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Ask HN: Is anyone making money selling traditional downloadable software?

210 points by 101008 2y ago

Curious if any HNers are running successful businesses selling desktop/downloadable software with a one-time payment model - not SaaS, not subscriptions. Something like the old days. How's the market for that? What's your experience with support and updates?

peepeepoopoo101 2y ago
[flagged]
quantumwoke 2y ago
Yes, I have a side project making ~$40k/year doing this in a niche market. I am fortunate in that I have some volunteers helping me with support so all up I spend about 5-10 hours per week doing support and development work. In terms of business model, I have been quite generous and provide a perpetual support model for free and paid customers and do not charge for upgrades (currently). As my time has become more limited, I am looking at changing this. Benefits of this model is that my product is the gold standard in the area and relatively sticky.
- Insanity 2y ago
  Which stack did you end up using?
  - quantumwoke 2y ago
    It's actually an old Java stack using SWT.
    - tonyedgecombe 2y ago
      It mostly doesn't matter, I can only recall one customer ever asking me about the underlying technology.
      - Insanity 2y ago
        Agreed, customers don’t really care. I was just curious.
- smitty1e 2y ago
  I just updated "GrandPrix Race Manager" for $25 from the vendor. It's an annual cost for my local derby thing. No idea how many copies they sell, but it's on version 24, so they must be doing OK-ish. Stand-alone Python application.
lefstathiou 2y ago
My brother acquired an aging app (from an aging founder) built on Delphi used by many dozens (or low hundred) of the world’s leading shipping, energy and commodities companies, used as a standard to calculate “laytime” and “demurge” (myriad of fees associated when a ship docks into a port). It used to cost $5k for a perpetual license tied to usb based key that had to be plugged in to activate. If you wanted to use on two machines, you had to buy two licenses with two keys. Customers in the US and Europe hated the usb, especially during COVID. In random places of Africa, where they greatly valued the single perpetual license, it persists. From my perspective, I don’t see anything positive from being an installed application for this use case - he had to hop through so many security hoops that when he rolled out the web solution IT departments breathed a huge sigh of relief and thanked him. Over a period of about 2 years he converted almost everyone to saas and 4x’d the annual revenue. That also generated enough fcf to hire more developers to ship more features. Saas is generally the way to go. Installed apps are common in financial services and industrial applications. I can think of a bunch of other niche examples but I personally would never pursue this model. We put bugs into production from time to time and it is nice to be able to instantly roll out updates.
- charliebwrites 2y ago
  How did he price out the SaaS model vs the USB perpetual license?
  - lefstathiou 2y ago
    Same price, only difference is you pay it annually instead of perpetually. I think it’s like 10-15k per license per year.
- adriand 2y ago
  > used as a standard to calculate “laytime” and “demurge” (myriad of fees associated when a ship docks into a port). Nitpick: I think you mean “demurrage”: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/demurrage.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/demurrage.asp
- zxvkhkxvdvbdxz 2y ago
phaedrus 2y ago
I want so much to be in the business of selling my own traditional downloadable software, that I've thought about (in the absence of an idea) just putting together a do-nothing application with payment, installer, configuration dialogs, bug feedback - everything but a raison d'etre. The irony is in my day job I am developing a traditional downloadable Windows application which will come with an immediate user base. But although I have considerable discretion over the project, it isn't mine (in an intellectual property sense), and I'm not getting rich off it.
msds 2y ago
I'm not running the show, but I am working at a place that does this. One time fee for a perpetual license for the current major version, free support, and historically ~6 years of updates per version. Users tend to be quite happy about it, and we're profitable enough to pay comfortable salaries and have...a lot...of runway. Of course, this model is possible because there was never any outside investment.
- turbojet1321 2y ago
  I used to work somewhere that had a similar licensing model. I believe it was perpetual access to all updates (minor or major) released within 12mths of purchase, along with free support. Once your 12mths were up there were no further updates. Last I heard, they were still successfully running a (small - 3 or 4 dev) business on this model.
seba_dos1 2y ago
Yes, game developers.
- kelseydh 2y ago
  Even when you buy a game by disc nowadays, you are forced into waiting an hour to install cloud updates.
  - tonetegeatinst 2y ago
    We need to get tape storage more accessible to the average folk. Its so mind shattering just how dense tape is even without compression. Tape isn't even that expensive compared to SSD storage or the old reliable rust, its the tape reader that costs an insane amount. Their are tops of DVD, CD, and vhs readers but somehow we can't make affordable LTO tape readers that don't cost less than a PC or a GPU.
    - Gigachad 2y ago
      The problem isn’t that discs can’t hold enough storage, it’s that in the weeks/months between the physical media being produced and you plugging it in, there have been enough updates to mostly invalidate the stored data and require a large update.
  - seba_dos1 2y ago
    I just buy a game from itch.io, download a zip file with it, unpack and play.
  - danaris 2y ago
    You know there's more games out there than the multi-hundred-GB ones put out by AAA studios, right?
- talles 2y ago
  "Downloadable software", sure. "Traditional", I don't think so.
coldtea 2y ago
How much "traditional downloadable software" do you have? How much other such software is sold and makes a living for those making it? Just the music software industry alone, for example, sells about 4 billion dollars worth of VSTs, DAWs, etc every year, most of it without subscriptions.
- cageface 2y ago
  Unfortunately even in this area there is now a strong push towards subscription models.
  - vunderba 2y ago
    I'm very well-versed in the field, what DAW(s) are you referring to? Cubase, Ableton, FL Studio, Logic Pro X, Bitwig, Reaper, etc. are all flat fees. Studio one has a subscription model but it's tied to access to splice assets and it's completely separate from their one time fee model.
