5 ms·

This looks great, but I'm getting very sick of software with recurring monthly fees. I get that it's more profitable for companies, and maybe I'm being a curmud

This looks great, but I'm getting very sick of software with recurring monthly fees. I get that it's more profitable for companies, and maybe I'm being a curmudgeon, but what happened to software you could actually buy once and then use forever?

paxys 5y ago
The subscription model makes sense if the bulk of the application is running on the company's servers, but for something like this I totally agree. I wish they'd at least offer their core app as a standalone product and charge monthly for features like online storage and sync.
aantix 5y ago
It depends on your expectations - do you assume that the software will be maintained indefinitely with security fixes, bug fixes, features, etc?
- disintegore 5y ago
  Security fixes, bug fixes, features (etc) also help with future sales. Monthly billing is not and never was for the benefit of end users.
- toss1 5y ago
  Considering that Steve Ballmer once pointed out that "revving software is insanely profitable", there is no reason that companies couldn't use the model of selling new revisions every year or so, which the users are free to purchase upgrades or skip. It also provides a better incentive to write better software (so the users don't skip more revs). The only reason to not do this is that subscriptions are even more profitable, more rent-seeking, and more extractive
  - samhw 5y ago
    That works fine for purely client-side software, such as was common in the 90s. Photoshop would be a great model of that. For such software, the only, or main, cost is R&D, and you pay for their R&D for each new version. It doesn't work so well for software like this, where one of the main selling points is that all your notes are stored in the cloud and can be retrieved on any new device (or by opening the website in a tab). That's a marginal cost which is directly proportional to your actual use of the tool itself - not an R&D cost which relates to developing the code. I understand objecting to software where the SaaS/cloud aspect is tacked on as an afterthought, to justify a subscription model – again Photoshop is an example – but that's not what's going on here. It's eminently reasonable for this software to be subscription-based. In short: It's reasonable for a car to be a one-off purchase, but it doesn't work the same way for the gas.
    - kitsunesoba 5y ago
      Even with Photoshop, eventually the product was complete enough that most users felt little need to upgrade even after multiple releases (I’m one such user — PS 7/CS1/CS2 is more than adequate and almost every feature added since is superfluous). They basically ran out of compelling features to add, which pushed them in the direction of subscriptions. Not that I like subscriptions (quite the opposite) but I think most client only software will eventually hit that saturation point where sales dip and ongoing support becomes questionable. I think this is more true of indie/small devs than of gigacorps, though. Adobe probably could’ve massages their strategy to make things work with single time purchases, but an indie doesn’t have nearly as much latitude.
    - toss1 5y ago
      Yes, if cloud storage & access is a key feature, there are some costs that scale with usage. But with a note-taking app like this, both bandwidth and storage from any user should be down in the $0.01-per-month or even per-year range. I think Obsidian has a much better model - I can run it independently as much as I like, and if I find it useful (or want to give them more support), I can sign up for their cloud syncing service. Having to use it from the outset, or after I get 40 cards, no thanks.
  - j2bax 5y ago
    Or you could look at it as the better software they write, the longer a user may go between revs... Thinking about how long our agency used Adobe CS2... Unless you are just referring to flashy features, which I fear would not ultimately always be about improving the product. The less sexy stuff is probably where I'd rather the developers focus if the feature set is already solid.
- MetaWhirledPeas 5y ago
