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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
by 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 agoIt 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 agoYeah 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 agoAlmost nobody sold one time purchases though, they all (including Adobe) charged for upgrades.