5 ms·

I wish businesses would understand that inflicting subscriptions on consumers is a lot more onerous than they think. A subscription means one has to use the so

by tomc1985 5y ago

I wish businesses would understand that inflicting subscriptions on consumers is a lot more onerous than they think. A subscription means one has to use the software they paid for. You can't have it sit on a shelf for those once-every-few-months use cases. It means having to manage a million stupid business relationships with vendors that one doesn't want to have to deal with. It means trolling credit card statements after-the-fact to make sure the subscription was actually cancelled when that comes time, and it means dealing with the cancellation process (and whatever dark patterns the vendor throws down) on a fairly regular basis. The old paid-updates model isn't "antiquated", it's customer-centric. Subscriptions are the opposite: customer-hostile. The service worker earning minimum wage can't afford a million subscriptions. Your subscription means they are a lost customer, and it means they cannot invest in their future in a way that they can effectively control their costs. It's a great way to get your stuff pirated. Photoshop is a great deal at a fixed cost of $1000 or whatever it was, because when I needed it it was there for me and I knew it would solve my problem. Photoshop cloud is a fucking rip off, I'm not going to pay their ridiculous monthly fees, nor deal with their onerous subscription terms, for an app I use maybe once every six months. I don't want to live in a future where I am beholden to a million rent-seeking wantrepreneurs because they forgot how to finance their business the old-fashioned way, or because they are afraid of being "antiquated" The SAAS mentality really, really, really needs to die.

vbezhenar 5y ago
> Photoshop is a great deal at a fixed cost of $1000 or whatever it was, because when I needed it it was there for me and I knew it would solve my problem. Photoshop cloud is a fucking rip off, I'm not going to pay their ridiculous monthly fees, nor deal with their onerous subscription terms, for an app I use maybe once every six months. How is paying $1000 better than paying $32 every six months and getting access for the entire month? $1000 better if you'll use it for 30 months without interruptions but it sounds like that's not your use-case.
- tomc1985 5y ago
  Photoshop is $10 per month in the photography plan on adobe's site, but only on an annual basis. MSRP and business users pay $30+ a month by itself. In either case where are you getting $32 every six months? I guess the photography plan is competitive, but it's still a subscription. I hate paying monthly fees for anything, especially for something I don't use. Much prefer to pay a higher fixed cost and finance that on my own... and yes I preferred this when I was a poor student; I bought a lot of expensive software back in the day by saving what I could from my $12/hour (in 2004 money) day job. And believe it or not, being able to open the program and have it simply work, without going through a bunch of login/update/subscription hassle, is really important for creativity. Technical crap regularly derails my creative process when I'm manic with an idea, so the possible premium is worth it.
  - vbezhenar 5y ago
    $10 is annual which is not useful when you need it once every 6 months. You wrote that you need Photoshop every 6 months. It means that you can pay $32, get access for a month and cancel subscription afterwards. I get what you're saying, but my point is that $1000 is ludicrously expensive when you only rarely need that software and in this case cheap subscription is a good option. I would not consider $1000 for Photoshop at all, but $32 is something I could pay if there's no free or cheap alternative.
    - tomc1985 5y ago
      The process of activating and then deactivating the software is too much, in the heat of the moment. Art is weird. I have a perpetual license for Lightroom. It's great because I can click the LR icon and boom, there it is, ready to download my photos and serve me. I don't have to measure my photography out by it, don't have to consider whether or not my LR subscription is current before I pick up the camera, I don't have to hassle with it when I need something... it's simply there. Same with music: if an idea pops up in my head, I can click the FL-Studio icon and... there it is! Ready to go. I have a couple of plugins that need to periodically reactivate interactively, and in all honesty they simply don't get used. In the moment even load times matter, I'm not going to sit around and finagle with logins or activations or anything... I'll just move on. I purchased a data recovery program that used to be called R-Studio a little while ago. It's great software, I used to pirate it back in the day, and its demonstrably better than most of the free data recovery apps out there. I've used it once, but again I am confident that it is there and it will run, and that I can confidently offer a data recovery service/favor to friends or customers without awkwardly futzing about or checking before-hand as to whether the software will work or not. These are all cases where having software ready-to-go is better, and a subscription just gets in the way. I could even argue that having this stuff on-hand helped me get through some really lean times where even $10/month was a difficult price to pay.
Causality1 5y ago
You're completely right. I can't count the number of paid apps I bought and then barely used. Two dollars here, five, sometimes ten. Thing is, I can play that game now, or tomorrow, or ten years from now and it still cost me the same amount.
dkarras 5y ago
>The SAAS mentality really, really, really needs to die. It won't. This is evolution. People are voting with their wallets, and subscription providers are making the money while "pay once and forget" people are going out of business one by one. Or let me put it another way: Looking at the world, habits of people around you, and the software pricing strategy landscape, which method do you see "surviving"? (not asking which one you want, but rationally, which one has the demonstrated advantage?)
- tomc1985 5y ago
  It may be, but wider technological trends are taking everything good about computing out of the picture. What good is computing for all when the computing all sucks? You call it an evolution, I call it a cycle. It's arrogant to think that SAAS' time in the sun will be forever. Remember mainframes? When the pendulum swings back, the power users will be ready for it. There are already cracks in the foundation. Internet fragmentation, increasingly onerous data regulation, sloppy 5g rollouts, societies with regimes that like to cut net access... hell there are even some new WiFi vulnerabilities that are on HN today. One day some business revolution is going to come along and eat SAAS's lunch... I can't wait to cruise the net on a highway paved with the corpses of dead subscription companies
wunderbaba 5y ago
I wish it would as well but honestly I think a lot of vendors treat their software as gym memberships - and hope that customers forget about that seemingly innocuous five dollar fee every month on their credit card.