  I hate fees but you're right. In the past when a developer shipped software they could move on to other things, but these days there's always a new version to ship with some sort of upgrade or patch. That said, some apps still don't need frequent updates, and those apps should be offered as a traditional purchase.
  - Cthulhu_ 5y ago
    In which case you get what you pay for; there are plenty of apps like that that don't work anymore because they are one-off purchases and the author does not want to fix issues that make the app no longer work on newer versions of your OS of choice.
    - davchana 5y ago
      True, people can sell software for one time purchase, for this(current) version of operating systems. Any new OS version comes, if software works, good for customer; if OS breaks things, then the developer can sell an upgrade, for that OS version. Edit: this will be difficult for server hosted apps. It will work only for apks, exe, or client sided installs.
- sz4kerto 5y ago
  Security and bugfixes generally don't cost that much. Most of the subscription fee is going to go towards new features (and possibly new products).
  - ppeetteerr 5y ago
    And cloud operations. We already have our own clouds (Google Drive, iCloud). It shouldn't be necessary to pay for another cloud storage solution if you don't need it.
  - tern 5y ago
    And a product like this will die quickly without constant feature iteration. The space is incredibly competitive.
- 015a 5y ago
  Features? No. If I'm not happy with how a product operates today, I'm not holding out hope for improvement in the future. Buy what it does today, not promises for tomorrow. Security and Bug Fixes? Not indefinitely, but I would expect the minimum generally accepted consumer warranty protections in modern economies: a year? Two? I'm also happy to help out keeping things up to date, if its open source (not everyone can do that, but not everyone has to, that's the magic of software. and this is HackerNews, not Facebook). Look, here's the reality: software has changed. You don't just get to charge $10/month, fail to get traction, then cry "people don't want to pay for high quality software, its all these hackernews luddite types who think everything should be open source". Office 365 is $5/mo. Apple's suite is ~free-$2/mo, with a device purchase (Apple Notes is probably the most-used note taking app on the planet). Google Workspace is $6/mo; it could literally just be Keep, it'd be 70% as functional as this product, and nearly half the price; oh, and it comes with the global standard of email inboxes, with a custom domain, global standard calendar provider, a terabyte of file upload, global near-standard office suite... Notion is $4/mo. That's your competition! Sure, none of them do exactly the same thing; but they're pretty close, and people have an inelastic amount they're willing to stretch their monthly spend beyond these high value services to perfectly hone in on a workflow that works. It's the same kind of inelasticity that keeps Excel wildly popular despite tons of more nuanced competitors. Here's my expectations, above all else: that in ten years, the data I've given this service will still be accessible, no rug pull, no pivot, no dirty acquisition. That's the trade-off you seem to be forgetting. The biggest risk to the users of most products isn't "paying enough to afford the developers necessary to maintain it and build it out"; it's "charging so much that they never gain traction, and disappear overnight". The way toward alleviating that fear, today, is one of extremes; you can either be a huge megacorp with so much tangential revenue & momentum that a rug pull is unlikely, or you can go the Obsidian.md route, not necessarily open-source but at least open, standards-compliant, useful, locally stored data. This product instead goes the 2010s VC-backed "just build a pretty product and charge a subscription people will come lol" route, and that route is destined for failure. Or, you can keep complaining that people won't pay for software. In an era where more money is spent on software than at any other point in computing history. People pay for software. That's the problem. So, figure it out, or die; but don't blame consumers because you've got a suicide wish to be customers' 22nd subscription service that's marginally different than two others they already pay for.
- throwoutway 5y ago
