Just Pay the Subscription • Hacker News Board

Re: Just Pay the Subscription

#61

Post by zetsurin » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 3:10 PM UTC

ur_tech_friend wrote: post #54

everdrive wrote: post #41

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…

This feels backwards—if the service gets worse, simply cancel your subscription. If it were a one-time purchase, wouldn't that encourage the service provider to make it worse over time because they've already taken your money?

That's the rub, numerous times you can't cancel until the x is done (for gym memberships it used to be a whole year). Or alternatively look at prime cancelling is made difficult.

Another issue is they tend to get more unnoticed as time goes on and little additional fees start creating in.

Just avoid subscriptions when possible has served me well

Re: Just Pay the Subscription

#62

Post by RulerOf » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 3:15 PM UTC

bee_rider wrote: post #35

Interesting take. In my gut I hate subscriptions mostly because keeping track of them is annoying. But I’m semi-convinced. I mean, aligning the interests of the developer and the users is a nice benefit. Something Apple could do is allow iOS to handle some of this stuff automatically. Establish a sort of “small app subscription” account. Keep track of which apps had been opened every month, only pay the subscriptions…

> Keep track of which apps had been opened every month, only pay the subscriptions for the ones I’ve opened, and allow me to set monthly limits.

That turns app icons into land-mines though.

Idk what the happy medium is, but there's gotta be something between "buy this kids game once" and "pay $13 a month until he gets sick of it," and I don't think we've quite found one that's equitable for all parties yet.

Re: Just Pay the Subscription

#63

Post by eertami » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 3:15 PM UTC

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).

Yeah as a rule I cancel every service immediately after payment. If I still need it in the second month I'll just buy another month, it takes seconds and I don't need to track anything. (Only exception being a music subscription, the only thing I use on a daily permanent basis.)

I would much prefer if all services offered an option to buy only one period rather than always requiring manual deactivation - but I also understand they make a lot of money from people paying for things they aren't using.

Re: Just Pay the Subscription

#64

Post by RugnirViking » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 3:16 PM UTC

dabluck wrote: post #60

RugnirViking wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That's totally fine, if you want to work on the sun tracking app in your free time and release it, I encourage it. But there's a lot of weird obsessive niches and I don't think you're going to make all of them, so the people who want weird things to exist should probably fund their obsessive niches. Of course, if you aren't interested in that niche, you shouldn't feel any obligation to use it or pay for it.

as I mentioned in my initial comment, I believe that a great many products are priced wrongly compared to the market. There may be some where it makes sense to go after power users (say, a train simulator game). I believe many more are common things most people will end up wanting at some point, just once or twice a year for a few seconds.

Re: Just Pay the Subscription

#65

Post by cogman10 » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 3:16 PM UTC

Brendinooo wrote: post #55

cogman10 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strong is exactly the type of subscription that I hate. This is the sort of app that can be "complete". It doesn't need any sort of backend and doesn't have any sort of real operating expenses. So why is there a subscription? This is exactly the sort of app that should have a single $10 purchase. About the only argument for it having a subscription of any sort is the devs have to cover the BS from apple/google (mostl…

> It doesn't need any sort of backend It's far down the list as to why I decided to subscribe, but I do like the idea that if I lose my phone, my data won't be lost forever. >This is exactly the sort of app that should have a single $10 purchase. If you cloned the app and offered it as a one-time $10 charge, I'd be interested in that for sure! > So why is there a subscription? Recently they pushed out some updates th…

> It's far down the list as to why I decided to subscribe, but I do like the idea that if I lose my phone, my data won't be lost forever.

You can pay for backup services with both google and apple. There's really no reason that data should be lost forever assuming the app stores data using that service. $7 a month gives you the ability to backup 1000s of apps worth of data.

> Recently they pushed out some updates that made the Watch experience a lot better. If you were the developer, would you have delivered that to $10 one-time purchasers for free, or would you have charged for a major version bump that had the feature?

This is a tricky thing. Sort of depends on where sales are currently at. I somewhat view this as the software not being complete before it was sold.

