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Subscription fatigue and related musings

morrick.me

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Re: Subscription fatigue and related musings

#11

Post by wongarsu »

candiddevmike wrote: post #3

I build apps with subscriptions (like https://homechart.app ) and this is why I offer a lifetime subscription/one time payment. To me, the monthly/yearly option gives users more of an "extended trial" option, and they'll hopefully see that it makes sense to just go lifetime. One problem I have (perhaps self inflicted) is that I do not offer my lifetime subscription on app stores. 30% is a huge cut of what is effectiv…

> I do think subscription-based creates better quality software

Maybe compared to pay-once. But the pay-for-every-major-version model that used to be common also provides an incentive to improve, while avoiding redesign churn: the amount of sales you get is directly correlated to how much better your new version is. Meanwhile with subscriptions you mainly have to update the design to attract new customers, your old customers are stuck paying unless you become worse than your competitors.

Re: Subscription fatigue and related musings

#12

Post by jsmith99 »

silvestrov wrote: post #6

A significant problem is that the App Store just says "In App Purchases" on the App page. We don't even get a list of prices and functionality of the IAPs. In EU it is a requirement that: "When you buy goods or services in the EU, you have to be clearly informed about the total price, including all taxes and additional charges." https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/pri... I don't think the App sto…

On my iPhone at least, if I scroll down the app store listing to the app details and expand the IAP section it shows a list of all the IAPs the app offers. The names don't always reveal what they unlock, but sometimes it's clear they are just voluntary donations.

Re: Subscription fatigue and related musings

#13

Post by mrtksn »

xoa wrote: post #8
mrtksn wrote: post #4

Some apps that I purchased before in full, later turned into subscription based apps(giving me a year of free subscription). This made me feel bad and I lost my warm and fizzy feelings towards these apps. That said, I understand why they are doing it. It doesn't make sense whatsoever to receive one time payment and provide updates forever. Also, despite that people claim that they want "one time payment apps" that do…

> It doesn't make sense whatsoever to receive one time payment and provide updates forever. Duh? This is written in English but I genuinely have trouble making sense of your words. We had this for decades without subscriptions, they're called UPGRADES! You buy 1.x, or 2.x or whatever, and then when 3.x comes out new customers pay full price but existing ones get it at a much reduced price. But they can do so on their…

It's not my English or that I haven't heard of upgrades, App Stores don't offer a mechanism to sell upgrades. That's why Im proposing it as a solution.

Re: Subscription fatigue and related musings

#14

Post by [deleted] »

xoa wrote: post #8
mrtksn wrote: post #4

Some apps that I purchased before in full, later turned into subscription based apps(giving me a year of free subscription). This made me feel bad and I lost my warm and fizzy feelings towards these apps. That said, I understand why they are doing it. It doesn't make sense whatsoever to receive one time payment and provide updates forever. Also, despite that people claim that they want "one time payment apps" that do…

> It doesn't make sense whatsoever to receive one time payment and provide updates forever. Duh? This is written in English but I genuinely have trouble making sense of your words. We had this for decades without subscriptions, they're called UPGRADES! You buy 1.x, or 2.x or whatever, and then when 3.x comes out new customers pay full price but existing ones get it at a much reduced price. But they can do so on their…

[deleted]

Re: Subscription fatigue and related musings

#15

Post by brookst »

Subscriptions align developer and user interests and produce better products and less wasted money in the long run.

One-time up front purchases only reward developers for expanding the target market of their product; whether the product improves over time has no bearing on revenue.

From a developer’s perspective, the one-time price should be the CLV of what they’d get with a subscription. For users, that means much higher risk.

I would much rather have 20 apps that I pay $10/mo/ea for than to buy one new $600 app a quarter and hope the developers I bought from years ago still care about me even though they will never make another dime.

Oh, you want apps to be one-time purchases for $20 with a useful lifetime of 10 years? Then subscriptions aren’t the problem, you just want $0.17/mo subscriptions, which are unlikely to be economically viable either.

