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…
This is a bold and not necessarily true statement. It really comes down to your target market. A SaaS is a much less disputed cost when it's targeting businesses but you're much more likely to encounter resistance to a subscription when you're targeting individual consumers.
There is plenty of highly successful mainstream modern day software that offers a perpetual license for one time fee. (DAWs come to mind: Bitwig, Reaper, Logic X, Studio One, Cubase, etc.).
Personally, I think a good compromise is the annual subscription with a fallback perpetual license, a.k.a. the Jetbrains model. I've never had an issue with paying a reoccurring subscription fee, but I take great issue with the proposition that the moment I stop paying I lose all access to the software - it's too close to rent seeking.