The issue is that Subform is 3x the price of Sketch (which lets you keep your current version when your license runs out) and 2x as expensive as Figma Pro and Framer.

Subform is in beta, and the others are finished and offer free trials.

Subform is more niche than Sketch or Figma. It's natural that the pro tool for a limited audience is more expensive, just like AutoCAD costs 10x what Illustrator does.

Also, Figma and Framer are backed by venture capital. They're going for marketshare and don't need to make any money from licenses. I appreciate that the Subform authors are upfront about their position on the order page: they're two people who need to make a living, and you can choose to support that or go elsewhere.

Still, having the whole adobe suite costs ~$25/month (if you wait until a promotion) Having the whole Jetbrains Suite costs ~$25/month Sublime costs ~$70 Leonardo (a drawing program similar to photoshop) $39 (paid once) - developed by 1 person.

The cost of subform is truly on the higher side. I understand that it's catered to a niche target group - how niche is it though? if it's managed by 2 people, 1000 customers would bring in $25.000 monthly before tax. I cannot imagine that they aim for 1000 customers only, though.

The market for tools that bridge design and development is large in theory, but quite difficult to reach in practice. Designers are busy and overworked already — they don't have the time nor interest to learn new tools that would require major workflow changes. Developers are accustomed to all dev tools being free, and they're deeply suspicious of anything that would tilt their creative freedom over to the design side.

I tried — and failed — to make a living in this market with two products, Neonto Studio [1] and React Studio [2]. Reaching one thousand subscribers was a distant dream. Nowadays we just give away the base product, and the real business is focused purely on customizing the software for enterprise in-house development where the pain is much greater than with what one might call "competent teams" (i.e. practically anyone reading HN).

[1] http://neonto.com/nativestudio [2] https://reactstudio.com