Evernote is worth mentioning. There was a time when everyone used it but really it wasn't that special. I wonder if they had any buyout offers they rejected and

Evernote is worth mentioning. There was a time when everyone used it but really it wasn't that special. I wonder if they had any buyout offers they rejected and now regret? I'm with the authoro on most of this. It's gym memberships, basically. The ideal customer is one who never uses the facilities but auto-renews forever. But software is an interesting exception. IMHO subscription is the best monetization model for software. Why? Because it aligns incentives between the consumer and the seller. Many people would rather pay $5/month than $150 upfront. It means the company (generally) is constantly updating and fixing it. With shrinkwrap software, there's a direct incentive to declare a new major version, sell an upgrade and stop fixing/updating the old version. Adobe used to do this with the RAW camera plugin for Photoshop. New camera came out? It was only added to a new version of the RAW plugin. That RAW plugin for no reason whatsoever required the latest version of Photoshop. The negatives about software subscriptions here are really negatives about Adobe. Adobe does use dark patterns to get renewals, only offers annual subscriptions and probably charges too much. The price here is off. You can get Photoshop/Lightroom for (IIRC) $10/month. The complete collection is $50/month. The standard counterexample here is Jetbrains. Monthly or annual billing, lots of notifications about upcoming renewals, decreasing pricing for long-term customers, reasonably priced personal licenses and you get to keep the version you had when you stop paying indefinitely. My point is that software subscriptions aren't inherently bad. Adboe is bad.