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I share the sentiment that there are plenty of products going the subscription route without any meaningful justification. However, one argument the author does

I share the sentiment that there are plenty of products going the subscription route without any meaningful justification. However, one argument the author doesn't account for is the increasing prevalence of apps that involve cloud services - which, even in the case of something lightweight like a sync mechanism, will still incur ongoing costs for existing users indefinitely. This situation does go some way to justifying subscription pricing - though plenty of apps use subscription pricing without any cloud involvement (looking at you Parallels). That said, one counterpoint to this is that too much software depends on the cloud unnecessarily - in many cases there's no need to use the cloud, what the user wants to do should be perfectly possible locally and therefore the lack of any ongoing expense would remove the need/justification for subscription pricing. Edit: Here's a perfectly timed example of this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11439001 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11439001

maxpupmax 11y ago
I disagree with the sentiment in the original post, at least for the generalization given, and with the justification of the cloud sync as an ongoing service justifying the cost. The justification of the cost is the value that the app is bringing to me (or my business). If I had some kind of lead gen software that brought me an additional N leads per month I'd loooove to pay N(.05)(margin_on_closed_deal) or something like that -- and having used similar justifications to potential customers I know that many businesspeople agree.
OneOneOneOne 11y ago
I wonder if it makes sense to provide cloud and noncloud versions with the cloud version priced higher to fund cloud services.
danieldk 11y ago
However, one argument the author doesn't account for is the increasing prevalence of apps that involve cloud services - which, even in the case of something lightweight like a sync mechanism, will still incur ongoing costs for existing users indefinitely. This IMO is another disease. I don't really want to store my data in the cloud of a small independent company, who probably don't have many security chops, are not audited, etc. Moreover, if a company goes under, I can only hope that I can still access my data. Give me a choice to store my data in Dropbox, iCloud, or whatever, but not in your private cloud.
- npunt 11y ago
  Exactly. Most are just a new shiny way to be back in the business of holding data hostage, rediscovered by another generation of naïve app developers who probably don't fully know what business they're in. The new version of Day One (Mac/iOS) just did this and it infuriates me to no end.

maxpupmax 11y ago

I disagree with the sentiment in the original post, at least for the generalization given, and with the justification of the cloud sync as an ongoing service justifying the cost. The justification of the cost is the value that the app is bringing to me (or my business). If I had some kind of lead gen software that brought me an additional N leads per month I'd loooove to pay N(.05)(margin_on_closed_deal) or something like that -- and having used similar justifications to potential customers I know that many businesspeople agree.

OneOneOneOne 11y ago

I wonder if it makes sense to provide cloud and noncloud versions with the cloud version priced higher to fund cloud services.

danieldk 11y ago

However, one argument the author doesn't account for is the increasing prevalence of apps that involve cloud services - which, even in the case of something lightweight like a sync mechanism, will still incur ongoing costs for existing users indefinitely. This IMO is another disease. I don't really want to store my data in the cloud of a small independent company, who probably don't have many security chops, are not audited, etc. Moreover, if a company goes under, I can only hope that I can still access my data. Give me a choice to store my data in Dropbox, iCloud, or whatever, but not in your private cloud.

npunt 11y ago
Exactly. Most are just a new shiny way to be back in the business of holding data hostage, rediscovered by another generation of naïve app developers who probably don't fully know what business they're in. The new version of Day One (Mac/iOS) just did this and it infuriates me to no end.