    - cageface 2y ago
      Logic Pro iPad is a subscription. It remains to be seen if the desktop version goes this way. Reason is pushing a subscription model hard. Online services like Splice are sub based for sounds & samples. Bitwig is a yearly fee. You don't have to upgrade but you're probably going to have issues with newer OS versions before long if you don't. Overall I agree it's sill a better space than most for software you actually can own.
      - coldtea 2y ago
        >Logic Pro iPad is a subscription That's the exception that proves the rule, and it's not really that popular though. They're pushing it more than there's actual update, and I think it's more for the "wanna try a music app" crowd atm (than the 'DAW using crowd'), mostly due to the limitations of the iPad.
      - vunderba 2y ago
bsnnkv 2y ago
I started selling commercial use software licenses on 01 January 2025 for installable/downloadable software I have been developing for about 5 years. The software targets Microsoft Windows. As the software is of the nature that it will require updates indefinitely (as OS updates come and go), and given the fact that the license is specifically for commercial use, I decided to go with a subscription model instead of a one-time payment model to ensure its long-term sustainability. I am lucky that this specific software is very "sticky" and already has a die-hard fan base. It also helps that people in the Windows ecosystem are used to paying for commercial use software licenses. This month to date I have made $800 on license sales. It will be interesting to see how the license sales continue to progress (or don't?) throughout the rest of the year.
- worthless-trash 2y ago
  When you started this, did you target a specific area that needed your skillsets or knowledge or did you research and find an area that needed better software ?
  - bsnnkv 2y ago
    I needed the software for myself so I ended up developing it. Turns out a lot of other people wanted it too :) I have been very clear with the community from the beginning that this is software that I develop first and foremost for myself - new features and bug fixes get prioritized largely according to this. Additionally, support is not offered as part of the commercial use license and is largely community-driven. Nevertheless, I still spend many hours a week helping out both personal use and commercial use users.
    - tmaly 2y ago
      what language and stack did you develop the software in?
      - replwoacause 2y ago
        His GitHub says Rust for the tiling window manager he’s talking about.
rkagerer 2y ago
Yes, I did so for 10+ years, about 15 years ago. It launched my business (which then evolved to include a lot of consulting). I charged for major version upgrades that introduced substantial new functionality (discounted for existing customers); minor version upgrades were free. I was probably too generous with support, but it resulted in very satisfied customers and a solid reputation that paid in spades with the more lucrative opportunities. Not sure how the market is these days for that model, but I can give you a datapoint of one in that I strongly prefer it over subscriptions in almost all cases (the exception being when there's legit ongoing service being delivered).
- Gigachad 2y ago
  Development cycles are getting faster making this less viable. You can’t afford to hold on to finished features waiting to bundle them in to a major release. Your competitor just released a feature, you have it finished, but you’re holding it for a release. Users will get frustrated and move to the software that’s always ahead.
  - DougN7 2y ago
    That’s the theory, but I have yet to see it play out in real life. Very few products are so identical that this would be the case.
  - rkagerer 2y ago
    There's some truth to that, but I'm not sold it's universally the case (or needs to be). Speaking for myself, I pushed those minor updates - with lots of little feature enhancements - as soon as they were ready (sometimes mere days after being envisioned/suggested). The major upgrades generally included stuff reliant on larger overhaul efforts or new foundations. I wouldn't typically hold anything back artificially. My team was small (for a good portion of time solo) and our efforts were focused, which probably helped. On the other hand, I've seen increasing examples in the last decade of meaningless UI changes that trip up the user by moving their cheese (instead of being carefully thought out in the first place), needless bugs introduced with no remorse, and a whole class of "features" there not for the user but instead to serve the interests of the vendor or their data-hoovering partners. (Windows sadly became a great example) My beef isn't inherent to the subscription model itself, but the shift in revenue structure made it tempting for companies to uncouple development from user wants. Where upgrades used to be forged on the anvil of user acceptance and pitched to our wallets first, they're now shoved down our throats with little choice whether to adopt. (And cloud delivery eliminated the option to stay on that old version you liked better.) I'm not convinced users jump ship quite so rapidly just to get new features. We saw a big move to mobile even when the apps lacked anywhere near the breadth of their desktop counterparts. Personally I gravitate toward products which do a good job of solving their primary purpose. As an example, I loved Dropbox for years but plan to migrate away soon because sync got worse and their dev efforts have been focused on all kinds of new fluff I never wanted.
0xbadcafebee 2y ago
I believe they are called "apps" now, it's a $500B market. As far as desktop software, it's the same as it ever was... you make a product, you release it for download, you sell a license. No mystery to it. But it often makes more sense to sell it as a subscription; you can make it very cheap for the user up front, and get a continuous revenue stream. Subscriptions make more sense if you provide constant updates, support or online services. If you don't do those things, one-time purchase might be better. Require a new license for major versions, put your killer new features in there. Traditional vendors like Microsoft do this with their software. You can also just combine the two, and let people purchase it once for one release, and subscribe to get support and more services/features.
