How to handle unexpected software subscription price hikes and slow support

“We are paying for 23 separate software subscriptions right now, everything from accounting to project management to CRM to email marketing to analytics to internal communication to file storage to scheduling to customer support to payroll, and the total monthly spend across all of them is $4,100 which is almost $50,000 a year on software for a 12 person company.”source ↗

“the thing that's happening is every tool is creeping their prices up 15 to 20% annually while simultaneously moving features that used to be included into higher tier plans, stuff that was in the basic plan two years ago is now "premium" and the basic plan has been hollowed out to the point where it barely does anything useful”source ↗

“is anyone else feeling like the SaaS tax on small business is getting out of control or is it just us, I'm genuinely curious what other business owners are paying monthly for software and whether you think the value matches the cost”source ↗

“We've had Disney+ for 4 years. It was $70/year when it started and last year it was $189/year. We probably should have canceled back then. Now it's going to be $215/year so we will probably cancel. My kids haven't watched it much lately.”source ↗

“I’ve cancelled Disney and Netflix starting October. Price hike AND ads, no thank you.”source ↗

“I lost track of how many price increased Spotify had. The family plan was $15 when we started, now it's $22 or something.”source ↗

“To keep jacking up the desktop price each year by several hundred dollars? CRIMINALS.”source ↗

“This year? OVER $1000 with tax. Absolutely mental.”source ↗

“I am so sick and tired of them. Between the AI being shoved down our throats, the lag in the software, the bugs, and the constant changes to the user interface. And the price gouging!!!”source ↗

“Intuit is increasing my desktop subscription from $135/month to $215! That’s a 60% increase!”source ↗

“Not that this is any new news to everyone here. When it was below $100 a month for me it was just ehh cost of doing business but now it's finally hit the review options point.”source ↗

“Once you factor in the credit card fees they get as well its a damn significant % of gross.”source ↗

“Cannot stomach the online version. $1200 they wanted for the privilege of another year.”source ↗

“I hate that as a customer who uses it for only invoicing my clients I am forced to pay for all of these “amazing features”.”source ↗

“I'm getting a 15% price hike every single year on Desktop.”source ↗

“Now forced into Enterprise at 2500 a YEAR. we are gone this year even if I have to go to using excel.”source ↗

“And the price has doubled in three years”source ↗

“I was forced off Desktop Pro and begrudgingly to Quickbooks online and it’s absolute hot garbage. At the end of this year, I’m migrating away.”source ↗

“When I went from paying $300 every 3 years for Desktop to $38/month and a reduction in features with QBO, I’m throwing in the towel.”source ↗

“Been thinking of moving to online, but can’t ignore the the price difference.”source ↗

“I went from the Accountant Version at $450 a year in 2020 and then downgraded to Pro Plus when that jumped. Now, my next renewal 6 years later will be $1350. There hasn't been nearly enough of improvements to triple the price in that time IMO.”source ↗

“I am done with these subscription things for life. Too many open source ones now, or I will develop my own for some of my companies that need a simple solution that I can customize to my exact needs, not the needs of a software company.”source ↗

“I haven’t completely decided, but for my small business I was leaning towards Zoho. I just know I can’t continue to support Intuit.”source ↗

“For clients with few transactions I have an an Excel P&L that I custom built so they can gather their info and it automatically puts it in a format that makes completing a Schedule C for them not a nightmare.”source ↗

“I hate the QBD price increases for no improvement.”source ↗

“They are now going to charge for monitors. Their recent announcement will DOUBLE my annual costs.”source ↗

“Well, this was inevitable. $180/year for 3 seats and unlimited endpoints for the last 10 years saved me and my clients a ton of money over where I'd be if I stayed with LogMeIn.”source ↗

“But I'm a bit frustrated at the extent of the price jump.”source ↗

“With Splashtop, for the number of endpoints I maintain, my rate is gonna go up 226% in year 1 and 2, and an additional 35% in year 3.”source ↗

“Most frustratingly, my renewal is in December, and I cannot renew early, so I'm losing out on 9 months of access I could have at the Legacy rate.”source ↗

