Every time management says "were now using SaaS product X, and they're giving a webinar so we can learn how to use their solutions to take our business to the next level!" — I can't help but associate it with Nigerian Prince scams.

The longer I'm a developer, the more I think vertical integration and inventing your own shitty wheels isn't such a bad idea.

Their generalized, overpriced seat-per-month service always boils down to "vendor lock-in, nothing can be customized or exported, integrations are a pain in the ass, and within a few months the bills will explode because of some overage fee".

yeah everything is a saas now sucking you dry poor 😩

I do think that there are plenty of services that are a commodity and save headaches, especially in terms of security. All things email for example.
When the webinar is looked at after purchasing the make or buy research is seriously shitty.

Yeah ! Let's code a whole custom OS for a custom chip with custom web server.

And HTML, we don't lile, let's add custom markup and custom webbrowser to give to everyone inside company.

I'm sure 1-2 interns can code maintain all of it.

@hjk101 Email, task planning, the stuff in github/gitlab/etc, that I can live with.

Most of the dev SaaS isn't even the worst.

It's the fucking sales & marketing tools with their $100k/year contracts, horrific rate limited APIs and data hostage keeping.

yeah if you need an example

Percolate Content Management Platform
https://percolate.com

They wont even tell you the pricing, you have to give all of your contact data in order to be chased by a sales rep.

Have you found any SaaS product that does not have the problems you described or close to none of the problems you described?

@bittersweet yeah that is exactly it. I can understand a form of rate limiting/ credit system so people don't bomb the API's to death but not as a business model that is has become.
The lock-in part is always there even with source management and mail (CI setup, issues, PR's etc./mailtemplates, API usage, credits). That's just a fact of life. Setting stuff up takes effort, migrating too.
When it becomes nearly or just impossible to make an exit strategy gtfo.

@heyheni I feel so out of touch with the world, I mean they are "The leading content marketing platform for the enterprise" and I never heard from them!!! Analysts agree it's a leader so I've must have done something seriously wrong.
Looks like an upper management honeypot.

@Sony-wf-1000xm3

Not really. Everything is on a scale.

I appreciate paid-hosted-but-FOSS-selfhosted platforms, like Sentry. At least you can make a PR when stuff sucks, and if they're unwilling to merge you can fork & self-host.

The really annoying part is especially the topic of hidden costs.

I e.g. had thx to Atlassian "all must go into the cloud" stuff the joyful task to explain to certain.... specially ungifted persons...
that this would mean to upgrade our whole inet infrastructure....

Which isn't so trivial, as it would require going for fibre - which, as it isn't available easily here, would mean to pay for the construction fees (at least partially).

Suddenly the whole frenzy died.

(we're running a lot of atlassian services... Which are kind a "dumping place" for anything collaborative. Currently in house, so noone cares. If it would go to the cloud, our tiny DSL would go up in flames... As nearly everything is in house and the external server stuff is on a seperate line)