- gregmac 2y ago
  Yeah, at the core of it I see this as a value problem. If you charge a lot, it's a tough or impossible sell for users who aren't yet sure they'll get that amount of value from it. If you charge too little, you're leaving money on the table from big customers who would be willing to pay much more. Setting the up-front cost also requires you to estimate a bunch of things: what will it cost you to build (including future time to get to "feature complete" for this version), how many do you think you are going to sell, how much time is each customer going to take up? In other words: this is what you value your time at, but you can't know most of the numbers used ahead of time. You need this for subscriptions, too, but there's a bit more latitude to change, and you don't necessarily have any obligations should you decide to just stop at the end of the next billing cycle. Longer term, there's also an incentive problem for you as the vendor. If you're very successful and saturate your market, why build new versions? Your incentive switches to making a "major" version with huge upgrades, which has a whole ton of downsides (which smart customers see, or learn the hard way). It's riskier than frequent, small releases: your first major real testing and feedback comes after a ton of massive changes. It incentives change for the sake of change (so you can justify a "major" version) as opposed to real improvements. Even fixing bugs becomes purely a cost, the only real incentives are pride/reputation, and hoping they'll buy the next major version. Subscriptions help even this out, and tying the cost to some usage metric can make the cost reflect the value even more, even as the usage changes over time (eg: the customer grows). The worst thing with subscriptions is when the cost doesn't reflect the value. If as a user, you pay $20/mo for something that enables you to make $2000/month, that's a no-brainer. When you have to pay $20/month for something that is useful 4 or 5 times a year, or when it's really hard to figure out what, if any, value you're getting for your money, that's when it becomes a problem.
protocolture 2y ago
I see a lot of people get started by building an otherwise indispensable app within their extremely niche business and selling it to the other 100 entities in the same vertical.
- cedws 2y ago
  The Golden Goose play. I’d love to do the same - the hard part is finding the goose.
shipscode 2y ago
The issue is that one time purchases have perpetual costs. Software has become complex enough where the subscription model is all but required in todays day and age to serve happy customers - and can even be cheaper to users rather than rolling customer LTV into a one time purchase.
- kijin 2y ago
  It used to work back when the software market was growing exponentially. You could take care of old customers using revenue from new customers, because you always had more new customers than old ones. Upgrade cycles also used to be much shorter, and nobody cared about security bugs. So you didn't really have to maintain old versions for long. It was a Ponzi scheme of sorts, and it worked for a while. Obviously it can't go on forever, especially when growth slows down. Maybe if you could convince your customers to use a subscription-based add-on service on top of the one-time purchase, you might make the business model keep working for a while longer.
  - Gigachad 2y ago
    Yeah this is exactly how I see it. A one time price for a continuously delivered service is obviously unsustainable in the long term. At some point adobe has sold photoshop to basically every person who wants to buy it.
    - tonyedgecombe 2y ago
      Almost nobody sold one time purchases though, they all (including Adobe) charged for upgrades.
iainctduncan 2y ago
Absolutely. Typically in specialized areas that need lots of local compute and low latency. I work in technical diligence, so I can't say who, but I can say that I have done diligences on companies selling desktop downloadable software and making great money, with license fees ranging from hundreds to hundreds of thousands per customer. Audio software is another one.
Tsarp 2y ago
Side project not a business. I have a tiny dictation app for Mac on the app store. One time payment since it runs whisper locally. Autoupdates through the app store, and I have a lot of folks emailing me positive, negative and improvement feedback. It is a lot of randomness. Some weeks are low and when it got a small mention in a popular article I saw a sudden inflow of traffic, downloads and purchases. So far Ive been ok paying the apple tax. Its a little hard going through the hoops to get it through the app store( I kinda understand why they do a lot of it ) but it provides a lot of free discovery and I spend 0 time on payments, refunds, disputes, handling a CDN to distribute binaries etc. Negative reviews without basis are the only thing that bother me, for some reason I seem to take it personally.
- tones411 2y ago
  You should look into the App Store Small Business Program to see if you qualify for reduced commissions.
exabrial 2y ago
* Ableton Live? * Photoshop? * DaVinci Resolve? * Table Plus? * Excel? * IntelliJ?
- vunderba 2y ago
  Photoshop hasn't been a one time fee for over a decade at this point. The last traditional single cost purchase was Photoshop CS6 which I still use and refuse to ever give up.
- worik 2y ago
  Have not Excel and Photoshop gone subscription?
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    You can still buy a one seat perpetual license to Office
    - worik 2y ago
      Ok. Why would you?
- draven 2y ago
  Intellij is also a subscription, although with yearly subscriptions you get a perpetual licence for whichever version you get while the subscription is active.
satvikpendem 2y ago
Many, especially in the indie hacker space, such as BoltAI, NomadList, etc . It works because the dev is a solo developer and does not necessarily need much money for expenses compared to a company hiring many employees, the money from all the solo dev's customers is likely enough to retire on.
Kelvin506 2y ago
I write bespoke software on this basis. There is a significant market for custom software in specialized industries. Security scopes, capitalisation rules, tax and privacy laws, etc., rule SaaS and subscriptions out for a lot of businesses.
stevenjgarner 2y ago
I don't know if they're making money, but they're charging money and I'm paying it. a) Audio Hijack [1] - software that should be part of macOS where you can route the audio output of any program to the audio input of any other program. b) Eazy Draw [2] - I have clients with massive legacy libraries of commercial AppleWorks drawings, and EazyDraw is the only product I could find that would open/convert them. I know I have many others, just brain dead atm. [1] https://rogueamoeba.com/audiohijack/ https://rogueamoeba.com/audiohijack/ [2] https://eazydraw.com/ https://eazydraw.com/
- anonzzzies 2y ago
  > a) Audio Hijack Ah yes, I paid for that even without thinking and forgot about it even though I use it rather often.
_kush 2y ago
I've been building a break reminder app for mac since slightly more than a year and it's been growing really well - mostly through word of mouth. It currently nets $5k a month. I sell perpetual licenses but I charge for updates beyond the first year. I do get 2-3 emails every day reporting bugs and general feature requests. I have some other apps for iOS as well but they are all subscription based.
- fruit2020 2y ago
  Is piracy a concern? Or are there good enough libraries to implement a client side license key mechanism?