“So what're all the cool kids using for remote support these days?”source ↗

“Their pricing has gone up consistently over the past several years while, at the same time, they've been pushing their customers to their cloud service. I think I was paying about $600 annually in the beginning but over the last several years, they've been quoting me over $2K annually. Recently, I received an auto-renewal email... it is now $3,000!”source ↗

“In order to get coverage of all 150 assets, I have to subscribe to their "2000 Asset" plan. So $3K is too steep for what I need.”source ↗

“I need your suggestions and recommendations for an alternative solution, mainly due to the increasing cost of renewal from last 3 years without any new features which we use.”source ↗

“We would love a better solution on this but there's no way we're paying what Lansweeper is charging now.”source ↗

“Our department budget has dropped quite a bit, which was the main reason for dropping lansweeper, but I do miss it.”source ↗

“Ditched them after they changed their pricing model a couple years back. It went from choosing a tier based on features, no device limit per tier. They changed it to be forced into a tier based on device count, regardless of the features you wanted.”source ↗

“It's not that I want to leave Fortinet, it's the price curve. On the main site I want more headroom, and for Fortinet that means stepping up to a 90G, which is $2170 for the first year (HW + license) and $1220/year after that just for the license.”source ↗

“It's genuinely hard to justify that to the people footing the bill in this economy, and I've been asked directly what other options exist.”source ↗

“I'm so disappointed to hear of this. I like my legacy subscription just how it is. Let me keep it and charge me a reasonable price increase!”source ↗

“This. But I just received the renewal quote for this year and it’s double of what we were paying in 2024.”source ↗

“This years renewal quote is double of what we paid in 2024”source ↗

“With this change I don’t dislike tracking monitors as an asset with lifecycle, but we’re seriously considering a monitor to be billed the same as a PC? Dumb. Couple that with the crazy cost increases they’ve been doing? SUPER dumb.”source ↗

“Both BV00 and BV01 are currently on FortiGate 60Fs, and I'm replacing them mainly because of the $480/yr + VAT per-unit license, not because the boxes are bad.”source ↗

“That's already more than double what I'm paying today across both 60Fs, so staying with Fortinet and just going bigger doesn't really solve the actual problem I'm trying to fix.”source ↗

“Be aware, as we have what, 30 days notice in typical Microsoft fashion.”source ↗

“Then we heard nothing until 29 days out that our price was going to jump 13%.”source ↗

“Then I tried to cancel but they said... Oh, sorry, you're inside your 30 day window so you are stuck with us for 12 months.”source ↗

“PSA: Watch your agreements with Auvik. I didn't notice (bad on me) but they are much more locked in in the last couple years than previous years, and they hold firm to it.”source ↗

“Once PE got involved in 2021 (Integrity Growth Partners) our price doubled. Now with their new pricing structure it will almost quadruple!”source ↗

“Then they tried to renew our 3 year contract from $300/mo to some crazy shit like $900/mo based on our device count.”source ↗

“It's litterally 3x the price, missing features I already have, and adding features I don't need. But don't worry, they have a super duper promotion so it's only x2 for the 1st year.”source ↗

“I just went through this with Scalepad. They were going to increase my monthly spend again. I told them I literally only use it for warranty lookups and the new cost just wasn’t worth it to me.”source ↗

“When our price went to like $1000 a month for warranty and they put us on a 3 year contract we moved to Strategy Overview and never looked back.”source ↗

“That's all we are using it for, yes we've been getting robbed for the last 4 years 😂”source ↗

“Our Proofpoint renewal quote came in about 20% up and I am struggling to sign it. The number alone I could live with but the platform has felt frozen for two years while the price keeps climbing.”source ↗

“Renewals that jump 20% while support nosedives and the roadmap is basically a rumor, that's a tough one to justify signing.”source ↗

“Proofpoint felt stale, but what actually pushed us out was billing. We were a few hundred seats over our purchased count heading into renewal. We asked them to true up the next quote. Instead they billed us immediately for the overage and wanted a check by the end of the following week”source ↗

“They increased prices and charged us for every basic function. We tried to cancel our subscription early on, but apparently we’re locked into a 1-year contract.”source ↗

