Tell HN: A Conversation Needs to Be Had over Subscription Software

#1

Post by Abhinav2000 » Fri, Jan 21, 2022, 9:57 AM UTC

The software world today is increasingly SaaS, user-hostile and rent-extracting.

My most recent experience is Shutter Stock, a completely scam company that charges ridiculous amounts of money with no easy to unsubscribe.

https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.shutterstock.com

- Microsoft has used its dominant position to charge for MS Office in perpetuity, breaking features and now trying to trick people to use One Drive more (renaming files from an Office App is only a "feature" that works for files saved remotely on One Drive)

- Apple's "services" income is mostly from various apps that use predatory practices to maximise how much they can extract from users. For example, it makes sense for me, with a broken App Store search, to pay $4 for each download when I can get users to pay $5/month to use my app.

- Many other examples, with the whole industry going towards SaaS and HaaS

What has the world come to, where technology has been appropriated and we are left paying rents every month and companies are increasingly becoming user-hostile and predatory and monopolistic!

Re: Tell HN: A Conversation Needs to Be Had over Subscription Software

#2

Post by klelatti » Fri, Jan 21, 2022, 10:11 AM UTC

Seems to me that there is an inherent contradiction at the heart of SAAS. A service either:

- Has a big enough moat that its immune to competition - in which case you get rent seeking behaviour; or

- It's vulnerable and could disappear / become economically unviable so you wouldn't want to have your business rely on it.

So you essentially have to choose between two unpalatable choices.

Re: Tell HN: A Conversation Needs to Be Had over Subscription Software

#3

Post by ique » Fri, Jan 21, 2022, 10:21 AM UTC

klelatti wrote: post #2

Seems to me that there is an inherent contradiction at the heart of SAAS. A service either: - Has a big enough moat that its immune to competition - in which case you get rent seeking behaviour; or - It's vulnerable and could disappear / become economically unviable so you wouldn't want to have your business rely on it. So you essentially have to choose between two unpalatable choices.

I think a large part of the problem is that so much software (like Office) is turning into a service when it doesn’t need to be.

Re: Tell HN: A Conversation Needs to Be Had over Subscription Software

#4

Post by klelatti » Fri, Jan 21, 2022, 10:27 AM UTC

ique wrote: post #3

klelatti wrote: post #2

Seems to me that there is an inherent contradiction at the heart of SAAS. A service either: - Has a big enough moat that its immune to competition - in which case you get rent seeking behaviour; or - It's vulnerable and could disappear / become economically unviable so you wouldn't want to have your business rely on it. So you essentially have to choose between two unpalatable choices.

I think a large part of the problem is that so much software (like Office) is turning into a service when it doesn’t need to be.

Agreed. I think that part of the problem is that SAAS makes 'bought' software look expensive which has driven down the prices on eg iOS App Store to a level that isn't viable.

Re: Tell HN: A Conversation Needs to Be Had over Subscription Software

#5

Post by Kuinox » Fri, Jan 21, 2022, 10:27 AM UTC

> Microsoft has used its dominant position to charge for MS Office in perpetuity

You can still buy a definitive, noncloud, without subscription of MS Office, and they still release it (there is a 2021 edition).

Re: Tell HN: A Conversation Needs to Be Had over Subscription Software

#6

Post by sokoloff » Fri, Jan 21, 2022, 10:29 AM UTC

ique wrote: post #3

klelatti wrote: post #2

Seems to me that there is an inherent contradiction at the heart of SAAS. A service either: - Has a big enough moat that its immune to competition - in which case you get rent seeking behaviour; or - It's vulnerable and could disappear / become economically unviable so you wouldn't want to have your business rely on it. So you essentially have to choose between two unpalatable choices.

I think a large part of the problem is that so much software (like Office) is turning into a service when it doesn’t need to be.

The value I get from and the price I pay for O365 are more closely aligned than when I used to buy shrink-wrapped software. “This software costs $299 in months 0 and some unknown month in the future, probably between 25 and 42, and is free in all the other months.” is how things used to work.

I hate recurring billing as well, and it works very poorly for occasionally used software, but for software that I use every week, I’m indifferent to whether it’s billed lumpy or smooth; the total price vs total value is what matters.

Re: Tell HN: A Conversation Needs to Be Had over Subscription Software

#7

Post by beebmam » Fri, Jan 21, 2022, 10:29 AM UTC

It takes resources to build, maintain, and operate most SaaS offerings. More competition should drive prices down, theoretically, but in reality there just aren't enough software engineers in the world who can build and maintain effective alternatives to many SaaS offerings.

Re: Tell HN: A Conversation Needs to Be Had over Subscription Software

#8

Post by fidrelity » Fri, Jan 21, 2022, 10:30 AM UTC

In general I do share your negative view on subscription business.

However, not all aspects of subscriptions - and not all players - are shady or bad. I wrote about the different aspects of subscription businesses recently[0] if you're interested.

[0] https://trive-studio.medium.com/do-you-hate-subscriptions-th...

Re: Tell HN: A Conversation Needs to Be Had over Subscription Software

#9

Post by math-dev » Fri, Jan 21, 2022, 10:33 AM UTC

klelatti wrote: post #4

ique wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a large part of the problem is that so much software (like Office) is turning into a service when it doesn’t need to be.

Agreed. I think that part of the problem is that SAAS makes 'bought' software look expensive which has driven down the prices on eg iOS App Store to a level that isn't viable.

Indeed, this is one of the bigger problems. Big Tech have normalised a situation where free (but you pay for it in other ways) or misleading SaaS (total cost much higher, although cheaper in the short run) are dominant and smaller developers struggle to compete against this

Re: Tell HN: A Conversation Needs to Be Had over Subscription Software

#10

Post by robertlagrant » Fri, Jan 21, 2022, 10:35 AM UTC

Kuinox wrote: post #5

> Microsoft has used its dominant position to charge for MS Office in perpetuity You can still buy a definitive, noncloud, without subscription of MS Office, and they still release it (there is a 2021 edition).

Actually, having this plus using something like Confluence for internal documents is quite appealing.