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Subscription is great for the company "selling", might be fine for other companies paying it, but I absolutely despise it as an end-user/private customer and wi

by muro 7y ago

Subscription is great for the company "selling", might be fine for other companies paying it, but I absolutely despise it as an end-user/private customer and will do everything I can to find an alternative (e.g. with a single-purchase license).

yoz-y 7y ago
Single purchase licenses are way better but a company with a cloud component can not be sustainable on that model. One option is to provide a way to offload the cloud storage to another company (such as Dropbox syncing).
- muro 7y ago
  1. I might not need the sync functionality 2. I already have a subscription to Google Drive + free quota is available on all others I think having a cloud component is often used as an excuse to explain the subscription model.
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  Depends how much data users use. I have a feeling you could store and transfer a lot of data for a £40 fee. A couple of alternatives: 1. Decouple the cloud syncing component and sell that as subscription, with a sync-less version for a fee. PWAs mean you don't even need to give up the web platform to do this nowadays. 2. (My personal favourite) is sell a perpetual license but charge for feature upgrades. Retro, I know. 3. Sell a subscription licence which includes a perpetual license for the latest copy of the software. If you stop paying, you stop getting updates. JetBeains works like this with their products.
ghaff 7y ago
I don't have anything against a subscription if: - I use it regularly. (Which means I'll probably be upgrading to new versions anyway.) - The price is reasonable for the value - I can export my data in a form that's still useful/accessible once I cancel my subscription. The problem is that all those conditions are frequently not met.
- muro 7y ago
  And even if they are at the beginning, they can randomly be removed later. E.g. Adobe Lightroom, which I pay a subscription for, had the option of moving to a fully paid version (which was able to open data from the subscription). However now it's no longer possible and when (not if) I stop paying, I won't be able to migrate my catalog (=edits) anywhere, short of exporting all photos as tiffs.
  - ghaff 7y ago
    But exporting as TIFFs seems a pretty reasonable option in that case. Your edits and catalog are all saved in a form you can import into another program.
raverbashing 7y ago
I'm torn on this. I think single-purchase licenses work for some things, but they're a hard sell for others. For example, I really, really can't justify paying for a password manager for example. At the same time, monthly subscriptions make sense for some things but don't make sense for others.
- cmroanirgo 7y ago
  It's funny how people can have opposite opinions on what constitutes an essential item. For me, the password manager is at the core of everything I do... And it's the first one I'm willing to pony up money for... Even more than the cost of maintaining my personal domains.
  - vageli 7y ago
    > It's funny how people can have opposite opinions on what constitutes an essential item. For me, the password manager is at the core of everything I do... And it's the first one I'm willing to pony up money for... Even more than the cost of maintaining my personal domains. I wonder if drilling into the whys of these choices would be useful. Like maybe password management is so crucial and with specific requirements that it makes no sense to pay someone else to take control of it. I'm personally very willing to pay for smarter people than me to handle problems I have but maybe it's not always the case that they're smarter than me or maybe there is a really ergonomic solution I can retrofit to my needs.
  - muro 7y ago
    I find the one built into chrome good enough to not bother paying for a different one.
enraged_camel 7y ago
Problem with single-purchase licenses is this: what if, after the short trial period, you decide that you don't like? Or what if you find a better alternative? With SaaS, you can simply cancel your subscription. With a single-purchase license though, it's basically money you have flushed down the drain (unless the company is really generous with their refund policy).

by muro 7y ago

yoz-y 7y ago

Single purchase licenses are way better but a company with a cloud component can not be sustainable on that model. One option is to provide a way to offload the cloud storage to another company (such as Dropbox syncing).

muro 7y ago
1. I might not need the sync functionality 2. I already have a subscription to Google Drive + free quota is available on all others I think having a cloud component is often used as an excuse to explain the subscription model.
cameronbrown 7y ago
Depends how much data users use. I have a feeling you could store and transfer a lot of data for a £40 fee. A couple of alternatives: 1. Decouple the cloud syncing component and sell that as subscription, with a sync-less version for a fee. PWAs mean you don't even need to give up the web platform to do this nowadays. 2. (My personal favourite) is sell a perpetual license but charge for feature upgrades. Retro, I know. 3. Sell a subscription licence which includes a perpetual license for the latest copy of the software. If you stop paying, you stop getting updates. JetBeains works like this with their products.

ghaff 7y ago

I don't have anything against a subscription if: - I use it regularly. (Which means I'll probably be upgrading to new versions anyway.) - The price is reasonable for the value - I can export my data in a form that's still useful/accessible once I cancel my subscription. The problem is that all those conditions are frequently not met.

muro 7y ago
And even if they are at the beginning, they can randomly be removed later. E.g. Adobe Lightroom, which I pay a subscription for, had the option of moving to a fully paid version (which was able to open data from the subscription). However now it's no longer possible and when (not if) I stop paying, I won't be able to migrate my catalog (=edits) anywhere, short of exporting all photos as tiffs.
- ghaff 7y ago
  But exporting as TIFFs seems a pretty reasonable option in that case. Your edits and catalog are all saved in a form you can import into another program.

raverbashing 7y ago

I'm torn on this. I think single-purchase licenses work for some things, but they're a hard sell for others. For example, I really, really can't justify paying for a password manager for example. At the same time, monthly subscriptions make sense for some things but don't make sense for others.

cmroanirgo 7y ago
It's funny how people can have opposite opinions on what constitutes an essential item. For me, the password manager is at the core of everything I do... And it's the first one I'm willing to pony up money for... Even more than the cost of maintaining my personal domains.
- vageli 7y ago
  > It's funny how people can have opposite opinions on what constitutes an essential item. For me, the password manager is at the core of everything I do... And it's the first one I'm willing to pony up money for... Even more than the cost of maintaining my personal domains. I wonder if drilling into the whys of these choices would be useful. Like maybe password management is so crucial and with specific requirements that it makes no sense to pay someone else to take control of it. I'm personally very willing to pay for smarter people than me to handle problems I have but maybe it's not always the case that they're smarter than me or maybe there is a really ergonomic solution I can retrofit to my needs.
- muro 7y ago
  I find the one built into chrome good enough to not bother paying for a different one.

enraged_camel 7y ago

Problem with single-purchase licenses is this: what if, after the short trial period, you decide that you don't like? Or what if you find a better alternative? With SaaS, you can simply cancel your subscription. With a single-purchase license though, it's basically money you have flushed down the drain (unless the company is really generous with their refund policy).