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No. Monthly subscriptions suck. Every company wants to "tax" me monthly for something that's feature complete. The ones I already pay, I do so very begrudgingly

No. Monthly subscriptions suck. Every company wants to "tax" me monthly for something that's feature complete. The ones I already pay, I do so very begrudgingly. There's simply too many SaaS products out there. Let's go back to perpetual licenses. And I'll gladly pay for upgraded versions, or not if the upgrade isn't worthwhile. When it's not SaaS, I also get to control what version I'm using. The product doesn't own me, I get to own the product.

ggoo 3y ago
This is the most developer response I could've imagined. I love it.
LeonB 3y ago
It might be a pedantic point but when you buy a perpetual license you don’t “own” the product - you “own” a license to use the product, on the terms in the license.
- aziaziazi 3y ago
  OP “own” the product in the sense “use it as long as he want in the terms defined in the license at the time it’s bought.” Adobe can’t change the license of the Photoshop CS3 cd-rom I bought a while ago. If I’m using their current subscription version I would only use the license to use the product in the time defined by the subscription.
  - sammyoos 3y ago
    I’m guessing the reason this is brought up is because of the concern about if the license server goes down or the company goes out of business can I still use the product.
    - aziaziazi 3y ago
      That would make sense! Could we use today an usb stick (similar to the digital wallet ones) to “validate” the ownership without relying on a server, like cd+license did 15 years ago?
V__ 3y ago
I understand the feeling of not wanting to pay continuously for something feature complete. But, as long as the monthly cost for those tools is less, than the hourly-rate it would take to do it yourself, does it really matter? You are still saving money/time.
- andrewxdiamond 3y ago
  It’s the feeling of being taxed for a transaction that is already completed.
- subhro 3y ago
  It absolutely does. It almost looks like a MLM scheme with at least depth of 1. Let's say you earn $100/hr using my tool. If I as the author/seller of the tool claim $1/hr for tool usage (I understand it is much less than that, but just go with my statement) in the form of subscription, I continue to get the buck as long as you use the tool. As a developer, I am paying the tool author perpetually for the work "I" do. I believe I should have an option to say, NO. This is precisely what is stopped by perpetual license. I am not opposed to subscription, but I MUST have a way to pay it outright and call it a day.
  - tamiral 3y ago
    I always like the "lifetime" access when the price is reasonable and makes sense. Also, i assume if you message lots of SaaS startups they will create a payment for a year or something specific...I mean 99% of them use stripe its not complicated option. The more we ask, the more we have options.
berkle4455 3y ago
I don’t like subscriptions because they feel like this never ending ticket that as soon as I complete that task it immediately is recreated +30 days out. Buying items for a whole price allows me to close that task for good.
- LurkerAtTheGate 3y ago
  Also, the additional task of tracking down all the monthly charges when my personal credit card number was compromised yet again and I need to update my payment details
mhuffman 3y ago
I mean, you are taking shit for this comment for some reason, but it is absolutely true! At some point I don't want to have to pay for dozens of apps every month. Just charge me what you need and let me have it. If it is broken when you sold it to me, great, I will update. If you come up with new clever additions, I may or may not want those. But subscriptions take that ability away from you. And I want a tool to use, not a relationship with you forever!
jchw 3y ago
Nailed it. I happily pay a lot of money for nice things, but only if I get to own them. I am not cheap, I'm picky. I'm not picky by choice, I'm picky by experience. I already know I can't trust subscriptions. If you have to make your tool a one-time cost, you might come to realize it's not really worth the amount of money you could've made by selling it for $5/mo, and that's a great illustration of just one reason why developers don't like subscriptions.
- soneca 3y ago
  They have a one-time pay option. $900. So, if you love to pay for nice things as long as you can own them, they have an option for you.
  - jchw 3y ago
    Exactly! And I do, in fact, I will pay much more than that for a one-time software payment, and I have. However: > If you have to make your tool a one-time cost, you might come to realize it's not really worth the amount of money you could've made by selling it for $5/mo, and that's a great illustration of just one reason why developers don't like subscriptions. At $900, it's not so easy of a sell. edit: Especially because, do I own it? > License for 3 activations OK. What happens when the activation server goes down? For software I really own, there is no concern here.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      I’d love to see software escrow for companies like this - something as simple as “if we stop making the software or go bankrupt or otherwise make it unable to be used, we have the source code and friends escrowed with a company that will then release it under the AGPL.”
      - earthnail 3y ago
        Unlikely that this will happen. Companies rarely go bankrupt, they often just float along. Even if it did release the source code, will you really go and make it compile? There's also a lot of credentials involved; for example for getting an app on the App Store, you not only need the source code but all the developer certificates. Releasing them would violate Apple's App Store T&C. It's just not that simple in practice. Then again, that's not unique to software: imagine being a car company and looking for suppliers. You're not gonna rely on some new unknown company for components that you need in your long-term planning. But if you do, you pay them so that they can survive. My main gripe with subs is that there's no central place to manage them and it's easy to forget how many you have. That is the one thing that Apple did well in the App Store.
soneca 3y ago
They have perpetual licenses (with perpetual upgrades). If you pay the $900 you don’t have any “tax” to pay. Doesn’t that option completely remove your concerns with this product?
tiffanyh 3y ago
I don't disagree with what you saying, but ... People seem to forget what the cost of a perpetual license use to be. Licenses would easily equate to 3-years (36-months) or more, of what a monthly subscription would cost. Case in point: $439, you can buy a perpetual license of Microsoft Office $7/mo, you can get the same functionality + hosting + storage as a monthly subscription It'd take over 5-years to breakeven. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/p/office-professional-2021/cfq7ttc0hhj9?activetab=pivot:overviewtab https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/p/office-profe... https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/buy/compare-all-microsoft-365-products https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/buy/compare-al...
- bombcar 3y ago
  There has to be a reason all these companies love SaaS vs yearly upgrades and I think it’s because “subscriptions” get forgotten or ignored or “it’s not worth worrying about”.
  - tiffanyh 3y ago
    Having predictable revenue is a huge reason. As opposed to super lumpy revenue due to bursts of revenue coming in after a new version release. There's also a lot of business risk because if you have a new version people don't like, they don't have to upgrade and now you don't get that burst of revenue your company needs to stay afloat. EDIT: also, perpetual licenses create the wrong incentives. We've all complained about software bloat before. With a perpetual license, you only get paid on upgrades ... creating a situation where the software vendor jams in more (unneeded) functionality in order to justify creating a new version release.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      The first can be solved with “pay over time” setups (which can be relatively easy to setup even if it’s just internal accounting, or you can literally buy appropriate bonds on the open market). I suspect the second is a bigger driver; companies don’t like people not choking down whatever idiotic change they’ve made in the latest version because it makes whichever exec pushed it look bad. With subscriptions you usually HAVE to keep updating.
zapt02 3y ago
Agreed. Value-wise this is a $30 product with one year of free upgrades, not $30/month.
mhaberl 3y ago
> Let's go back to perpetual licenses. There is a perpetual licence listed on a page; Life-time $900 > Monthly subscriptions suck. They do. But for a SaaS biz that has to pay the bills for infra it is hard to get around it.
- chillbill 3y ago
  900 dollars, lol, what a joke.
pjmlp 3y ago
Yeah, now do the math how much it costs to keep a company in business, and how much it must land in the bank every single month to pay everyone's salaries and infrastructure.
Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago
Agree. I use a tool on Windows called Netlimiter. I use it to block out/in going connections per app, rate limit per app or block internet for certain apps. It's been working, I purchased a license time ago, no updates and it works. This year they changed the business model and the new licenses expire every 1/2 years in exchange of a feature i don't even care about. I'll keep using the old version obviously. Why on earth a complete software had to resume development and charge me yearly?