  - _kush 2y ago
    I used to worry about it a lot but now I have made peace with it. It's a cat and mouse game. Pirates will always find a way no matter how hard you make it to crack. There's no way to make it impossible to crack.
    - DougN7 2y ago
      Just make it hard enough to keep the mostly-honest people honest.
      - _kush 2y ago
        Yeah that's what I've done!
longnguyen 2y ago
I’ve been running BoltAI[1] and it generates enough revenue for me to work on it full time. I follow the “perpetual license with one year of support/updates” model. So far it’s working great. My customers love it as they’re in control of the software. Some users can run BoltAI entirely offline. But I’m adding the subscription soon as this model is not sustainable when I’m adding other cloud features such as cloud sync and other collaboration features. I think the pricing model should reflect the value and cost of the product. If it’s more on the software side (think winzip or other smaller desktop widget where there is no or low operational cost), it should be one time payment. If it’s more on the service side (cloud sync, collaborative features, fast changing niche where you need to update the product constantly…) then it makes more sense to charge a subscription. But the tricky part here is that potential customers might not see it that way. Many assume it’s just like another desktop app, therefore it has to be one time payment. So in my experience, I’d start with no cloud feature and offer a perpetual license. Then I’ll add a subscription and with other cloud features. Basically 2 different offerings. [1]: https://boltai.com https://boltai.com
- satvikpendem 2y ago
  Great app, I actually mentioned you in my other comments as a good example of a one-time payment model and why it works for you, at least until you add the more service oriented features as you mentioned.
  - longnguyen 2y ago
    Thank you
- dcreater 2y ago
  That's surprising. The free version of Msty is better
  - longnguyen 2y ago
    I’m sure Msty is a good app. And it might be better for some users while it might be worse for others. For example, it’s not a native app and doesn’t support “inline usage”, which some users may find not appealing.
_bin_ 2y ago
i buy very little software but i made an exception for that recently. i bought Alternative A2DP Driver (https://www.bluetoothgoodies.com/a2dp/ https://www.bluetoothgoodies.com/a2dp/) from Luculent Systems, a windows driver that allows extensive configurability of my bluetooth headphones. i have a sony WH-1000XM series that supports the higher-quality LDAC codec, not supported natively by windows, and can now use them at a great 990Kbps quality. it was a one-time purchase of $5.99, though it's unfortunately locked to a specific computer, with a small charge to use it on another machine. no subscriptions, no ongoing charges. if you use a windows machine and bluetooth headphones with reasonable quality, it's worth a buy.
paradite 2y ago
I'm making very small amount of money (1k USD a month) selling 16x Prompt for lifetime license. Many people have told me to switch to subscription but I just don't think it's the "right" thing to do with a desktop GUI app. https://prompt.16x.engineer/ https://prompt.16x.engineer/
pwdisswordfishz 2y ago
RARLAB
stakhanov 2y ago
Legal changes are making it increasingly very difficult to sell perpetual licenses. For example, in Germany, a new law recently took effect that clarifies that if you sell a software license for a given period of time, you're liable to provide whatever updates/support the customer may need over the course of the software's licensing period to enable the customer to keep running it, at no additional cost, regardless of what it costs you. I'm not a lawyer and may be getting this wrong, but if you're contemplating getting into the business of selling perpetual licenses in software, definitely check with a lawyer. It's not like it was in the 90s. In the 90s, a large driver of recurring revenue for software was that when the OS and hardware landscape changed, you made a new version of the software adapted to that change, and then, if customers wanted to upgrade their OS or hardware (frequently for reasons unrelated to your product), that made them come back to you to pay for the new version of your product. Under the new legal regime, you would be forced to give them the update for free, so if you sell an actual perpetual software license, you have a fixed amount of revenue on one hand, and a potentially unlimited liability to incur additional costs on the other.
- anonzzzies 2y ago
  But it can be possible to have a license that allows you to run it at your own risk forever right? I mean, open source licenses do that, so you can make those and sell those as well. The 'support' being whatever updates happen to appear. Or the support is separately sold (again, like open source), so you pay once and for all year and you get updates forever, however, no support after 1 year; you can buy more. I have used support for downloadable paid products (turbo pascal, delphi, visual studio etc) in the past exactly 0 times, so not sure if support isn't just a check box for larger companies and they can buy it then yearly.
  - theshrike79 2y ago
    Usually if something is written into law, a person can't waive those rights with a separate contract.
    - mojomark 2y ago
elemcontrib 2y ago
Slightly tangential but perhaps somebody could answer this question: So having decided that rather than trade as a fictitious company and go the "personal brand" route, I'm interested to know who has successfully sold their own desktop apps from a website with their personal domain eg. JoeBloggs.com. Do buyers really care so long as the software meets their requirements, or does the psychology of a trading entity really affect peoples' appetites to purchase? Reasons include authenticity, the ability to self brand for freelance dev work, and being able to list ad-hoc products as I develop them without having to market each one separately. Comments welcome, as well as success stories, or otherwise.
- tomcam 2y ago
  Corporate customers are allergic to one-person shops because software price considerations pale next to stability of your company. They care much more about being able to depend on an SLA than whether the software costs $499 vs $999. In fact, they prefer paying too much for software because that impresses management and keeps budgets increasing.
