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Comment by gnicholas | Hacker News Reader

This article frames the cup-of-coffee pricing comparison as: "$100/mo is less than a cup of coffee every day". But I most frequently see the comparison as: "$5/mo means giving up just a cup of coffee once a month".

In this formulation, I think it's a pretty reasonable comparison, since a prospective user doesn't have to sacrifice much (just a semi-luxury item, one day a month) in order to use your service. The author's criticisms don't seem to hold as much purchase (no pun intended) in this context.

I'd be curious to know if others think of cup-of-coffee pricing as $5/mo or $5/day. The only context where I can remember hearing per-day pricing is life insurance or supporting a child in a developing country.

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For me the fallacy lies in two parts:

- my standard cup of coffee is not 5$. It’s a free perk on the job, coffee I drink at home and buy in bulk so I don’t think in terms of cups, or a 2€ expresso I buy to sit in some warm place waiting for someone or to use the toilets.

In particular for the last instance, it’s a cost I won’t skip because I bought some service online at the same price. I’d pay the 5$ service in top of my coffee.

- coffee I really want to pay for at 5~10€/$ is extremely good and comes from a specialized place that invests a lot in making good coffee and providing a place to enjoy it. It’s of tremendous value and not something I get from random starting services. TBH I’d value it more than a third backup of my photos through dropbox for instance.

5$ per month is more what I think. Or per year, or sometimes even one time fee. Like buying a mobile app for the price of a cup of coffee. I see it as, I can just skip the next cup of coffee and I've already recouped the money.

$100 a month is less than the amount I spend on coffee, but most people seem to think I have a problem.

If you spend this much in coffee shops, I highly recommend you try the Cash app, from Square. If you turn on the "coffee shop boost", you get $1 off of every purchase made at a coffee shop. There's a 30-minute recharge period required between purchases, and a $1.50 minimum purchase.

The sign up process is a little bit of a hassle, but for anyone buying multiple cups a day, it's probably worth it.

If you sign up via an invite code, you get $5 free (and your referrer does too). For anyone who wants it, my referral code is: https://cash.app/app/HSMSVXP, or you can just sign up at http://cash.app.

note: I do not work for the company — I just find this perk to be very handy!

Daily coffee comes with addiction (light), so even if you are used to the 5$coffee every day, you surely won't give it up for one day. It would be one uncomfortable day of crawing your coffee.

$5 is far above the price of a cup of plain coffee in 100.0% of the world, rounding to the nearest 0.1%.

I agree though that the 0.001% ultra elitists who are destroying the world like to brag that they routinely spend this amount on one cup of plain coffee. When the revolution comes, these people will be the first against the wall and no one that is human will shed a tear at their loss.

An "X" every day reminds me of the guy who set out to eat McDonald's food every day. There's usually a large difference between doing something whenever you feel like it and literally doing it every day for eternity.

You can make a lot of money simply by selling the right to a cup of coffee every day in advance. A cup of coffee every day is equivalent to the price of a luxury car, from the point of view of a modern capitalist, and figuring out a way to charge people accordingly is a straightforward arbitrage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetuity

I don't think it's any more reasonable.

I like coffee, but I've not bought even a 4€ cup of coffee in a few months. Actually I don't visit coffee shops a lot, I much prefer drink my coffee at home (or at work, where it's free)...

Also if they argued that 7€ would be just 2 beers per month... maybe I'd still take 2 beers over some ridiculous SaaS. TLDR: I don't like subscriptions.

If you really don’t like subscriptions, then people who are considering how to pitch their SaaS services probably shouldn’t put too much weight on your opinion...

Not to be rude — just pointing out that feedback from someone who is highly unlikely to purchase a type of product is less relevant.

For the record, I also don’t like subscriptions, and I probably put too much weight on my distaste when pricing my startup's products.

Yeah, but currently everyone seems to focus just on those few customers who like subscriptions. Nobody caters to the guys who don't like subscriptions. (Or maybe just nobody blogs about it)

Is it just a few customers who like subscriptions? I'm not sure this is the case. I know my startup has an iOS app with one-time IAPs, but we see way more usage of our Chrome extension, which is a subscription.

I have resisted the push to make or app subscription-based, since I personally would never buy an app with a subscription. But perhaps I'm out of step with the "kids these days"? I also have zero subscriptions to Chrome extensions, and we have plenty of customers there...

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