Dear startups: I hate subscription services (2021) • Hacker News Board

Re: Dear startups: I hate subscription services (2021)

#11

Post by davidkuennen » Sat, Jul 30, 2022, 10:26 AM UTC

auveair wrote: post #8

boffinism wrote: post #4

Dear customers: we know. But our businesses are viable as subscription services, and not as one-off or ad-hoc puchase models. We know because we tried them. So we're catering to the people who are OK with buying a subscription because there are enough of them. Sorry if that doesn't suit you.

> So we're catering to the people who are OK with buying a subscription because there are enough of them. Are there enough of them? Many services seems like they can only exist because many people forget to cancel their subscription.

I believe this to be untrue. People are very quick to unsubscribe to my app once they don't see a use for them for the paid version anymore.

Re: Dear startups: I hate subscription services (2021)

#12

Post by TheChaplain » Sat, Jul 30, 2022, 10:27 AM UTC

jmyeet wrote: post #6

Evernote is worth mentioning. There was a time when everyone used it but really it wasn't that special. I wonder if they had any buyout offers they rejected and now regret? I'm with the authoro on most of this. It's gym memberships, basically. The ideal customer is one who never uses the facilities but auto-renews forever. But software is an interesting exception. IMHO subscription is the best monetization model for…

Evernote isn't that bad, both me and my partner uses it frequently and I feel we got our worth.

But Evernote is garbage with their API, their SDK's are rarely updated and they use odd protocol called Thrift.

Re: Dear startups: I hate subscription services (2021)

#13

Post by haunter » Sat, Jul 30, 2022, 10:27 AM UTC

Rich coming from a blog that is on Medium. Once you run out of free access you have to sub. And even worse it's one of the rare subscription services where you don't even see the price on the landing page without making an account first https://medium.com/membership

Re: Dear startups: I hate subscription services (2021)

#14

Post by nikanj » Sat, Jul 30, 2022, 10:27 AM UTC

We don’t build them for you, we build them for the VCs. They love them.

Re: Dear startups: I hate subscription services (2021)

#15

Post by Havoc » Sat, Jul 30, 2022, 10:27 AM UTC

I can deal with them conceptually - I just dislike how they go about things on the billing & signup side.

Its usually quite darkpattern-y in vibe. See trials that switch to paid, or discounts for 1 month (heavily advertised) then extortionate rate (in fine print) after. Or easy online sign up, phone in during office hours to cancel. Or getting mercilessly hounded to re-sub after cancellation.

If they just behaved a little less scummy things would be better

Re: Dear startups: I hate subscription services (2021)

#16

Post by charcircuit » Sat, Jul 30, 2022, 10:28 AM UTC

>Lack of customer retention. If a user pays upfront for a product, they will feel compelled to use it daily to get their money’s worth

No, if anything it's the opposite since you don't want this month's payment to go to waste. Although I don't have the data, I wouldn't be surprised if consumers actually don't care that much about "getting their money's worth" for most products.

Re: Dear startups: I hate subscription services (2021)

#17

Post by manigandham » Sat, Jul 30, 2022, 10:32 AM UTC

xg15 wrote: post #10

boffinism wrote: post #4

Dear customers: we know. But our businesses are viable as subscription services, and not as one-off or ad-hoc puchase models. We know because we tried them. So we're catering to the people who are OK with buying a subscription because there are enough of them. Sorry if that doesn't suit you.

> But our businesses are viable as subscription services, and not as one-off or ad-hoc puchase models. Doesn't explain businesses that had been per-purchase for a long time and are now still switching to subscriptions though. (E.g. photoshop, jetbrains...)

Restate it as "more viable".

Re: Dear startups: I hate subscription services (2021)

#18

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jul 30, 2022, 10:32 AM UTC

boffinism wrote: post #4

Dear customers: we know. But our businesses are viable as subscription services, and not as one-off or ad-hoc puchase models. We know because we tried them. So we're catering to the people who are OK with buying a subscription because there are enough of them. Sorry if that doesn't suit you.

[deleted]

Re: Dear startups: I hate subscription services (2021)

#19

Post by Omavel » Sat, Jul 30, 2022, 10:33 AM UTC

You have choice not to use them, init?

Re: Dear startups: I hate subscription services (2021)

#20

Post by jmyeet » Sat, Jul 30, 2022, 10:33 AM UTC

TheChaplain wrote: post #12

jmyeet wrote: post #6

Evernote is worth mentioning. There was a time when everyone used it but really it wasn't that special. I wonder if they had any buyout offers they rejected and now regret? I'm with the authoro on most of this. It's gym memberships, basically. The ideal customer is one who never uses the facilities but auto-renews forever. But software is an interesting exception. IMHO subscription is the best monetization model for…

Evernote isn't that bad, both me and my partner uses it frequently and I feel we got our worth. But Evernote is garbage with their API, their SDK's are rarely updated and they use odd protocol called Thrift.

Thrift was (and is) Facebook's answer to protocol buffers. Like protocol buffers it a language and platform independent way of storing structured data.

But Thrift adds and RPC mechanism on top of that. Google had their own protocol buffers based RPC (called Stubby) that wasn't open source at the time (we're talking 10-15 years ago).