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Dear startups: I hate subscription services (2021)

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

#81

Post by withinboredom »

dotancohen wrote: post #73
withinboredom wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You own a license, instead of paying for a license in perpetuity.

It's actually a fair question. The online service still has hosting and bandwidth to pay for at a minimum. Paying them once does not mean that they will be able to pay for hosting and bandwidth for the next twenty years that I expect to use the product. For scale, I've been using VIM for almost thirty years. Twenty years is not an exaggerated number.

4.5 people per second turn 18 years old. Surely you can convince at least one of those people to make a purchase every month?

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

#83

Post by GekkePrutser »

haunter wrote: post #13

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

Yeah medium has become a really nasty user- hostile service :( Substack is where it's at now IMO

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

#84

Post by mxander »

mattjenner wrote: post #21

Dear innovative people: think of a better model. 1. Free = problematic with the lack of money 2. Freemium = looks good if the balance is right 3. Ads = Mostly works but the model is flawed and skewed 4. Subscription = Love/Hate currently trendy but too relied on 5. Pay-what-you-can = Fans provide the service for everyone 6. Premium only = Only what it's worth, when it's worth 7. Enterprise = S'ok because my company/o…

I am surprised that the model of one off payment plus subscription after is not more common. I am happy to pay for ongoing support and updates to latest OS plus whatever MODEST margin, but I don’t really want to pay for product development cycle of features I might not even want or need. Some apps are just good as they are, I don’t want to pay for constant reinvention of UI or gimmicky features that developers feel like they have to add to justify subscription.

I’d love to say pay for a feature set that I really like and pay a “lower” subscription for it for ever. Even if at some stage I am forced to upgrade because developers have too many versions that they need to maintain.

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

#85

Post by sethammons »

shapefrog wrote: post #66
xg15 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about good old "pay for it once, then own it"?

Would you like feature updates with that purchase?

Usually, no. If the updates are worth it, I'd purchase the next version. I used Adobe Photoshop 5 for _years_. I wouldn't have paid for the CS version.

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

#86

Post by danielvaughn »

Havoc wrote: post #15

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 l…

The “phone in during office hours” technique led me to threaten a lawsuit on one occasion. I really think it should be illegal.

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

#87

Post by jeromegv »

andix wrote: post #60
chrisseaton wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I make good money, but I can’t afford to have 10 subscription services for 9,99 per month. So 100 a month total? Surely that's not any kind of issue if you're making good money? I get tons of value from the services I subscribe to.

After paying for housing, power, food, insurance, transportation, savings, …, I have maybe 1000$ left for spending every month. I don’t want to spend 10% of it for some apps/services that save me maybe a few minutes every months, for tasks that can be also somehow achieved with the apps that came with my phone.

Then you’re not the target market.

It’s just supply and demand. If not enough people want to pay that subscription, they will stop and change model (or shut down).

But if this is sustainable enough to pay for their dev, it doesn’t look like they should cater to you as those are non critical tasks for you and they barely have any impact on your life.

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

#88

Post by yourMadness »

gordaco wrote: post #67

I'm a very, very firm believer on not paying for "subscription" to software. New content, I can understand (I spend about 40€ monthly on several Patreons, mostly comic artists; and I have a couple news subscriptions as well), although I still hate music/tv subscriptions and I don't want Netflix, Spotify or whatever. But for software, no matter how useful it is , I just refuse to choose between an unbounded price and…

Would you use a service that converts subscriptions into one time purchases at 20x the yearly subscription cost?

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

#89

Post by clement_b »

Yes, subscriptions for everything isn't good for consumers, but, if it was 'easy' to sell software as a one off before the cloud, it's a bit harder now with all the costs associated with cloud features such as everlasting storage, security, sync, compute, you name it. How do you sell something that consumes resources continuously at a one-off cost?

SaaS can only work with a continuous revenue stream because the software provider has to keep delivering the service, and doesn't know how long it will be necessary to do so. LTV predictions are based on the assumption that customers churn, but what if they don't? If you charge the LTV as a one off but got that wrong, you're out of business.

With proper software, that you install on your device, you power everything, therefore one off licences can work.

There is also the whole way to ship software that has to change for a shift away from subscription, but are consumers ready to wait for yearly releases and pay for these ? Are consumers ready to install software again? Not so sure!

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

#90

Post by cptaj »

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...)

Heated seats
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