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Just Pay the Subscription

uncommonapps.nyc

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Re: Just Pay the Subscription

#41

Post by everdrive »

No, no, never. Subscriptions never benefit the consumer. They all work exactly the same way:

- Get the user hooked into their ecosystem

- Slowly make the service worse / more expensive / different over time

- The user is paying for a subscription which feels like an investment, so they put up with more crap than they would otherwise.

Trust me. If you have a subscription for something, and you like it, it will change under your feet. It will get worse, and in effect, it will be taken from you.

I'm not paying for the subscriptions. If everyone moves towards subscriptions, I'll move into a shack in the woods. I don't care. I don't want your subscriptions. If you think subscriptions are a good idea I don't want to hear from you, and I wish you had no say in how anything was built.

[edit]

If the counter-point is that mobile apps will suffer, then good. I don't like or any want any mobile apps whatsoever.

Re: Just Pay the Subscription

#42

Post by wffurr »

FatherOfCurses wrote: post #39

Every other business has figured out a way to operate on a single transaction model where I give them money and they give me a product and that is the end of our relationship until I need something else that they make. Somehow we have managed to operate in this manner for hundreds of years. Why is software development any different?

That might work if the software platform vendors kept compatibility with old versions, but they're quite poor at this. Windows used to be quite good at it, but Android and iOS are really bad at it, and macOS is not a lot better.

Software is, unfortunately, a living thing and when not actively maintain bit-rots and becomes unusable.

Re: Just Pay the Subscription

#43

Post by neilalexander »

dabluck wrote: post #30
neilalexander wrote: post #25

> Upgrade pricing also doesn’t solve this. [...] versioned upgrades incentivize developers to chase shiny features that people might pay for rather than improving their app and building for the long haul. It makes the product worse. In my mind this is missing the point. I am very pro-upgrade pricing because upgrade pricing actually forces the developer to think about what their users actually will pay for, or what im…

Can you list any examples of companies that have done this well? The products I have used that tried this either stopped trying it (Ulysses articulated it really well) or devolved into shinier objects. In practice I think it's pretty tough to pull off.

TablePlus is a good example. I buy their product and in exchange I get a year of updates. After that, it keeps on working without new features or updates. If I want new features or updates after that, I buy it again. Otherwise, I can keep on using the version I have pretty much until it stops working due to e.g. platform changes.

Re: Just Pay the Subscription

#44

Post by mirmor23 »

Just ask for one-time payment also.

IMO, this whole 'article' has such a corporate bootlicky flavor to it. I pay for subscription (claude, gpt, netflix etc) since there are no real (pragmatic, convenience and financial) alternatives and it's not easy to rig a solution. otherwise the very fact that the only option is app subscription, i stay out of it on principle. even IDApro has perpetual license.

Re: Just Pay the Subscription

#45

Post by dabluck »

hellisothers wrote: post #34
ventana wrote: post #15

Speaking about paying for apps in general, I'm all for it. The moment a new app shows an ad, if this app seems useful to me, I'll go make a purchase if it's a single "remove ads" IAP with a reasonable price, where "reasonable" is a price that is less or equal to a price of a cup of flat white where I live. But I really don't see a reason to pay for a subscription for the app I probably don't use that often. If it's i…

You can cancel immediately and still get that initial trial/month! I always do this, especially for apps i aspirationally purchase a subscription for a year for (fitness/language apps).

I do the same. Then when I lose access and I actually care, I know that's something I should support.

Re: Just Pay the Subscription

#46

Post by carimura »

FatherOfCurses wrote: post #39

Every other business has figured out a way to operate on a single transaction model where I give them money and they give me a product and that is the end of our relationship until I need something else that they make. Somehow we have managed to operate in this manner for hundreds of years. Why is software development any different?

Agreed.

"I don't need a receipt for the donut, I'll just give you some money, you give me the donut. End of transaction. We don't need to bring ink and paper into this."