It'd be up to the dev if they wanted to run a new rev of pull out some good will to hopefully sell more apps. I'd assume you wouldn't make a new major version just for better watch integration. But then, there is the case of EA sports whose entire business model is releasing the same game with only roster and game player updates.

Re: Just Pay the Subscription

#66

Post by fusslo » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 3:21 PM UTC

ChessGenome wrote: post #18

I agree 100%. The key thing is that the monthly subscription should be cheap. That way it really does work for everyone - the user does not end up paying very much over a lifetime and they are getting value for it. And I think in most cases the subscriptions are cheap enough because those that aren't get no business. Of course there are rip-offs out there, and there's nothing wrong with them existing, but just don't…

also friction-less

I am so burnt out of making accounts. verifying my email. entering 2fa. re-logging in. entering cc info. getting spammed with marketing email.

Re: Just Pay the Subscription

#67

Post by bellowsgulch » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 3:21 PM UTC

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 your fucking bananas aren't connected to servers in a datacenter that require you to pay monthly bills and engineers need to get paid more than people stacking rocks for living.

Re: Just Pay the Subscription

#68

Post by giantrobot » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 3:25 PM UTC

dabluck wrote: post #7

thatxliner wrote: post #6

Right, the issue is that we are owning our stuff less and less. You used to be able to even buy a copy of an OS on a CD. Thus, I don't think a subscription justifies the cost of maintenance, and a lot of app models don't do subscriptions for app updates. Of course, if there is a cloud component, that's a different story because there are recurring costs to hosting a server. Or maybe a user uses the service enough to…

I addressed this in the post. I don't quite understand what people mean when they say they want to own their software. I mean okay you can put the CD on the shelf. Now what? I understand why they don't like paying money. But ownership just doesn't make a lot of sense when talking about a mobile app.

I have a retail copy of Photoshop 7 I bought decades ago with hard earned money. A full copy of Photoshop then was hundreds of dollars. I still use it to this day.

I learned Photoshop well enough back in the day to do cool stuff and make a few bucks on the side doing graphic design. I'm not a professional graphic designer at all so it never made sense for me to get on the version treadmill. Even today it does everything I need and more.

Adobe got paid for the work they did. I've gotten incredible value out of my purchase since I've used it so long and the cost has amortized over decades.

Subscriptions imply change. I don't necessarily want change. If I buy something that suits my needs...it already suits my needs. Adding more shit isn't necessarily a boon. Changing the behavior or look with a new update is infuriating. This is especially true of complex software that takes time to learn.

For a developer selling a subscription the strategy of locking up data is entirely rational. They'll keep getting money no matter what they do because they're holding my data hostage. It's a model I have no interest in.

Even better is when they decide to shut down or get bought out. If the subscription shuts down there's no amount of money I can pay to get it back.

Re: Just Pay the Subscription

#69

Post by haritha-j » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 3:26 PM UTC

The big problem with the subscription model for me is that it gives devs carte blanche to "fix it in post". Its now okay to sell a half baked product and then sell a subscription for bug fixes. Befiore the advent of subscriptions, comapnies sold complete tools that just worked. Im not saying there weren't bugs, but there were certainly far less.

Re: Just Pay the Subscription

#70

Post by stego-tech » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 3:27 PM UTC

I mean in a perfect world where I knew my subscription fees were going to developers and enabling them to live a high quality of life, sure thing.

Except in practice, that’s rarely the case. The systemic incentives in society have perverted the subscription into little more than rent extraction rather than genuine support. Products see arbitrary “updates” all the time just to justify someone’s promotion or some executive’s whims rather than actual customer feedback or needs. Hiding software behind layers of infrastructure to justify largesse instead of transparency around how it actually works and providing options for those who would rather retain some degree of ownership even at the expense of building the infra themselves.

The entire present-day model for 99% of corps out there isn’t subscriptions-as-support, it’s subscriptions-at-gunpoint. Companies like Panic or Capture One are the exception to the norm, making it clear what the fees actually do and don’t just funnel them up and out to external shareholders.

I am all for supporting developers, content creators, and everyone else involved in technology. I’m just beyond done with forced migrations to new UI/UX or arbitrary monetary extraction schemes for technology that frustrates me rather than helps return time back to me.