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Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

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Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

#1
Not newspapers or media services (though those can be annoying too), but products in general? It feels like it's getting harder and harder to just buy something in the tech world, especially when it comes to running programs on my home computer. Want a password manager? It's a SaaS now. Note taking app? SaaS. Image editor or office suite? SaaS (thanks Adobe...)

This is especially annoying given I generally refuse to rent anything in life, and will go out of my way to buy something upfront simply so there's no risk of losing it if finances get worse in future (or the wrong billionaire buys the company). Yet it seems like it's getting harder to do so, especially when open source products don't exist for that domain.

So yeah, why is that? And is anyone else tired of the constant barrage of subscriptions for things that should be one off purchases?

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

#2
Because of all the free, open source software, I don't see it as a big deal. I don't mean to say that you can just get the free version of everything in OSS. Rather, that the entire software landscape has shifted, in a meaningful way. On the one hand, you get A TON more software for free, and on the other, for something that has a real moat - yeah, you pay. I think it's fair, software moats are hard, and therefore expensive.

I too prefer to buy, not rent, wherever possible. But the way I think of subscriptions is, first of all, as one-off annual expenses, which I can decide if I still want or don't.

Something like the office suite, I think you get the basic for free. And you can have a workable email client like thunderbird for free. But outlook is a million times better. So when I did this one piece of work, in my mind I said: okay, this one pays for Office till I retire. Mentally, I allocated the money, and stopped thinking about it.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

#4
> So yeah, why is that?

Because like media or newspapers, the product continues to require work and has no defined expiration date. I assume you want updates for your password manager?

Companies also love the idea of subscriptions for cash and approval management reasons. In government, subscriptions can even prevent you needing to go through a formal procurement phase, which might lead to some important infrastructure losing and needing to be ripped out.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

#5
When something is web based, I get it. That requires infrastructure to run. When it's a downloadable program that requires nothing but yearly or monthly licensing, then I am in full agreement with you. I would argue however that for most SaaS or subscription based services though, there are alternatives to them that follow a different business model or are FOSS. I do know, though, that in some cases this is not true.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

#6
And this is exactly the reason I self host[0]. I am pretty sure it's not just me. I have seen r/selfhosted[1] skyrocket in it popularity over past year or two. The number of applications that you can self host are increasing daily. The only problem at the moment with self hosting seems to be the maintenance and setup but that also will be solved once many people start doing it. History repeats itself. Self hosting too will become mainstream once again

[0]: Why start self hosting https://rohanrd.xyz/posts/why-start-self-hosting/

[1]: https://reddit.com/r/selfhosted

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

#7
I dunno.

I felt like it was a mistake to get a Plex Pass that I paid for once because Plex had my money and didn't have to listen to me with product direction and Plex got worse and worse at serving media from my local server while it became increasingly focused on showing me ads for off-brand streaming services.

I think the subscription model actually works for Adobe in that the upfront price of creative cloud was astronomical and breaking that up to a monthly payment puts the product in reach of people at basically the same pricing.

Subscriptions for video games like the Xbox GAME PASS irk me. It's hard to make a case that they aren't a good value, but I think it's a movie that we saw with cable television and it doesn't end well. If I can't reward game companies by buying their games, I feel like I don't have any input into what games get made.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

#8

I dunno. I felt like it was a mistake to get a Plex Pass that I paid for once because Plex had my money and didn't have to listen to me with product direction and Plex got worse and worse at serving media from my local server while it became increasingly focused on showing me ads for off-brand streaming services. I think the subscription model actually works for Adobe in that the upfront price of creative cloud was a…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

#10

And this is exactly the reason I self host[0]. I am pretty sure it's not just me. I have seen r/selfhosted[1] skyrocket in it popularity over past year or two. The number of applications that you can self host are increasing daily. The only problem at the moment with self hosting seems to be the maintenance and setup but that also will be solved once many people start doing it. History repeats itself. Self hosting to…

Great, let’s make a subscription based service to help people easily self-host…
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