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

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

#561

Post by Rastonbury »

chillfox wrote: post #443
moonchrome wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Switch to 1password or something else ? That's the nice part about subscription - when it's about to expire it's easy to switch. Just make absolutely sure you remove payment info from that scammer site - they charged me for a year after I canceled and supposedly "refunded me" when I went to support forums- but never actually saw money refund. Couldn't be bothered to go further but just the fact that they will charge…

How do you figure moving hundreds of passwords + shared passwords (requires other people to also move) from one solution to another is easy.

That's a slight strawman, the same thing applies to owned software. If I own non-subscription software and want to migrate to something newer/better, it won't be easy either. It may be even harder if either or both does not come with support.

Companies ruining their product lines is not really a good argument against subscriptions unless the company has monopoly like power and customers have no choice but to stick with inferior (these exist). If it's a sticky product, it would've been sticky either way owned or subscribed. Password managers are commodities even if it takes effort to move.

Main problem here is bosses want to go with incumbent big dog or has a relationship with sales, sticking the company to products that are subpar or going downhill. If anything subscriptions make it so that there are competitors chasing those dollars while being willing to help you migrate

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

#562

Post by colonwqbang »

diffeomorphism wrote: post #533
jacobsimon wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spotify doesn’t need to “get better” - you’re paying the fee for streaming rights to an ever-growing content library. Same with Netflix, etc. There’s also an unspoken but important accounting detail here - if you run an online software business and offer a one-time, lifetime purchase for your product, you are now contractually on the hook to provide that service to customers forever, even if your business stops growi…

No. If that were true I could simply use spotify or netflix with any software of my choice. You are paying for both the content and the software bundled together. And no, you don't get it "for free".

But you can, in the case of spotify: https://github.com/librespot-org/librespot

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

#563

Post by Dr_ReD »

Convenience Vs. Control is a mostly lost battle and Everything-as-a-Service is but one of its ugly children.

Yet, it's all up to —and due to— "We, the People", as a group which values convenience way too much.

Gosh! We should know better, but still...

.

My solution?

Accept some small sacrifices in order to privilege ownership and control as much as possible — and vote with my wallet.

Care to join me? :)

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

#564

Post by antifanboy »

solardev wrote: post #126
thot_experiment wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the heck subscription models are you using? In my experience the software gets broken over time and you can't do anything about it, including RUN THE OLD VERSION WHICH WORKED. There's no longer as much incentive for companies to improve because they'll get paid anyway instead of payment being contingent on actually delivering something useful. Yes subscription models are good for developers, no this doesn't make…

Not the OP, but I have to disagree too. Creative Cloud, IntelliJ, Figma, Google Workspace, Postman, Spotify, Vercel, Adguard, Google storage space, Alltrails, 1password.. They're all subscriptions and getting better all the time. Meanwhile it's the old purchased software like Windows and Office that get worse with every version.

You’re kidding abiut 1password right? It has significantly gone downhill since they sold out its hsers and went subscription. I have a shell alias to kill off al of 1password’s processes and use it 2-4x per day. Thrree or four times a week I have to clear my sessions and close safari to get 1password yo work, which means lost productivity.

Im also quite worried about privacy with their shit tastic hosted vaults and still use my own local Copies.

1password is always my first example of what goes wrong for the user when companies decide they should subscribe for $50/year to a product they once bought for $40.

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

#566

Post by saiya-jin »

crazygringo wrote: post #40

Not really, because I saw too many software companies go out of business because not enough people wound up upgrading to the next major version -- the ownership model of software can be awfully feast-or-famine for developers' income, it's a very tough/risky business model. Generally speaking, I'm happy to pay a subscription because this way I get a steady stream of all the updates, and it's much more likely the compa…

To sum it up - good for the companies, not so good for many users. I fail to grasp why as a user I should care about increasing salaries at given company though, my priorities are elsewhere, even orthogonal since its my cash they so desperately want.

The company part - just look at how Adobe increased profits when they moved to subscription model. Many vocal users hated it since day 1, but majority goes and buys it even if they complain, even if it costs them much more long term. Why? Well if you are a photographer, you will need Lightroom or Photoshop as today as in 10 years. Nobody at Adobe cares that you would be perfectly fine with same version as purchased, not enough cash can be squeezed out like that.

As for users part, it has 2 subparts - quite a few really benefit since they get cheaply access to otherwise expensive tools (like say editing 2 videos per year in Premiere if we stay in Adobe realm). But most simply see increased TCO long term on product they are sort of 'stuck' with, in sense they have workflow and tool they are good at, fast, and understand it, possibly even paid for some plugins or similar. Very few people migrate away from Lightroom for example, competition would have to create something remarkably similar which normally is not how product strategy looks like.

At least they didn't start requiring you to move all your assets to their cloud in order to use them, that's outright slavery sold as added value. I am sure companies like Adobe would be very happy to put this in place.

So yeah, companies do it because they can, if they feel that market will accept this move and move on, and not stop using its products. Kind of semi-monopolies. I do expect Microsoft will come up with similar model for OS if it hadn't already done so.

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

#567

Post by Rastonbury »

trinsic2 wrote: post #446
crazygringo wrote: post #40

Not really, because I saw too many software companies go out of business because not enough people wound up upgrading to the next major version -- the ownership model of software can be awfully feast-or-famine for developers' income, it's a very tough/risky business model. Generally speaking, I'm happy to pay a subscription because this way I get a steady stream of all the updates, and it's much more likely the compa…

IMHO it feels like the subscription model in many cases (not all of them) protects a developer from having to innovate and deliver other products. In the real world you shouldn't expect to get unlimited income from one type of product regardless of Whether or not you are maintaining it. There is a saturation point.

That's not true at all, for most modern software with newer products, competition on product and winning competitors customers using X new features is ruthless. Messing up your product or falling behind will send your company to the grave, unless you are Adobe.

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

#569

Post by dstick »

jimnotgym wrote: post #568

I just surveyed the market for bug tracking systems, and ended up installing Redmine to get away from saas. I installed it with a template onto a cloud server in a couple of clicks. It is not sexy, but it is robust... and exactly what I needed!

So.. you moved the software to a server that runs in the cloud. So sorta-SaaS? ;-)
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