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

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

#61

Post by _bin_ »

i buy very little software but i made an exception for that recently. i bought Alternative A2DP Driver (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.

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

#62

Post by trimethylpurine »

satvikpendem wrote: post #30
lefstathiou wrote: post #6

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…

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 de…

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.

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

#63

Post by trimethylpurine »

lylejantzi3rd wrote: post #60
irrational wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

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

#64

Post by _kush »

fruit2020 wrote: post #57
_kush wrote: post #51

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.

Is piracy a concern? Or are there good enough libraries to implement a client side license key mechanism?

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.

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

#65

Post by satvikpendem »

longnguyen wrote: post #59

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 syn…

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.

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

#66

Post by paradite »

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/

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

#67

Post by draven »

exabrial wrote: post #39

* Ableton Live? * Photoshop? * DaVinci Resolve? * Table Plus? * Excel? * IntelliJ?

Intellij is also a subscription, although with yearly subscriptions you get a perpetual licence for whichever version you get while the subscription is active.

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

#69

Post by dcreater »

longnguyen wrote: post #59

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 syn…

That's surprising. The free version of Msty is better

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

#70

Post by BenjiWiebe »

Gigachad wrote: post #52
massysett wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

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. :)
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