“Most of these contacts are from an old CSV someone at the company uploaded to keep in the CRM and the client has no understanding they are being charged for contacts they aren't actively marketing to.”source ↗

“Is it just me, or has their entire pricing model become a confusing/expensive mess?”source ↗

“Biggest mess of legacy and new crap.. a billion configurations nothing works...”source ↗

“Encountered this by mistake a few times when bulk importing. If you notice it right away I was able to get support to prevent the billing increase.”source ↗

“I don't manage enough direct HubSpot spend to justify the $4.8k annual partner fee just to keep execution seat access for occasional client work.”source ↗

“We are leaving in November when our contract is up”source ↗

“Our annual fee was $6k in 2015 and ballooned to $23k in the span of 2020-2022.”source ↗

“After all these changes, and Hubspot basically shaking me down to sell, sell sell, I decided to leave the partner program entirely.”source ↗

“Going through a renewal and it makes no sense. Trying to offload services increased price and adding more services on is supposed to lower it?”source ↗

“Had my bill doubled because I we went over our contacts by 1 contact!!”source ↗

“Yeah our hubapot costs $19k a year and because some genius (before me) locked into a 2-year contract we can't change seat mix without paying, we can't change the number of marketing contacts vs other elements we aren't using… and our AM was shocked we wanted leave having ghosted us 9mo ago when we were having issues”source ↗

“And you get to pay for every tab in the dashboard separately!”source ↗

“We were hit with a 9% increase! We asked why and our AE cited that it was because we had a lower buy so they 'the renewal team' adjusted the increase upwards.”source ↗

“Was also angry about this because we had a renewal call about a month before the deadline where we reviewed licenses, talked about future plans, etc. They mentioned there may be a price increase. And then when they send the docusign, boom 9% increase.”source ↗

“It took them over 6 months to get Salesforce billing to remove the tax from their bills. They didn't respond to any communication until they said fuck it and let their bill hit delinquency because they wouldn't fix the issue.”source ↗

“So Liquidweb who have bought out LearnDash and seem to be pushing everyone into their software packages most of which I don't need. We currently pay $199 a year and they're forcing us onto a $350 a year package that includes Events Calendar, Kadence and Give. I'm looking at alternatives and both TutorLMS and Masteriyo look good but I'm undecided about which one to try.”source ↗

“I made the switch from LearnDash last year when they started that bundling nonsense.”source ↗

“Right now, I'm using Plus myself for 160 dollars, and it looks like it will be renewed for the same price. If that's true, how do you deal with it?”source ↗

“The new bundle is ridiculously overpriced. And most people I'm sure just want Kadence blocks”source ↗

“I find it comical and nauseating at the same time that they hide the "/year" part of the price until you hit the buy button.”source ↗

“Our POS company just raised our premium plan and it’s very frustrating”source ↗

“Auto renewals you missed, price hikes at renewal, getting charged to export your own data, a vendor going down with no real compensation. I'm curious what people here have actually run into and whether you were able to fight it or just ate the cost.”source ↗

“Adobe requires a year long commitment if you’re stupid enough to pay for Acrobat. I was in a bind and paid for it thinking I’d just cancel after the first month. Nope, $30/mo for a full year and of course it auto renews and is difficult to change.”source ↗

“We spent months putting our business into software that was supposed to make our lives easier. And now we're stuck choosing between paying more than we can afford or starting over somewhere else.”source ↗

“The worst part isn't even the price increase. It's realizing how much time we've invested in something we don't really control.”source ↗

“How do you avoid getting locked into software after investing so much time setting it up?”source ↗

“My quote doubled since last yr with same company”source ↗

“was $119 last year. This yrs quote is $280. Tooooo much”source ↗

“I uses to use YNAB before they switched on to the subscribtion model, and now i am struggling to find a replacement.”source ↗

“When I consider our usage of Shopify POS Plus, Stocky was really the 1 thing we used and needed the most.”source ↗

“Now it feels like I'm paying 800 a year to have discount tiles on the overview page of POS, and paying 600 a year to replace stocky.”source ↗

“Dont get me wrong, I LOVE paying all this extra money for no real service from Shopify but maybe there's another way?”source ↗