Re: Just Pay the Subscription

#47

Post by xnorswap »

FatherOfCurses wrote: post #39

Every other business has figured out a way to operate on a single transaction model where I give them money and they give me a product and that is the end of our relationship until I need something else that they make. Somehow we have managed to operate in this manner for hundreds of years. Why is software development any different?

Because people expect:

  1. bug fixes and updates
  2. Services to work in the "cloud"
If you bought a piece of software, received precisely that version and never got updates, and didn't expect your data to magically follow you around, then we could have that model, as evidenced by that model working well back when software largely did work that way.

Re: Just Pay the Subscription

#48

Post by Brendinooo »

ok123456 wrote: post #26
Brendinooo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're overgeneralizing. I subscribe to a couple of apps (OnX, Strong) and some news sites (Tangle, local sports site); as far as I know none of them started on 1, and 3 hasn't happened yet for any of them. They all provide services that I think are valuable, at a fair price - a price that, as far as I can recall, hasn't changed for any of them in the 4-6 years I've been a subscriber.

Strong appears to be a fitness tracker. It's in competition with a spreadsheet. OnX appears to be heatmaps as a service for outdoor recreation. They have to cover their opex costs. These are not the subscriptions people have in mind when they say they hate the subscription model. People dislike obvious rent-seeking behavior; they really dislike it when there is no technical reason something can't be sold to them in a…

> It's in competition with a spreadsheet.

I mean, I guess in the sense that any software that stores data is in competition with a spreadsheet? It's in competition with pencil and paper too. And if those things work for you, great!

The app runs on my watch, which tracks my heart rate through the workout and ultimately passes data to Apple's Health stuff. It syncs the workout to my phone so I can more easily input data. It keeps a database of exercises with video instructions (WAY better than trying to run down stuff via search or YouTube), keeps track of my history and records per-exercise, as well as doing one-rep max calculations. It has built in timers and a bunch of little conveniences that make it easy to log weighted exercises.

If you don't see value in that, that's fine, but it's hardly a grift, especially when the cost is just $2.50 a month.

>These are not the subscriptions people have in mind when they say they hate the subscription model.

Right. This why I replied saying that I think you're overgeneralizing, and why I provided examples of subscriptions that are eminently reasonable and in the spirit of the post we're commenting on ("talented individuals work hard on making great software like craftsmen, and they just get paid for it." - though I'll admit I don't know the size of the team that make Strong, they're certainly not Adobe-sized).

Re: Just Pay the Subscription

#49

Post by organsnyder »

FatherOfCurses wrote: post #39

Every other business has figured out a way to operate on a single transaction model where I give them money and they give me a product and that is the end of our relationship until I need something else that they make. Somehow we have managed to operate in this manner for hundreds of years. Why is software development any different?

Software used to work like this. You'd pay for a shrink-wrapped product, and the only updates you'd ever get (if you're lucky) would be for major bugfixes.

Subscriptions have gotten ridiculous, but with the way we've come to expect frequent updates the pay-once model isn't sustainable for many products.

Re: Just Pay the Subscription

#50

Post by RugnirViking »

dabluck wrote: post #36
RugnirViking wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this. I would happily pay subscriptions if they reflected an app's value to my daily life. The unfortunate truth many many app developers would immediately find out is that their sun tracking app or sprit level app or game I play on the train twice a year or whatever is worth approximately 10 cents a month if they're lucky. It's far too common for me to download something ive never used before and for it to ask me to…

The cheaper it is then the more people you need to sustain it. If there are only a small number of obsessives who want the sun tracking app, and the sun tracking app is really great and serving their needs, it should probably be more expensive not less. If the sun tracking obsessives want it to exist, they have to pay for it, because nobody else cares.

no, they really don't. if the sun tracking app didn't exist, I or some other enterprising fellow could make it, and release it for free. It's at best a series of calculations, or just taking data directly from some api.

Just because a business model can be made around something, does not mean a business model needs to exist to sustain that thing

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