ggoo 3y ago

This is the most developer response I could've imagined. I love it.

LeonB 3y ago

It might be a pedantic point but when you buy a perpetual license you don’t “own” the product - you “own” a license to use the product, on the terms in the license.

aziaziazi 3y ago
OP “own” the product in the sense “use it as long as he want in the terms defined in the license at the time it’s bought.” Adobe can’t change the license of the Photoshop CS3 cd-rom I bought a while ago. If I’m using their current subscription version I would only use the license to use the product in the time defined by the subscription.
- sammyoos 3y ago
  I’m guessing the reason this is brought up is because of the concern about if the license server goes down or the company goes out of business can I still use the product.
  - aziaziazi 3y ago
    That would make sense! Could we use today an usb stick (similar to the digital wallet ones) to “validate” the ownership without relying on a server, like cd+license did 15 years ago?

V__ 3y ago

I understand the feeling of not wanting to pay continuously for something feature complete. But, as long as the monthly cost for those tools is less, than the hourly-rate it would take to do it yourself, does it really matter? You are still saving money/time.

andrewxdiamond 3y ago
It’s the feeling of being taxed for a transaction that is already completed.
subhro 3y ago
It absolutely does. It almost looks like a MLM scheme with at least depth of 1. Let's say you earn $100/hr using my tool. If I as the author/seller of the tool claim $1/hr for tool usage (I understand it is much less than that, but just go with my statement) in the form of subscription, I continue to get the buck as long as you use the tool. As a developer, I am paying the tool author perpetually for the work "I" do. I believe I should have an option to say, NO. This is precisely what is stopped by perpetual license. I am not opposed to subscription, but I MUST have a way to pay it outright and call it a day.
- tamiral 3y ago
  I always like the "lifetime" access when the price is reasonable and makes sense. Also, i assume if you message lots of SaaS startups they will create a payment for a year or something specific...I mean 99% of them use stripe its not complicated option. The more we ask, the more we have options.

berkle4455 3y ago

I don’t like subscriptions because they feel like this never ending ticket that as soon as I complete that task it immediately is recreated +30 days out. Buying items for a whole price allows me to close that task for good.

