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From the business perspective, what's the advantage? If you sell a product once, I feel like it becomes more difficult to have people pay for an upgrade. If you
by bdotdub 18y ago
From the business perspective, what's the advantage? If you sell a product once, I feel like it becomes more difficult to have people pay for an upgrade. If you spend a lot of time developing updates and improvements upon your product, I feel like you'll find fewer and fewer people willing to pay for them because whatever they have "works fine".
- davidw 18y agoIt's completely in the business' interest to keep going back for more money every month. However, perhaps with the economy headed south, people will look at that flow of money and think twice about it.
- mechanical_fish 18y agoActually, hard times make many people discount the future more. Why spend a lot of money up front on a solution that will sustain you for four years when the odds that your company won't last one year have just gone up? In extreme cases, businesses with cash flow problems are just like poor people, who are forced to patronize ripoffs like check-cashing places, payday loan sharks, and Rent-A-Centers because they can't afford the minimum balance or down payment on a better solution. They live day-to-day. So do businesses in trouble.
- skmurphy 18y agoFrom the customer perspective paying month creates an ongoing incentive for the developer to continue to maintain and enhance the offering. If the application is something that you would foresee using every month, or at least most months, then paying for it monthly aligns incentives. From the seller perspective it is normally easier to get folks to pay a smaller amount for one month's use than an annual or perpetual license fee. You can always offer annual and multi-year licenses with a discount structure in addition.