3 ms·

The difference is that the new purchases provided a strong incentive to JetBrains to make their software better. If the new version doesn't add anything useful,

• dragonwriter 11y ago
  OTOH, if the subscription price is substantially lower than the pre-subscription purchase price, JetBrains has to keep improving faster than the competition long enough to get you to keep buying the subscription for several cycles instead of switching to a competing option or they are losing money from going from outright purchase to subscription.
  • Aldo_MX 11y ago
    But it isn't unless you purchase the bundle with every application, the worst offender is WebStorm, with a price of 99 USD/year vs the price of 29 USD/upgrade it had in the past.
    • dragonwriter 11y ago
      > But it isn't unless you purchase the bundle with every application The initial buy-in is cheaper for many products than it was previously, so for new developers they have to have some ability to retain people to even break even with subscription licensing. The annual subscription seems to be more expensive than the current per-upgrade add-on price for most products, though. And, of course, there are some, like WebStorm, where the annual subscription price is more even the new-purchase price under the old model. So, its kind of a mixed bag.