  Why can't I pay for major versions? V2, V3, V4.. if I don't want V5, fine.. I can move on
  - tern 5y ago
    Because running multiple versions of a SaaS app is prohibitively complex. A way to get both the advantages of SaaS and desktop + mobile apps is yet to be invented and popularized to my knowledge. The only architecture approaching this that I'm aware of is Urbit.
    - throwoutway 5y ago
      I must not have been clear. I don’t want a SaaS app, just a native app and local files. Charge for the mobile app too, and let me handle the cloud storage with either iCloud or google drive or something else
- ppeetteerr 5y ago
  I would expect any software to come with security fixes, and bug fixes, even after purchase, even when I don't pay for a recurring fee.
  - mbesto 5y ago
    > I would expect any software to come with security fixes, and bug fixes, even after purchase, even when I don't pay for a recurring fee. So let me get this straight. You expect to pay for anything that naturally requires maintenance just once and then expect an unlimited amount of maintenance (i.e. cost for that provider) in perpetuity? Think about that for a second and then explain to me why any business would ever offer such a thing. Just to be clear - there are endless amounts of software providers who support perpetual licenses but they either have annual maintenance contacts or support cycles tied to version support. In either case, you essentially are paying a recurring fee whether you like it or not.
    - ppeetteerr 5y ago
      Yes, that's how it used to work. When you bought an operating system, you received support for that product for multiple years. Similarly, in the pre-cloud office days, you would still receive updates to your software after the purchase. It's still the case with video games.
      - mbesto 5y ago
        "or support cycles tied to version support."
    - bachmeier 5y ago
      > You expect to pay for anything that naturally requires maintenance just once and then expect an unlimited amount of maintenance (i.e. cost for that provider) in perpetuity? Think about that for a second and then explain to me why any business would ever offer such a thing. I'm getting slow in my old age, but Microsoft Windows came to mind in less than a second.
- atlantas 5y ago
  I bought Minecraft for $19.99 a decade ago and it's still being updated. Also there are lots of SaaS products that have died in that time. A subscription isn't a guarantee that it'll last.
  - xanaxagoras 5y ago
    > A subscription isn't a guarantee that it'll last. It's practically a guarantee that it won't. The whole business model reeks of VC types fantasizing about recurring revenues. These startups are a dime a dozen, they rise and recede on a daily basis.
  - simplify 5y ago
    Microsoft sells Minecraft servers for $8/month. That $19.99 may very well go to zero.
bmurphy1976 5y ago
I don't mind that any one company is charging a monthly fee, what's frustrating is that every company is charging a monthly fee. It's getting very difficult and prohibitively expensive overall to manage all these subscriptions. In this case, the product looks nice but I'm struggling to justify the cost (as I have for every other note taking app I've tried). I just need a convenient way to get Markdown docs synced across a couple of my devices and so far Joplin (originally synced via Dropbox but now synced via a Nextcloud raspberry pi server I'm running) has gotten the job done.
dotancohen 5y ago
I actually like paying periodically for software that get good upgrades and bugfixes, such as the Jetbrains editors. And getting an over-the-hill Debian CLI VIM user like myself to switch development environments is no easy task, but Jetbrains makes products that good. However, $8 monthly for a notes-taking app? I'm sticking with Org-mode and Evil. I'd consider it for $1 - $2 per month, but $8 is monthly is actually more than I pay Jetbrains. For a note-taking app.
- boplicity 5y ago
  Actually -- Jetbrains is a little different, in that you can buy and own the software (effectively). You just have to pay for updates, once your license expires.
  - dotancohen 5y ago
    True, but I do pay them yearly and I'm more than happy to do so. Even though half the year I'm using the free EAP editions anyway.
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paxys 5y ago

