Do we over engineer and over price problems?

I remember the 'good old days' fondly.

I was a few months into my career as a tester when the dot com bubble happened.

I was starting up my business around the 2008 crash.

Around 2005-2010ish, I loved what the web was.

One tool that I still use is Pinboard.in for bookmarking. I've stopped and started over the years. I even deleted all my bookmarks to start afresh. But I still go back to it as a bookmarking tool.

• The UI is simple, plain, good enough.
• It doesn't try to upsell me.
• I don't get annoying emails.
• The yearly prices of $11 is a no brainer (though I think I signed up for a lifetime thing in the early days).
• it's a one man show and he makes decent revenue

Why can't more tools be like this?

In times like now I'm reviewing what subscriptions I have. I would keep subscriptions like that without even thinking about it. Anything now that costs me more than $10 per month I'm going to seriously consider whether it brings me value.

My meetup.com subscription is up for renewal, they're expecting $100 for 6 months. I've pretty much decided not to continue with that (pricing is not the only reason for this one).

My Carrd subscription, $24 per year I think, is a no brainer for me to keep.

And yes, I know people say charge more, but I still think there's tons of room to charge less and making it work by delivering less and automating as much as the work as possible.