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Ask HN: Does Shareware still work in 2018?

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Re: Ask HN: Does Shareware still work in 2018?

#21

Post by giancarlostoro »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #15
jchw wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why UWP? Who buys from Windows Store? Not my parents. They started computers with buying software in boxes, but in the modern age almost all of their digital purchases are done on smartphones. Neither of them have any idea what Windows Store is. One of them uses Steam for games. Not most power users I know, most of which bawk at UWP apps and the concept of a walled garden store on their desktop computer. Many power u…

Windows Store apps are (relatively) sandboxed, and go through an approval process. For the average user, it is generally safe to let them know they can install anything they want off of it. This isn't true of most other places on the Internet, including some more poorly managed walled gardens. I've done a lot of support for senior citizens, and when they're looking for say, a card game, the Windows Store is fantastic…

The Netflix app is fantastic you can download stuff for offline viewing on any laptop with Windows 10. Now I can take all my shows with me on a laptop anywhere!

Re: Ask HN: Does Shareware still work in 2018?

#22

Post by ocdtrekkie »

jchw wrote: post #20
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows Store apps are (relatively) sandboxed, and go through an approval process. For the average user, it is generally safe to let them know they can install anything they want off of it. This isn't true of most other places on the Internet, including some more poorly managed walled gardens. I've done a lot of support for senior citizens, and when they're looking for say, a card game, the Windows Store is fantastic…

Sandboxing is a useful property, but do Desktop Bridge apps even get sandboxing? If not it calls the whole thing into question. Android has an app store with mandatory sandboxing and you can't always trust it, even Apple with probably the most strict rules and review process have had some incidents. I would like sandboxing in general, but as a feature of Windows Store it's definitely not enough to win me personally o…

Desktop bridge apps can request "full access" permission, which effectively evades sandboxing, but those apps are heavily scrutinized on review. In comparison, the Play Store has no manual approval process and an automated malware scanner that's industry-worst according to independent review. ;) Apple does a pretty good job though, and would be my general recommendation for mobile security.

Note that while Android and iOS both have numerous examples of malicious apps in their store, AFAIK, Windows Store does not (though there are definitely ad-ridden nightmares in there). I found their reviews annoyingly onerous for a literally 50-line UWP app with a single function when I tried to submit something.

The biggest benefit of their sandboxing though is not actually the security limitations of what they can access, but how it's installed, and more importantly, uninstalled. UWP apps are one-click remove, and do not leave any lingering garbage in the registry, as they have kind of like a "registry diff" inside their own folder.

Apps like iTunes which are notoriously messy for install and removal I prefer over UWP because it's much easier to purge them safely.

Re: Ask HN: Does Shareware still work in 2018?

#23

Post by LeonB »

abalone wrote: post #14

“Still work”? Was there a time that shareware worked? Serious question.. citations appreciated. Also it sounds like you are doing enterprise software. Shareware was more of a consumer pricing model. With enterprise you want to make it totally free for small scale grassroots adoption by champions and then monetize large scale adoption.

Shareware certainly did work for some, pre-WWW.

Distribution was not a solved problem back then, and required significant capital. Shareware use a viral engine of growth (though this did mean that there were far more products for which shareware didn't work versus the handle for which it did).

Re: Ask HN: Does Shareware still work in 2018?

#27

Post by john_moscow »

Applejinx wrote: post #9

It's called Patreon. You've got to be established, though: can't come out of nowhere with a thing and expect to see much traction. I literally went from using Kagi for ten years, to using Patreon. At first it's a decimating change because you're going from 'sale of a product' to 'literally giving product away free and telling people they can support you if they like'. However, if your cashflow isn't too tough, one be…

There's one big catch there - once you reach a "fair" income level, many people will think that you are already getting enough and won't bother to sponsor you.

Look at the statistics [0]: unless you are in the top 100 creators, you'll get far less than your regular FAANG pay.

[0]: https://graphtreon.com/patreon-creators

Re: Ask HN: Does Shareware still work in 2018?

#28

Post by nhebb »

ghaff wrote: post #4

You're not really describing Shareware (though in practice it may not have been a whole lot different). Shareware was software distributed under a try-before-you-buy license but the license actually required you to pay if you continued to use the software beyond a certain time period. Did this make a difference for most users? No. But, when I wrote shareware, I usually got one or two 4 figure site licenses per year f…

> You're not really describing Shareware

These days, yeah, but the term shareware started out as OP described. It later became synonymous with trialware.

https://asp-software.org/www/history/the-origin-of-shareware...

Re: Ask HN: Does Shareware still work in 2018?

#29

Post by kyriakos »

bhengaij wrote: post #2

Honestly- just use UWP and sell on windows store. Hacker news is believe it or not, a very niche space with very few employees of big enterprises except the popular ones. You wont get to hear from the regular it worker here

If you are targeting the enterprise I wouldn't recommend the Windows store as its blocked by IT department policy in most large companies.

Re: Ask HN: Does Shareware still work in 2018?

#30

Post by peterwwillis »

I don't think just distributing it for free will net you revenue. Usually people need a reason to pay. I personally will pay for something if really want it, and I'm incredibly annoyed by the free alternative. Likewise, someone in a small team in a big company will use your software for free, but until they get annoyed enough by it, they won't convince their boss to pay for it to avoid the annoyance (or gain the premium feature, etc). In this sense, the value driving the purchase is the pain factor, not how useful the software is by itself.

You should also tailor your business model to the product's market. If you have a broad market - home users, small business, large businesses, etc - some can use it for free, but some will still pay. If it's a smaller market - only small businesses - maybe only a few will pay if it's available for free.

You can also change the business model to be free software that drives paying for something else - like a cool cli tool, but a much more useful premium GUI. Or a free tool that's easier to set up and use as a SaaS.

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