- tonyedgecombe 2y ago
  I'd keep it separate just for liability reasons. Also if it fails and you have to go back to a normal job you may want to obfuscate that part of your CV, that's going to be easier to do if you presented yourself as an organisation.
fxtentacle 2y ago
I know that Houdini (that VFX software used for Dr. Strange portal effects), Marmoset Toolbox (an alternative to Adobe's Substance Painter), and zBrush (a sculpting software) were all perpetual licenses when we bought them. And we chose these softwares specifically because they had perpetual licenses. SaaS vendors want to capture the margin of their power users, which means by necessity they price out casual users of their software. => For any software that might be used for hobby or casual use, perpetual licenses target a different market than SaaS offerings. That's one of the reasons why the Spatial Audio Designer - targeting freelance audio producers and very popular with musicians - sells best with a perpetual license tied to a hardware USB dongle: https://www.newaudiotechnology.com/products/spatial-audio-designer-producer-plug-in/ https://www.newaudiotechnology.com/products/spatial-audio-de... In my opinion, USB dongles also help with marketing because you make it easier for your power users / evangelists to borrow out the software to others.
oleksii88 2y ago
I have been doing this for the past 5 years with https://folge.me https://folge.me. A one-time payment alternative to Scribehow, Tango.us and myriads of similar apps. I can't say that this is a very profitable business, especially given that I don't charge any fees for the updates, but I quite enjoy talking to users, finding out their needs, and improving Folge over time. I think Folge has become my hobby.
- replwoacause 2y ago
  I am a customer and think the software is great. Keep it up!
  - oleksii88 2y ago
    Thank you!
whiletrue111 2y ago
Take Steam, for example, when it comes to games. It remains a platform for 'traditional downloadable software,' where indie developers can still make money. It also has a very large and active community
- BlueTemplar 2y ago
  Is it though, when it has included so many functions into itself, like updating and DRM management ?
ldz0 2y ago
I tried to sell original products from companies like Adobe, Microsoft, Autodesk, ESET, McAfee, and others, establishing partnerships with each of them. I soon realized there was an opportunity to sell products at much lower prices than the market. I did it, but I discovered that people weren’t attracted to low prices. They seem to feel more secure with higher prices, as if expensive items are associated with higher quality, and cheap items are seen as suspicious. In the end, I decided to abandon that business model and focus solely on businesses. However, now I’m considering the possibility of revisiting that idea, but in the form of a blog, monetizing through Bitcoin payments. Currently, I am fully focused on automation, so the idea would lean more towards a blog/e-commerce approach. In my original proposal, I didn’t offer subscription-based products like Office 365, but I did offer antivirus software, which has always been subscription-based.
throw0101b 2y ago
On macOS, two backup programs are doing this: * https://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html https://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescriptio... * https://bombich.com https://bombich.com Also, Little Snitch, a network monitoring/firewall tool: * https://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html https://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html
DarrenDev 2y ago
I switched off sales of my last desktop app a couple of months ago. It was still bringing in sales of about $600 a month, but it felt like a weight hanging around my neck. Despite shutting it down I expect I'll still get a couple of support emails a month for the next 10 years. We're building a desktop / SaaS app right now that we'll be selling using a SaaS model. A combination of desktop app built with Electron and a web app for managing accounts and teams. I'd never touch a "once off" pricing model again.
- tonyedgecombe 2y ago
  >It was still bringing in sales of about $600 a month, but it felt like a weight hanging around my neck. I had the same feeling when I shut down mine last year. In theory I could have left it running for some pocket money but after 23 years I had had enough. After a couple of really slow months I decided to discontinue it and retire.
outcoldman 2y ago
I do. macOS applications. Generating between 1,000-2,000 USD monthly (so variable because no subscriptions). Obviously this is still a hobby that I am trying to make more sustainable. But this is where I am right now after 3-4 years in this business. https://loshadki.app https://loshadki.app - you can check the apps here.
- iKlsR 2y ago
  OpenIn seems like something I've been hunting for for a while on Windows, use case is I primarily use firefox but I have so many google logins that it only makes sense to use chrome where applicable for several reasons the most annoying being it's hard to toggle between accounts when logged into multiple google accounts, I also use Notion Calendar which by default tries to open firefox when you start a meeting. So my workflow typically is click join meeting, go to the firefox tab, copy said link then open the appropriate profile and paste link. Ideally I'd want to click that link which launches Chrome where I select a profile and it continues to the link.
  - outcoldman 2y ago
    To be honest I am surprised how bad any OS supports browser profiles. Most people do use the same laptop for Work and Personal. And ok, now all the major browsers support profiles, but why the Password managers don't integrate with it, and support profile specific passwords for example?
nunez 2y ago
Alfred on the Mac is a one-time purchase that only works for the major version it was purchased for. Rectangle Pro as well.
stego-tech 2y ago
Just take a look at Panic - most of their stuff is perpetual license software, with really only Nova requiring a subscription if you want ongoing updates after the first year. They make this model work for them by providing compelling software that just works - no unnecessary feature creep, proper rebuilds on new architectures rather than lazy ports, understanding what customers actually need versus what the broader industry says is a must-have. They’re successful in spite of largely being locked to the Mac, too, proving you can find success in even niche market segments if you’re actually listening to customers and providing a competent product. To be fair, they’ve pivoted a bit these past few years into more experimental areas - game publishing and hardware, for example - but even those experiments have bore impressive successes for a company of their size and lineage. So yes, it’s possible, and you don’t even have to find a captive audience to find success. Just do good work while nurturing your customer base.
- skuxxlife 2y ago
  Beyond Panic, there’s even a surprisingly large community of Mac/iOS developers making their living selling “premium”software with traditional licensing models. Rogue Amoeba, Omnigroup, Flying Meat, along with a bunch of one to two person shops are still around. There’s fewer of them than there used to be (some bought some folded), and many of the bigger ones switched to subscription pricing (1Password), but they’re still out there doing their thing if you know where to look.