The subscription model makes sense if the bulk of the application is running on the company's servers, but for something like this I totally agree. I wish they'd at least offer their core app as a standalone product and charge monthly for features like online storage and sync.

aantix 5y ago

It depends on your expectations - do you assume that the software will be maintained indefinitely with security fixes, bug fixes, features, etc?

disintegore 5y ago
Security fixes, bug fixes, features (etc) also help with future sales. Monthly billing is not and never was for the benefit of end users.
toss1 5y ago
Considering that Steve Ballmer once pointed out that "revving software is insanely profitable", there is no reason that companies couldn't use the model of selling new revisions every year or so, which the users are free to purchase upgrades or skip. It also provides a better incentive to write better software (so the users don't skip more revs). The only reason to not do this is that subscriptions are even more profitable, more rent-seeking, and more extractive
- samhw 5y ago
  That works fine for purely client-side software, such as was common in the 90s. Photoshop would be a great model of that. For such software, the only, or main, cost is R&D, and you pay for their R&D for each new version. It doesn't work so well for software like this, where one of the main selling points is that all your notes are stored in the cloud and can be retrieved on any new device (or by opening the website in a tab). That's a marginal cost which is directly proportional to your actual use of the tool itself - not an R&D cost which relates to developing the code. I understand objecting to software where the SaaS/cloud aspect is tacked on as an afterthought, to justify a subscription model – again Photoshop is an example – but that's not what's going on here. It's eminently reasonable for this software to be subscription-based. In short: It's reasonable for a car to be a one-off purchase, but it doesn't work the same way for the gas.
  - kitsunesoba 5y ago
    Even with Photoshop, eventually the product was complete enough that most users felt little need to upgrade even after multiple releases (I’m one such user — PS 7/CS1/CS2 is more than adequate and almost every feature added since is superfluous). They basically ran out of compelling features to add, which pushed them in the direction of subscriptions. Not that I like subscriptions (quite the opposite) but I think most client only software will eventually hit that saturation point where sales dip and ongoing support becomes questionable. I think this is more true of indie/small devs than of gigacorps, though. Adobe probably could’ve massages their strategy to make things work with single time purchases, but an indie doesn’t have nearly as much latitude.
  - toss1 5y ago
    Yes, if cloud storage & access is a key feature, there are some costs that scale with usage. But with a note-taking app like this, both bandwidth and storage from any user should be down in the $0.01-per-month or even per-year range. I think Obsidian has a much better model - I can run it independently as much as I like, and if I find it useful (or want to give them more support), I can sign up for their cloud syncing service. Having to use it from the outset, or after I get 40 cards, no thanks.
- j2bax 5y ago
  Or you could look at it as the better software they write, the longer a user may go between revs... Thinking about how long our agency used Adobe CS2... Unless you are just referring to flashy features, which I fear would not ultimately always be about improving the product. The less sexy stuff is probably where I'd rather the developers focus if the feature set is already solid.
MetaWhirledPeas 5y ago
I hate fees but you're right. In the past when a developer shipped software they could move on to other things, but these days there's always a new version to ship with some sort of upgrade or patch. That said, some apps still don't need frequent updates, and those apps should be offered as a traditional purchase.
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  In which case you get what you pay for; there are plenty of apps like that that don't work anymore because they are one-off purchases and the author does not want to fix issues that make the app no longer work on newer versions of your OS of choice.
  - davchana 5y ago
    True, people can sell software for one time purchase, for this(current) version of operating systems. Any new OS version comes, if software works, good for customer; if OS breaks things, then the developer can sell an upgrade, for that OS version. Edit: this will be difficult for server hosted apps. It will work only for apks, exe, or client sided installs.
sz4kerto 5y ago
Security and bugfixes generally don't cost that much. Most of the subscription fee is going to go towards new features (and possibly new products).
- ppeetteerr 5y ago
  And cloud operations. We already have our own clouds (Google Drive, iCloud). It shouldn't be necessary to pay for another cloud storage solution if you don't need it.
- tern 5y ago
  And a product like this will die quickly without constant feature iteration. The space is incredibly competitive.
015a 5y ago
Features? No. If I'm not happy with how a product operates today, I'm not holding out hope for improvement in the future. Buy what it does today, not promises for tomorrow. Security and Bug Fixes? Not indefinitely, but I would expect the minimum generally accepted consumer warranty protections in modern economies: a year? Two? I'm also happy to help out keeping things up to date, if its open source (not everyone can do that, but not everyone has to, that's the magic of software. and this is HackerNews, not Facebook). Look, here's the reality: software has changed. You don't just get to charge $10/month, fail to get traction, then cry "people don't want to pay for high quality software, its all these hackernews luddite types who think everything should be open source". Office 365 is $5/mo. Apple's suite is ~free-$2/mo, with a device purchase (Apple Notes is probably the most-used note taking app on the planet). Google Workspace is $6/mo; it could literally just be Keep, it'd be 