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A big argument against subscription pricing is that you are locking out casual users. Only those who regularly use your app will keep paying. People often move

A big argument against subscription pricing is that you are locking out casual users. Only those who regularly use your app will keep paying. People often move from one project or job to the next. If they rent their software, they'll unsubscribe when they no longer need it, and cease being your customer. But with a perpetual license, your customers will never cease being your customer. This makes it much more likely they'll pick up my app again, when they need it again. For SaaS, I presume that the number of people resubscribing after unsubscribing is very low. Now why is that important? Because a big user base is necessary for growth. Word of mouth and personal recommendations are extremly important for a small developer like me. The biggest problem I have isn't convincing people to buy a license; my biggest problem is that my prospective customers have never heard of me.

noir_lord 11y ago
That only matters if ($months_subscribed * $monthly_fee) < $one_time_fee or if the tool isn't the dominant one for whatever you do (or one of the dominant ones). For example I pay for the intellij monthly subscription, if I changed job it would be to a similar role and I'd keep paying for intellij (or my employer would). Since JetBrains switched there hasn't been any stagnation that I've seen in their development speed or addition of new features. JetBrains is competing against free in many areas of it's product range so they have an incentive to ensure that users are happier paying than not paying.
- jakobegger 11y ago
  Note that I was explicitely talking about casual users, not power users. I think that subscription pricing is a perfectly fair deal for software you use everyday. But lots of software has a long tail of casual users. I really want to make my apps affordable for those less invested users as well.
  - noir_lord 11y ago
    Indeed, not sure one model will fit all cases either. It's fairly hard to be a WinZip power user after all.

noir_lord 11y ago

That only matters if ($months_subscribed * $monthly_fee) < $one_time_fee or if the tool isn't the dominant one for whatever you do (or one of the dominant ones). For example I pay for the intellij monthly subscription, if I changed job it would be to a similar role and I'd keep paying for intellij (or my employer would). Since JetBrains switched there hasn't been any stagnation that I've seen in their development speed or addition of new features. JetBrains is competing against free in many areas of it's product range so they have an incentive to ensure that users are happier paying than not paying.

jakobegger 11y ago
Note that I was explicitely talking about casual users, not power users. I think that subscription pricing is a perfectly fair deal for software you use everyday. But lots of software has a long tail of casual users. I really want to make my apps affordable for those less invested users as well.
- noir_lord 11y ago
  Indeed, not sure one model will fit all cases either. It's fairly hard to be a WinZip power user after all.