AaronAPU 2y ago
I developed some audio software and it has been going pretty well. Difficult to market, and it’s only me, so I basically just don’t do marketing. Relies on organic spread and a few basic news/deals aggregators listing it. Not the type of high revenue startup you see on HN usually but the craftsmanship style of custom C++ plugins has been enjoyable for me. It’s like working on old school WinAMP or something. https://apu.software/ https://apu.software/
p0w3n3d 2y ago
Jetbrains is still selling their IDE using old method as well as new. You can buy perpetual license but if you want upgrades, you pay again. That's how I bought my Clion and still use it personally from time to time. Buying a plan for me is too expensive - I do tinkering at home rarely. The same with any Photoshop or Lightroom - I bought a last available license and won't buy the cloud version especially because it has exit fees. Minecraft - having huge community - still sells lifetime license with upgrades. I wouldn't pay for it monthly neither. I also bought some software like GuitarTuna perpetual license and they turned it off (the possibility of buying it that way) but I still use it this way (despite they used to nag me to pay monthly). The problem is that one private person cannot hold to many subscriptions. It's killing the budget. Keep this in mind. Also companies tend to switch to cheaper subscriptions after they calculated where did they go in terms of monthly payments. I know I didn't answer your question because my perspective is different, but I wanted to highlight the other side of the deal. If you want $$$$ go for it. If you have a mission or want to gather community or you want small people to use it from time to time - maybe hybrid both solutions is the way to go?
foxglacier 2y ago
Yes. It's a Windows application for engineers. Price is a few hundred dollars per seat. The support load is pretty stable. People often have a few issues at first or when trying to do something novel, then they're fine. They have to update it themselves and occasionally I'll hear from a customer still using a 10 year old version but usually when they ask for help, they're already on the latest version, somehow. Nobody has complained that it doesn't auto-update or nag them. I make about the same money as a regular job. All my customers are extremely pleasant to deal with. You hear horror stories about angry or entitled customers but mine are always polite and respectful. When something doesn't work right, they often act like it's their own fault. Even when they want a refund because they don't like it, they ask nicely. I suppose they know I'm a one-man-band so their expectations are a bit lower than for a giant company. But also, engineers don't seem to be dickheads generally, at least not when they're at work.
techedlaksh 2y ago
I used to do this with small windows applications earning some couple of hundreds but it always stayed as a hobby because of how it was such an unpredictable variable in my life. I have now shifted my attention to my new product, finding a balance between one time payment and recurring payment by providing option to buy an item with “unlimited edits and yours forever” with a one time payment while still having other items to upsell to the same customer. The release went all right, and as expected. Hopefully if the numbers are good, I might share some insights otherwise keep on.
PhilAT 2y ago
You might want to look at once.com by 37signals. Although they do a lot of Saas products they must believe there is a market for buy once. They are also leading the way by ditching the cloud (https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/37signals-expects-to-save-7m-over-five-years-after-moving-off-of-the-cloud/ https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/37signals-expects...)
hevisko 2y ago
The biggest reasons I read here for SaaS/subscription are "updates" ie. "We shipped early something with loads of bugs we intend to fix as you pay us" vs the model of "We make sure things work first time bug free" of days gone past... but then yeah... things changed and become too complex
lfredricks 2y ago
We continue to sell software with licenses that don't expire after 20+ years. If you want updates after 12 months, then you 'renew' for an additional 12 months of updates.
losses 2y ago
I spent six months working full-time developing Rune, an open-source music player and management software that offers a modern experience with a beautiful, Zune-inspired interface design. As an open-source project in a niche market, establishing a sustainable development model has been challenging. I set the price at $10, which gives users privileged access to feature requests and effectively makes them stakeholders in the project's future direction. While I acknowledge this might seem high for open-source software, the development costs and ongoing maintenance require significant resources. So far, I've sold about 60 copies. After platform fees of roughly 40%, the revenue covers only a fraction of the development costs. Some users have criticized this as "money-grabbing," but they may not fully grasp the complexity involved in creating such software from scratch. The development process demands meticulous attention to various aspects, including accessibility features, elegant design implementation, and cross-platform integration. Maintaining my dedication to the project while seeing modest financial returns has been challenging. There's constant pressure to add value and justify the price tag, which is leading to burnout. Finding the right balance between making the software accessible to users while ensuring sustainable development has proven to be a complex challenge. The path of independent open-source development, while rewarding in many ways, comes with its own set of unique challenges that aren't always visible to users. This isn't an easy path to follow. Source code here: https://github.com/losses/rune https://github.com/losses/rune

satvikpendem 2y ago

Thanks for stating this. Some customers (who are often the vocal minority) don't like SaaS likely due to subscription fatigue but most don't realize the amount of manpower it requires to continuously update software that will atrophy without them, not to mention adding more features. The business reality is often not understood by the users and that's why every company is moving towards SaaS, it allows the company developing the product to continue to stay in business rather than providing a product then shuttering because it couldn't sell enough. The former is simply more sustainable than the other, much as some (like the vocal minority) might disagree with this fact. --- That being said, there are many who sell one-time licenses, especially in the indie hacker space on Twitter, such as NomadList and BoltAI. Their model works because they make enough money from their products to retire on, as solo devs, and their products aren't necessarily ones that require constant updates (well, maybe BoltAI as new AI advances come out all the time that need to be implemented, such as RAG, parsing PDFs, storing "memories" like OpenAI, etc, but most advances come through new models, which is just an API call away).

massysett 2y ago
Some users do not want updates. I understand that updating software takes manpower. Same for running servers for sync or online information or similar. But I might rather pay once for something that works on my machine as it is now. I need no servers or sync. If I need an upgrade later, I’ll buy it. I do buy some software as a service but for other software if there’s a subscription I just don’t buy.