70% as functional as this product, and nearly half the price; oh, and it comes with the global standard of email inboxes, with a custom domain, global standard calendar provider, a terabyte of file upload, global near-standard office suite... Notion is $4/mo. That's your competition! Sure, none of them do exactly the same thing; but they're pretty close, and people have an inelastic amount they're willing to stretch their monthly spend beyond these high value services to perfectly hone in on a workflow that works. It's the same kind of inelasticity that keeps Excel wildly popular despite tons of more nuanced competitors. Here's my expectations, above all else: that in ten years, the data I've given this service will still be accessible, no rug pull, no pivot, no dirty acquisition. That's the trade-off you seem to be forgetting. The biggest risk to the users of most products isn't "paying enough to afford the developers necessary to maintain it and build it out"; it's "charging so much that they never gain traction, and disappear overnight". The way toward alleviating that fear, today, is one of extremes; you can either be a huge megacorp with so much tangential revenue & momentum that a rug pull is unlikely, or you can go the Obsidian.md route, not necessarily open-source but at least open, standards-compliant, useful, locally stored data. This product instead goes the 2010s VC-backed "just build a pretty product and charge a subscription people will come lol" route, and that route is destined for failure. Or, you can keep complaining that people won't pay for software. In an era where more money is spent on software than at any other point in computing history. People pay for software. That's the problem. So, figure it out, or die; but don't blame consumers because you've got a suicide wish to be customers' 22nd subscription service that's marginally different than two others they already pay for.
throwoutway 5y ago
Why can't I pay for major versions? V2, V3, V4.. if I don't want V5, fine.. I can move on
- tern 5y ago
  Because running multiple versions of a SaaS app is prohibitively complex. A way to get both the advantages of SaaS and desktop + mobile apps is yet to be invented and popularized to my knowledge. The only architecture approaching this that I'm aware of is Urbit.
  - throwoutway 5y ago
    I must not have been clear. I don’t want a SaaS app, just a native app and local files. Charge for the mobile app too, and let me handle the cloud storage with either iCloud or google drive or something else
ppeetteerr 5y ago
I would expect any software to come with security fixes, and bug fixes, even after purchase, even when I don't pay for a recurring fee.
- mbesto 5y ago
  > I would expect any software to come with security fixes, and bug fixes, even after purchase, even when I don't pay for a recurring fee. So let me get this straight. You expect to pay for anything that naturally requires maintenance just once and then expect an unlimited amount of maintenance (i.e. cost for that provider) in perpetuity? Think about that for a second and then explain to me why any business would ever offer such a thing. Just to be clear - there are endless amounts of software providers who support perpetual licenses but they either have annual maintenance contacts or support cycles tied to version support. In either case, you essentially are paying a recurring fee whether you like it or not.
  - ppeetteerr 5y ago
    Yes, that's how it used to work. When you bought an operating system, you received support for that product for multiple years. Similarly, in the pre-cloud office days, you would still receive updates to your software after the purchase. It's still the case with video games.
    - mbesto 5y ago
      "or support cycles tied to version support."
  - bachmeier 5y ago
    > You expect to pay for anything that naturally requires maintenance just once and then expect an unlimited amount of maintenance (i.e. cost for that provider) in perpetuity? Think about that for a second and then explain to me why any business would ever offer such a thing. I'm getting slow in my old age, but Microsoft Windows came to mind in less than a second.
atlantas 5y ago
I bought Minecraft for $19.99 a decade ago and it's still being updated. Also there are lots of SaaS products that have died in that time. A subscription isn't a guarantee that it'll last.
- xanaxagoras 5y ago
  > A subscription isn't a guarantee that it'll last. It's practically a guarantee that it won't. The whole business model reeks of VC types fantasizing about recurring revenues. These startups are a dime a dozen, they rise and recede on a daily basis.
- simplify 5y ago
  Microsoft sells Minecraft servers for $8/month. That $19.99 may very well go to zero.

bmurphy1976 5y ago

I don't mind that any one company is charging a monthly fee, what's frustrating is that every company is charging a monthly fee. It's getting very difficult and prohibitively expensive overall to manage all these subscriptions. In this case, the product looks nice but I'm struggling to justify the cost (as I have for every other note taking app I've tried). I just need a convenient way to get Markdown docs synced across a couple of my devices and so far Joplin (originally synced via Dropbox but now synced via a Nextcloud raspberry pi server I'm running) has gotten the job done.

dotancohen 5y ago

I actually like paying periodically for software that get good upgrades and bugfixes, such as the Jetbrains editors. And getting an over-the-hill Debian CLI VIM user like myself to switch development environments is no easy task, but Jetbrains makes products that good. However, $8 monthly for a notes-taking app? I'm sticking with Org-mode and Evil. I'd consider it for $1 - $2 per month, but $8 is monthly is actually more than I pay Jetbrains. For a note-taking app.

boplicity 5y ago
Actually -- Jetbrains is a little different, in that you can buy and own the software (effectively). You just have to pay for updates, once your license expires.
- dotancohen 5y ago
  True, but I do pay them yearly and I'm more than happy to do so. Even though half the year I'm using the free EAP editions anyway.

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