They may read this forum & the opinions expressed here
But they certainly never act on them
And I expect that we’ll see a rise in user registrations on INN after this
What is odd to me is that instead of focusing on growing the user base to sustain revenuews they went the other way. In a way unsurprisingly.
There ARE definitely a certain segment of users who are locked in and have few realistic choices that will just pony up the price hike.
But, thats unlikely to be a majority of current users.
And hobbyists, who make up a significant portion of the user base, are also unlikely to just pony up an extra $400
Instead I might have gone with a single version with a single price
Super simple licensing $199 for whats currently Pro
it would be an increase for hobbyists - but not $400
And how many non-current users would update ?
And I would have had the discount for updates - maybe even going back to 50%
EDIT : AND even though I’m certain Xojo, possibly Geoff, reads this forum I have NO expectation that anything will change there
It would be AMAZING if they did because I truly think they have committed hari-kari with this move
But admitting that something was a bad move isnt in Geoff’s nature
So, even with all the criticism this is bound to generate they wont change
And that, is likely what will kill them
Also on TOF people are getting that an end of Xojo means a lock-in for the applications written and an end to their work with dead sourcecode. That’s what I meant when I wrote about other languages as an alternative. Yes, learning curve and time. But it is more secure.
My immediate reaction when I got the email (despite not having renewed my subscription for three years now) was, “this is the beginning of the end.”
I see the possible logic in driving the subscription base, but fundamentally, the price increase is either about improving the product (by hiring developers), or they are trying to just sustain on an ever-smaller user base, which will continue to spiral down if the product doesn’t improve. I’m thinking all indicators point to the latter at the moment, but let’s see what happens over the next several months.
Milking the customer base pretty hard. I’m glad I moved off Xojo a while ago, having only one Xojo web app left in production which I can easily rebuild with AI in a matter of minutes.
AI tools like Claude Code will give Xojo the final kick, as it makes UI development significantly more trivial for simple internal tools. I have an internal Xojo Desktop app that I use only personally for some trivial database updates, and I only run it from the IDE when I need it.
I made screenshots from all the Windows and wrote a little specification alongside, giving Claude Code the task to recreate this app as a web app. After 12 minutes, Claude Code almost perfectly recreated the app with a Node.js backend and it worked out of the box.
Xojo is on a life line now, I bet they see close to zero new license sales now. So the only thing they have left is the companies that rather renew than rebuild.
by the way I found a difference between Xojo and PowerBasic.
PowerBASIC AFAIK never raised the prices before they became irrelevant.
But our genius obviously still needs some cash before retirement.
I doubt he ever will tackle the fundamental and structural problems.
Going from “for Citizen developers” to “gimme just a little bit more time”
P.S. just checked powerbasic website, still away (under construction) for a while. I doubt they will come back what makes me sad, 'cause back in the DOS epoch it was an advanced high performance language.
People having alternatives. They can move to other platforms. There are platforms to use for free. Without paying one Buck. Professional IDE’s with the chance for AI integration. IntelliJ CE with for example Github CoPilot. Runs perfectly. Okay, AI is not for free. But hey, hundret Bucks a year and the knowledge that all I need is available and running. But that are Xojo enthusiasts: they pay but they do not change.
Hobbyists will not buy this product at all. That’s it. For them it is way too expensive.
And for the others: it is what it is. An ADVENTURE. While Xojo has not a consistent syntax you may have a few problems. While no AI is speaking “XoJo” in real especially while it follows API one, API 2 and Web 1 and Web 2: a nightmare.
One thing I have learned using Java: consistent syntax is one of the most affordable points using a language in the long run to be sucure with it.
Yes, GO follows this concept too. Using Java is using Java. And not API 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 …
And yes, there are deprecated Features. Years later they disappear from the language. That helps to work with old projects when something has to be changes within the code after years. This will be the same with GO in twenty years. It is a normal behavior. Not like Xojo does within a fwe month. MSGBOX->Messegabox->MSGBOX is an example for this Ideas of programming.
Geoff tends to fully disconnect when he’s on vacation. If you’re curious, he’ll probably share his reasoning — though I’ll admit, I haven’t quite been convinced by it myself.
Yes, that is true. I just searched for the other ones. They don’t want any discussion about their pricing politics while new users shall not read about. Man what a world. Do they really believe that people are not looking in other forums, this one for example? I have no Idea how people can believe that this way is the right one.
This is the way to the end of it. They may have a few left Customers but they will passs away.