- satvikpendem 2y ago
  Depends on the size of the company. Perhaps you're simply not the target customer for that company, you self-select out of their customer pipeline which makes it easier for them to handle costs, as it is more expensive to maintain separate SaaS and one-time versions (essentially on-premise, which is often much more expensive and for enterprises who can afford them due to said hassle). However, some solo devs and smaller companies do exist that make only one-time purchase products, because they don't have much overhead.
- Gigachad 2y ago
  You need updates these days or stuff stops working fast. Everyone at every stage is quite happy to make breaking changes without long term backwards compatibility other than a transition period because it’s understood that everything can be quickly updated. Every time I updated macOS I find that some program stopped working and I just have to update it and it works again. As well as the fact that most software these days has an online component that has an ongoing cost to provide.
  - BenjiWiebe 2y ago
    Windows is pretty good with backwards compatibility. We bought some software back in the early '00s and it still runs fine on Windows 10. You do have to install the manufacturer's update after installing it off the CD, though. Even though the update says only for win2k machines. :)
    - araes 2y ago
      Frankly, I may have serious issues with Microsoft, yet backwards compatibility is one of the few areas where there's almost nothing to criticize, and MS is almost off the deep end on the other side. You can install stuff from the 90's and it will still have the hardware drivers. It's really kind of ridiculous. I tried compiling modern software in Visual Studio, and the number of includes for historical support was mind boggling. "Holy s*t, I think MS just added every printer for the last 30 years to my project. There's like a 1000 includes on a 5 file project. Doesn't even print." (maybe a teeny bit of criticism)
  - hulitu 2y ago
    > You need updates these days or stuff stops working fast. Maybe some engineering course will help. If you make a product that breaks in 6 months, i won't buy it from you. This really means that the amount of testing is minimal and, instead of fixing bugs, you just rewrite the "app" keeping the bugs.
    - satvikpendem 2y ago
      You misunderstand, it is not the application code that changes, it is the code of the environment that the app lives in that changes, macOS is one of the most famous examples of breaking APIs.
      - GoblinSlayer 2y ago
        That's just Apple life: users must constantly pay to keep their stuff working. But if you evade the system API entirely with SaaS, you don't need updates for broken system API. Might as well go with PWA, java or wine.
- irrational 2y ago
  Photoshop 6 does everything I ever want Photoshop to do. I wish Adobe would continue to sell a one time purchase copy of PS6 instead of forcing everyone to SaaS. Fortunately I own a physical copy of the PS6 disks that I purchased years ago, so I don’t have a problem acquiring PS6 on any new machines by various means.
  - lylejantzi3rd 2y ago
    A little off topic, but, if you'll indulge me: Why do you think nobody has been able to make a successful alternative to Photoshop? Everybody I know complains about it constantly, and yet it's still the industry standard.
    - trimethylpurine 2y ago
      Gimp works great. The worst thing about it is the lack of high end YouTube video tutorials. That's what you're really paying for with Adobe, I think.
      - araes 2y ago
        Having used Gimp and Photoshop fairly extensively, I'd agree that Gimp works, and it has the features that Photoshop has (for the most part). However, there's quite a bit of user interface issues with Gimp that make somewhat simplistic activities rather irritating. Gimp kind of has the Open Source issue where it has tons of features, yet there's a large wall of complexity, zillions of little fiddly knobs to tweak on almost every process, and the interface makes you feel like you need to, because they're all exposed immediately. Photoshop (personal opinion) is better about having an initially functional feature, with relatively "what you expect" defaults, and then layers of fiddly knobs you can tweak if you "really" want to or need to for a project.
        herbst 2y ago
        Every time I've used Photoshop the whole UI/UX changed. Buttons are moving around, getting renamed. Some functions are hidden in submenus of submenus, etc. IMO Photoshop is just simpler because people are usually used to it. In reality Gimp always had a much more reliable UI
vunderba 2y ago
> and that's why every company is moving towards SaaS... This is a bold and not necessarily true statement. It really comes down to your target market. A SaaS is a much less disputed cost when it's targeting businesses but you're much more likely to encounter resistance to a subscription when you're targeting individual consumers. There is plenty of highly successful mainstream modern day software that offers a perpetual license for one time fee. (DAWs come to mind: Bitwig, Reaper, Logic X, Studio One, Cubase, etc.). Personally, I think a good compromise is the annual subscription with a fallback perpetual license, a.k.a. the Jetbrains model. I've never had an issue with paying a reoccurring subscription fee, but I take great issue with the proposition that the moment I stop paying I lose all access to the software - it's too close to rent seeking.
- mojomark 2y ago
  100% this. This helps consumers understand the need for SW maintenance services on their own, without having to convince them... "You want to keep the software alive on your WindowsXP machine after the 2yr support garuntee that comes with your perpetual license is up? Have at it. However, here's a nice service package that will get you back up and running when your ready to upgrade your environment to align with the rest of the world." I suppose the risk to the SW company is that consumers never learn and just keep opting for the one-time perpetual license every 5 yrs or so, so the perpetual license needs to be priced to bridge that time gap (effectively rolling multi-year support agreements into the perpetual license cost). I don't belong to a country club, but I've heard they work that way. A big one time payment to join, then annual dues to maintain a membership. If you leave (don't pay dues) for a period of time, then you'll need to pay the big payment again because you haven't been contributing to the maintenance/operating costs of the club to 'keep it alive', so you need to back-pay your fare share.
