.
Each step in the workflow is the ‘kind of work’ that needs to be done on the Issue, all the way to “Release this issue into a Version”.
My clients love having the Workflow Board just up on a screen, so they can see progress as issues go from left to right. My sub-contractors like having concise work units, well described, to work on - and more to the point, have gotten ‘in the flow’ as far as pushing things from left to right. And I enjoy spending my day making sure the issues are well-described, and in the proper place in the workflow, as well as collecting data, refining issues, and generally being the grease of the wheels.
Of course, this style isn’t for everyone, or every kind of project - but I have found, if you can usefully describe the flow of work from “idea -> done” in concrete stages, and have roles and responsibilities well respected by those working on the projects (anyone can assign an issue to anyone else, or move the issue in the workflow, including backwards in the case of inappropriate completion) .. most projects can be run well with Jira, and any other project management systems which allow the description of workflow.
So, I usually sniff at any PM which claims to be a replacement for Jira, while not immediately having custom workflow -> Kanban board mapping, and an immediate interface to doing that. I find a scrolling list of issues that can only be sorted by tag to be particularly irksome.
How does EnkiTask compare in that regard, anyone know?
It's great piece of software. But every instance I've seen had overcomplicated setup enforced by random initiatives in the organization, while making further reasonable fixes hard by how has privileges and "we're not sure what this will break at this point".
Plus having actual admin of that stack is some magical creature that companies are afraid of.
We hate Jira but we should rather demand fixes from people enforcing how it's managed in our org.
Just a quick note to say that I find the "overscroll-behavior-x: none;" setting obnoxious, and it immediately set a resentful tone towards your website. Please don't limit how I interact with my browser.
I am not the target audience, but I applaud the attempt at a different pricing model. Even if it has flaws (pointed out elsewhere in this thread), I’m happy to see someone attempt something other than subscriptions.
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*However*, this alternative is pretty weird. Think about it from the perspective of a software developer. Would you really want the granularity of your tickets dictated by a pricing model?
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I think the pricing is reasonable enough for this not to happen.
For me that just feels like a weird external factor. If it doens't bother you more power to you.
This makes budgeting & forecasting difficult to impossible for a lot of teams, and creates wrong incentives. It is better to have a per user pricing, and then allow them to use as much as they want.
It's the same reason why I use api keys from all of the LLM providers rather than pay monthly fees to any one individual company. It's $5-10/mo vs. ~$80/mo.
There's a lot of problems trying to run a business with this model though IMO (forecasting, recurring expenses, etc.). I hope it works out for them though!
Each step in the workflow is the ‘kind of work’ that needs to be done on the Issue, all the way to “Release this issue into a Version”.
My clients love having the Workflow Board just up on a screen, so they can see progress as issues go from left to right. My sub-contractors like having concise work units, well described, to work on - and more to the point, have gotten ‘in the flow’ as far as pushing things from left to right. And I enjoy spending my day making sure the issues are well-described, and in the proper place in the workflow, as well as collecting data, refining issues, and generally being the grease of the wheels.
Of course, this style isn’t for everyone, or every kind of project - but I have found, if you can usefully describe the flow of work from “idea -> done” in concrete stages, and have roles and responsibilities well respected by those working on the projects (anyone can assign an issue to anyone else, or move the issue in the workflow, including backwards in the case of inappropriate completion) .. most projects can be run well with Jira, and any other project management systems which allow the description of workflow.
So, I usually sniff at any PM which claims to be a replacement for Jira, while not immediately having custom workflow -> Kanban board mapping, and an immediate interface to doing that. I find a scrolling list of issues that can only be sorted by tag to be particularly irksome.
How does EnkiTask compare in that regard, anyone know?
Jira is so much more than just the Web-UI, it has a very powerful API and it can be queried in a very flexible way.
https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/jql-f...
It's great piece of software. But every instance I've seen had overcomplicated setup enforced by random initiatives in the organization, while making further reasonable fixes hard by how has privileges and "we're not sure what this will break at this point".
Plus having actual admin of that stack is some magical creature that companies are afraid of.
We hate Jira but we should rather demand fixes from people enforcing how it's managed in our org.
[0] https://www.shortcut.com/
https://taiga.io/
"Taiga: The free and open-source project management tool
For cross-functional agile teams to work effectively"