LurkerAtTheGate 3y ago
Also, the additional task of tracking down all the monthly charges when my personal credit card number was compromised yet again and I need to update my payment details

mhuffman 3y ago

I mean, you are taking shit for this comment for some reason, but it is absolutely true! At some point I don't want to have to pay for dozens of apps every month. Just charge me what you need and let me have it. If it is broken when you sold it to me, great, I will update. If you come up with new clever additions, I may or may not want those. But subscriptions take that ability away from you. And I want a tool to use, not a relationship with you forever!

jchw 3y ago

Nailed it. I happily pay a lot of money for nice things, but only if I get to own them. I am not cheap, I'm picky. I'm not picky by choice, I'm picky by experience. I already know I can't trust subscriptions. If you have to make your tool a one-time cost, you might come to realize it's not really worth the amount of money you could've made by selling it for $5/mo, and that's a great illustration of just one reason why developers don't like subscriptions.

soneca 3y ago
They have a one-time pay option. $900. So, if you love to pay for nice things as long as you can own them, they have an option for you.
- jchw 3y ago
  Exactly! And I do, in fact, I will pay much more than that for a one-time software payment, and I have. However: > If you have to make your tool a one-time cost, you might come to realize it's not really worth the amount of money you could've made by selling it for $5/mo, and that's a great illustration of just one reason why developers don't like subscriptions. At $900, it's not so easy of a sell. edit: Especially because, do I own it? > License for 3 activations OK. What happens when the activation server goes down? For software I really own, there is no concern here.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    I’d love to see software escrow for companies like this - something as simple as “if we stop making the software or go bankrupt or otherwise make it unable to be used, we have the source code and friends escrowed with a company that will then release it under the AGPL.”
    - earthnail 3y ago
      Unlikely that this will happen. Companies rarely go bankrupt, they often just float along. Even if it did release the source code, will you really go and make it compile? There's also a lot of credentials involved; for example for getting an app on the App Store, you not only need the source code but all the developer certificates. Releasing them would violate Apple's App Store T&C. It's just not that simple in practice. Then again, that's not unique to software: imagine being a car company and looking for suppliers. You're not gonna rely on some new unknown company for components that you need in your long-term planning. But if you do, you pay them so that they can survive. My main gripe with subs is that there's no central place to manage them and it's easy to forget how many you have. That is the one thing that Apple did well in the App Store.

soneca 3y ago

They have perpetual licenses (with perpetual upgrades). If you pay the $900 you don’t have any “tax” to pay. Doesn’t that option completely remove your concerns with this product?

tiffanyh 3y ago

I don't disagree with what you saying, but ... People seem to forget what the cost of a perpetual license use to be. Licenses would easily equate to 3-years (36-months) or more, of what a monthly subscription would cost. Case in point: $439, you can buy a perpetual license of Microsoft Office $7/mo, you can get the same functionality + hosting + storage as a monthly subscription It'd take over 5-years to breakeven. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/p/office-professional-2021/cfq7ttc0hhj9?activetab=pivot:overviewtab https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/p/office-profe... https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/buy/compare-all-microsoft-365-products https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/buy/compare-al...

bombcar 3y ago
There has to be a reason all these companies love SaaS vs yearly upgrades and I think it’s because “subscriptions” get forgotten or ignored or “it’s not worth worrying about”.
- tiffanyh 3y ago
  Having predictable revenue is a huge reason. As opposed to super lumpy revenue due to bursts of revenue coming in after a new version release. There's also a lot of business risk because if you have a new version people don't like, they don't have to upgrade and now you don't get that burst of revenue your company needs to stay afloat. EDIT: also, perpetual licenses create the wrong incentives. We've all complained about software bloat before. With a perpetual license, you only get paid on upgrades ... creating a situation where the software vendor jams in more (unneeded) functionality in order to justify creating a new version release.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    The first can be solved with “pay over time” setups (which can be relatively easy to setup even if it’s just internal accounting, or you can literally buy appropriate bonds on the open market). I suspect the second is a bigger driver; companies don’t like people not choking down whatever idiotic change they’ve made in the latest version because it makes whichever exec pushed it look bad. With subscriptions you usually HAVE to keep updating.

zapt02 3y ago

Agreed. Value-wise this is a $30 product with one year of free upgrades, not $30/month.

mhaberl 3y ago

> Let's go back to perpetual licenses. There is a perpetual licence listed on a page; Life-time $900 > Monthly subscriptions suck. They do. But for a SaaS biz that has to pay the bills for infra it is hard to get around it.

chillbill 3y ago
900 dollars, lol, what a joke.

pjmlp 3y ago

Yeah, now do the math how much it costs to keep a company in business, and how much it must land in the bank every single month to pay everyone's salaries and infrastructure.

Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago

Agree. I use a tool on Windows called Netlimiter. I use it to block out/in going connections per app, rate limit per app or block internet for certain apps. It's been working, I purchased a license time ago, no updates and it works. This year they changed the business model and the new licenses expire every 1/2 years in exchange of a feature i don't even care about. I'll keep using the old version obviously. Why on earth a complete software had to resume development and charge me yearly?