  - GoblinSlayer 2y ago
    What do you do that windows xp is not enough for you? It has network, file system, gui, and these things didn't change much lately, only hardware support changed, really. Same goes for something like CentOS 6.
trimethylpurine 2y ago
likely due to subscription fatigue It's due to a-hole fatigue. These are too often just VMs running an installed solution in a 3rd party cloud, run like garbage and cost way too much. There are just too many vendors in the middle to get any expectation of a good experience. And to top it off, every time I buy SaaS the vendor is bought by some private equity giant before the first payment and the product turns to shit by the second one. That said, it depends what the software does. If it's a platform for sharing or interacting with the public (e.g. eBay), then a true web app makes a lot of sense to me.
- satvikpendem 2y ago
  > These are too often just VMs running an installed solution in a 3rd party cloud, run like garbage and cost way too much I mean, you try making such software and let me know how that goes for you. This type of vague criticism sounds a lot like the typical engineer retort of "I can build it myself in a weekend," discounting the real complexity involved.
  - trimethylpurine 2y ago
    I'll try to be more specific. Stuffing a win32 app into a Citrix box and selling it to the next private equity that will offshore your support while your customer's contract milks them for another 3 years doesn't make for an enticing offer for decision makers. It makes a lot of sense for the private equity purchaser who will sell the company again before those contracts run dry and the software is shuttered or replaced. As the decision maker (also a software engineer) I will work hard to avoid SaaS because it's a sensible move. And that is especially true if other engineers believe as you do that it's difficult to make a good product. By comparison, the same app, installed locally, doesn't suffer from any of the above problems. There is no contract, no latency, and I don't have any risk if the company is sold. I will likely just have to find another solution provider, in the last case, but at least I'm not locked into additional years of servitude supporting a poor product for my users. In summary, SaaS itself might be great. But the subscriptions that it usually comes with tend to incentivize bad vendor behavior and a poor customer experience.
whatevaa 2y ago
Companies prefer SAAS, as IT costs to manage that software is non-trivial. Individuals prefer standalone software, as managing costs for that software are non- existant. But company market pays much better. So we get this weird situation of SAAS for individual licenses.

thayne 2y ago

Because Adobe photoshop is what people are tought how to use. It is the same thing with excel. It isn't enough to have a superior product, you also have to overcome the momentum of the prevailing software. That's not to say it is impossible, but Photoshop has a significant advantage.

SideQuark 2y ago
Photoshop isn’t on top simply because people know how to use it. There’s simply no better tool for most users who need that level of photo editing tool. I’ve never seen a superior product to either Photoshop or Excel. Have you? Maybe they’re on top because they really are good products.
- sys_64738 2y ago
  I find Excel a clunky piece of junk so use Apple Numbers for my spreadsheet needs. The majority of people probably don't need to pay the M$ or Adobe monthly tax.
  - neverartful 2y ago
    To be fair, you have to pay the Apple tax to use Apple Numbers. It's not monthly (or even a subscription), but it's not a one-time payment if you want the ability to use it over a long period of time.
    - maeil 2y ago
      Once in >5 years is nothing like a SaaS, especially since it's such a tiny part of a product. Even with the traditional software there'd be no guarantee it would keep working for longer than that, e.g. on new OS versions, especially with more specialized software which is a lot of the market for such things.
- GoblinSlayer 2y ago
  I know mspaint better, it starts faster too.
- herbst 2y ago
  Googles spreadsheet is much more performant, useable and shareable for me. I also never got warm with excel weird and heavily limited language, no matter how much I tried to. For Photoshop I agree that no software has the same amount of tools built in. However I have been Happy with gimp ever since, and know plenty of people who prefer Krita or something because their interesting is in drawing and not design.
  - SideQuark 2y ago
    Sheets lags at 1000 rows. Excel allows 1 million. Excel has incredible optimization capabilities, it's numerics are vastly faster (and more accurate, thanks to Javascript being terrible for accurate math). While Javascript (sheets) is decently performant, it's no match for C++ and hand tuned assembly making Excel work. I tried but cannot find a single performance benchmark where Sheets outperforms Excel. And the first time you need sheets to interact with any of the zillion excel spreadsheets running on the planet (all of finance and pretty much all of corporate America) and it fails and it costs you a contract, you'll switch immediately. I'm guessing you really don't push either much at all. Despite Sheets having a free version for almost 20 years, Excel sales are at all time highs. Go figure.
    - herbst 2y ago
      Sure I am not a power user. I doubt most people are :) I never found a CSV and instantly thought "oh wow let's put that in excel" I usually would just write a random script to get the data I want the way I want it. Edit:// I am not sure if increased sales means anything when they switched their license model so often and aggressive
      - SideQuark 2y ago
        Most people aren't power users of Photoshop either, but no other program comes close to being able to do what it does, which is why it's the tool of choice for the vast majority of professionals that edit photos. The same thing goes for Excel. Your anecdata of being an amateur doesn't provide evidence that Excel is not a superior product, any more than a claim MSPaint is better than Photoshop because all you do is draw circles. If all you do is CSV things then you're not even a basic user of either. The power isn't a viewer for a table of data. As to increased sales, I find it amusing where there's good evidence for a thing being true, and people not wanting it to be true make up the most fringe excuses. The fact is sales are up by a lot. If you're going to make handwave claims, demonstrate a fact that your excuse is an actual fact, not a wishful claim to save face. If anything, as the world does more and more data analysis, Excel is one of the most used tools, because it's good for that, so it also makes sense there is more, not less, demand for Excel. And if the license model pissed enough off there a completely free "alternative". Why don't they all jump ship if it's usable? Occam's razor :) I just did a search on indeed.com to see job listings with "microsoft excel", 500,000 hits. I did the same search with "google sheets", zero hits. Ouch.