Your app subscription is now my weekend project
rselbach.com
Your app subscription is now my weekend project
1–10 of 390 posts
Re: Your app subscription is now my weekend project
#2Yeah. Part of why this is possible is simply that there are tons of subscription apps out there that were never really justified in requiring a recurring payment and are actually fairly trivial.
It used to be that you offer subscriptions only if there are ongoing costs, and a one-time payment if not (utilities, local, etc). SaaS kinda ruined that.
I'd welcome a boom in DIY vibe-coded utilities for personal use.
Re: Your app subscription is now my weekend project
#3I made the same realization two weeks ago. Posted about it here, where I rebuilt bare bones todoist with a habit tracker, goal setting and more within a few vibe coding sessions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46633092
I think that many existing apps with huge userbases will gradually lose users as the models become better and better. Their biggest advantage is that people don't like change, and thus having to e.g. export data from some tools etc. seems to be a hassle not worth $5 a month. But as the models get better and the quality of the output will match the quality of the established SaaS but tailor the whole thing to a single user with the ability to make any change they can imagine within minutes, and perhaps deploy to Hetzner and whatnot where they could host all of those apps for a single $5 instead, the exodus will accelerate.
On the other hand, new products will have a much harder time to gather a big userbase. Whenever I'll see a launch of a SaaS asking for $$$, the first question I'll ask myself will be how long it will take LLM to recreate it. And for most cases, I imagine that the time it will take to get 80% of what they have is a few vibe coding sessions (as most newcomers will probably have used LLM themselves to code it up).
Re: Your app subscription is now my weekend project
#4Some apps just do not make any sense for monetization and are now raced to zero. If it's not already open sourced then someone will vibe-code an implementation if none exist.
Vibe-coding accelerates the destruction of basic (closed-source) apps charging a subscription for features that offer little to no value whatsoever.
Re: Your app subscription is now my weekend project
#5First of all, I’m skeptical about these being free. Time isn’t free, and the tokens to make these projects certainly weren’t free.
Second of all, all of these SaaS apps that don’t actually have a need for recurring charge probably should be paid one time. I don’t use Loom — I use CleanShot X and it was a one-time $30 payment and has a lot of great features I benefit from. I can’t reimplement it in $30 of tokens or $30 of my time.
But for an app whose use case doesn’t change and is recurring for no reason? Yeah there’s probably not much value in recurring payments outside of wanting to support the developer. I pay a lot of indie devs out of the goodness of my heart, and I’ll continue to do that.
But the value for “SaaS apps” without clear monthly costs should have always been under scrutiny.
Re: Your app subscription is now my weekend project
#6Thats not cheaper than paying a subscription.
In fact this is at least 3x-10x more expensive.
And this is comparing to being subscribed many years in a row. With SaaS you can unsub and sub only when you need it again.
With your side project - a weekend of your life is invested and you will never get it back.
This is the worst use of your time if you measure it in $. If you make it for fun - sure. In all other terms it is a complete loss.
Re: Your app subscription is now my weekend project
#7First of all, I’m skeptical about these being free. Time isn’t free, and the tokens to make these projects certainly weren’t free. Second of all, all of these SaaS apps that don’t actually have a need for recurring charge probably should be paid one time. I don’t use Loom — I use CleanShot X and it was a one-time $30 payment and has a lot of great features I benefit from. I can’t reimplement it in $30 of tokens or $3…
Most apps rationale for subscriptions is "Ongoing development" without an option like jetbrains etc. to fall back to a perpetual license.
In practice, regardless of whether an app needs ongoing development or not, this is the best way to try to guarantee continuous income and make a living off of a project I guess.
Perhaps LLM's will force developers/companies to change their stance and to stop users from recreating what they have already created, just buy an at-a-time snapshot of their app for a one-time-fee? Probably not but one can hope.
Re: Your app subscription is now my weekend project
#8And one day your day job will be someone else weekend project
Re: Your app subscription is now my weekend project
#9First of all, I’m skeptical about these being free. Time isn’t free, and the tokens to make these projects certainly weren’t free. Second of all, all of these SaaS apps that don’t actually have a need for recurring charge probably should be paid one time. I don’t use Loom — I use CleanShot X and it was a one-time $30 payment and has a lot of great features I benefit from. I can’t reimplement it in $30 of tokens or $3…
Most apps rationale for subscriptions is "Ongoing development" without an option like jetbrains etc. to fall back to a perpetual license. In practice, regardless of whether an app needs ongoing development or not, this is the best way to try to guarantee continuous income and make a living off of a project I guess. Perhaps LLM's will force developers/companies to change their stance and to stop users from recreating…
It is not irrational on the part of the developer -- I've definitely felt this too. The problem comes from the fact that practically everyone has subscription fatigue these days, and each of us probably has only a few pieces of software we truly care about enough to want to support them out of the goodness of our hearts.
But everyone wants us to pay $10/mo. It just isn't sustainable from a consumer perspective.
Re: Your app subscription is now my weekend project
#10The "Your" shouldn't have been stripped from the title IMHO.