vbezhenar 5y ago

> Photoshop is a great deal at a fixed cost of $1000 or whatever it was, because when I needed it it was there for me and I knew it would solve my problem. Photoshop cloud is a fucking rip off, I'm not going to pay their ridiculous monthly fees, nor deal with their onerous subscription terms, for an app I use maybe once every six months. How is paying $1000 better than paying $32 every six months and getting access for the entire month? $1000 better if you'll use it for 30 months without interruptions but it sounds like that's not your use-case.

tomc1985 5y ago
Photoshop is $10 per month in the photography plan on adobe's site, but only on an annual basis. MSRP and business users pay $30+ a month by itself. In either case where are you getting $32 every six months? I guess the photography plan is competitive, but it's still a subscription. I hate paying monthly fees for anything, especially for something I don't use. Much prefer to pay a higher fixed cost and finance that on my own... and yes I preferred this when I was a poor student; I bought a lot of expensive software back in the day by saving what I could from my $12/hour (in 2004 money) day job. And believe it or not, being able to open the program and have it simply work, without going through a bunch of login/update/subscription hassle, is really important for creativity. Technical crap regularly derails my creative process when I'm manic with an idea, so the possible premium is worth it.
- vbezhenar 5y ago
  $10 is annual which is not useful when you need it once every 6 months. You wrote that you need Photoshop every 6 months. It means that you can pay $32, get access for a month and cancel subscription afterwards. I get what you're saying, but my point is that $1000 is ludicrously expensive when you only rarely need that software and in this case cheap subscription is a good option. I would not consider $1000 for Photoshop at all, but $32 is something I could pay if there's no free or cheap alternative.
  - tomc1985 5y ago
    The process of activating and then deactivating the software is too much, in the heat of the moment. Art is weird. I have a perpetual license for Lightroom. It's great because I can click the LR icon and boom, there it is, ready to download my photos and serve me. I don't have to measure my photography out by it, don't have to consider whether or not my LR subscription is current before I pick up the camera, I don't have to hassle with it when I need something... it's simply there. Same with music: if an idea pops up in my head, I can click the FL-Studio icon and... there it is! Ready to go. I have a couple of plugins that need to periodically reactivate interactively, and in all honesty they simply don't get used. In the moment even load times matter, I'm not going to sit around and finagle with logins or activations or anything... I'll just move on. I purchased a data recovery program that used to be called R-Studio a little while ago. It's great software, I used to pirate it back in the day, and its demonstrably better than most of the free data recovery apps out there. I've used it once, but again I am confident that it is there and it will run, and that I can confidently offer a data recovery service/favor to friends or customers without awkwardly futzing about or checking before-hand as to whether the software will work or not. These are all cases where having software ready-to-go is better, and a subscription just gets in the way. I could even argue that having this stuff on-hand helped me get through some really lean times where even $10/month was a difficult price to pay.

Causality1 5y ago

You're completely right. I can't count the number of paid apps I bought and then barely used. Two dollars here, five, sometimes ten. Thing is, I can play that game now, or tomorrow, or ten years from now and it still cost me the same amount.

dkarras 5y ago

>The SAAS mentality really, really, really needs to die. It won't. This is evolution. People are voting with their wallets, and subscription providers are making the money while "pay once and forget" people are going out of business one by one. Or let me put it another way: Looking at the world, habits of people around you, and the software pricing strategy landscape, which method do you see "surviving"? (not asking which one you want, but rationally, which one has the demonstrated advantage?)

tomc1985 5y ago
It may be, but wider technological trends are taking everything good about computing out of the picture. What good is computing for all when the computing all sucks? You call it an evolution, I call it a cycle. It's arrogant to think that SAAS' time in the sun will be forever. Remember mainframes? When the pendulum swings back, the power users will be ready for it. There are already cracks in the foundation. Internet fragmentation, increasingly onerous data regulation, sloppy 5g rollouts, societies with regimes that like to cut net access... hell there are even some new WiFi vulnerabilities that are on HN today. One day some business revolution is going to come along and eat SAAS's lunch... I can't wait to cruise the net on a highway paved with the corpses of dead subscription companies

wunderbaba 5y ago

I wish it would as well but honestly I think a lot of vendors treat their software as gym memberships - and hope that customers forget about that seemingly innocuous five dollar fee every month on their credit card.