Ouch. That's also well above the threshold where we'd have to get IT approval to use them as a vendor, complete with security reviews, comparison shopping with other vendors, bringing in the legal team to look at the contract, etc. It's not "just" writing a check for $30K and calling it a day.

Yes, now do the math, if you owned a company, how much monthly revenue you must get per month to pay everyone at a similar salary level, plus government related taxes, office space, electricity, water.

I expect my employer to pay for the tools they require me to use for my job.

Likewise I pay in various forms (books, donations, one time payment, subscriptions), for the tools I use regularly outside my job, for side projects.

Companies are run based on margins, not just subscriptions.

That individual account you are paying for most likely does not have the RoI needed to manage it due to a mix of larger customers abusing individual accounts to get a discount or individual account users overrepresenting themselves in support tickets, asks, and feature requests.

If you don't like the direction a tool you like is going, go build a competitor and manage it to your liking.

For most products, the revenue skew is 80-20 so if you're not part of the 20% you aren't going to be heard.

Until supermarkets and landlords start taking pull requests as payment, it guarantees more often than not.