Re: Subscription fatigue and related musings

#16

Post by nirav72 »

Few years ago I bought a drive partition manager tool for windows. I only used it a few times over the years. Recently I installed a new primary drive on my gaming machine. Downloaded the latest binary from the vendors site and tried to put in the license key. Nope, wouldn’t activate. So i contacted their support and their response was that I had to pay the new yearly subscription to use the latest version. So I asked if they had the installation binaries for the version I had originally purchased which did not require annual subscription. Their response, “they no longer provide install files for the non-subscription version.” If i can find the original installer somewhere , they will activate the license as a one time courtesy.

There is absolutely no way I’m going to pay an annual subscription for software that I do not use often or everyday.

Re: Subscription fatigue and related musings

#17

Post by cglong »

This article misses the elephant in the room: Apple. For years after the App Store launched, developers asked for an integrated way to provide upgrade pricing to help support major upgrades. Instead, they usually had to resort to creating an entirely new entry in the App Store. How many customers were lost because they didn't know they had to go back to the Store to download a separate app named Thing 2? And how many then felt ripped off that they didn't get a discount after having previously purchased Thing 1?

After years of being asked for upgrade pricing, Apple instead introduced and then started pushing developers to embrace the exact subscription model we see today. Unlike paid upgrades, a subscription guarantees recurring revenue not only for the developer, but for Apple themselves.

Re: Subscription fatigue and related musings

#18

Post by bvrlt »

mrtksn wrote: post #4

Some apps that I purchased before in full, later turned into subscription based apps(giving me a year of free subscription). This made me feel bad and I lost my warm and fizzy feelings towards these apps. That said, I understand why they are doing it. It doesn't make sense whatsoever to receive one time payment and provide updates forever. Also, despite that people claim that they want "one time payment apps" that do…

> Some apps that I purchased before in full, later turned into subscription based apps(giving me a year of free subscription). This made me feel bad and I lost my warm and fizzy feelings towards these apps.

> That said, I understand why they are doing it. It doesn't make sense whatsoever to receive one time payment and provide updates forever.

This. While justified, so many apps messed up the switch to subscriptions.

We recently switched our app Genius Scan to a subscription model, but tried to do it The Right Way: users who had purchased the pro features automatically got subscribed to our Plus plan for life.

New users will have to subscribe though, as it's the only way to be sustainable.

We also introduced a new plan, Ultra, with more advanced features. This way, we still get a chance for long time users to support us if they upgrade to the Ultra plan.

Re: Subscription fatigue and related musings

#19

Post by comfypotato »

xoa wrote: post #8
mrtksn wrote: post #4

Some apps that I purchased before in full, later turned into subscription based apps(giving me a year of free subscription). This made me feel bad and I lost my warm and fizzy feelings towards these apps. That said, I understand why they are doing it. It doesn't make sense whatsoever to receive one time payment and provide updates forever. Also, despite that people claim that they want "one time payment apps" that do…

> It doesn't make sense whatsoever to receive one time payment and provide updates forever. Duh? This is written in English but I genuinely have trouble making sense of your words. We had this for decades without subscriptions, they're called UPGRADES! You buy 1.x, or 2.x or whatever, and then when 3.x comes out new customers pay full price but existing ones get it at a much reduced price. But they can do so on their…

With phone upgrades, for example, and an iOS app.

The cost of maintaining different versions of apps for different tiers of payees seems prohibitive. Especially when libraries change constantly.

Maybe I’m wrong and your system would work fine. It doesn’t seem right to me though.

Personally, I think subscriptions are the way forward, just lower cost subscriptions. Why is 15 a month such a standard? Most of the 15/month apps I shell out for feel more like 3/month or 4/month apps.

Re: Subscription fatigue and related musings

#20

Post by louison11 »

xoa wrote: post #8
mrtksn wrote: post #4

Some apps that I purchased before in full, later turned into subscription based apps(giving me a year of free subscription). This made me feel bad and I lost my warm and fizzy feelings towards these apps. That said, I understand why they are doing it. It doesn't make sense whatsoever to receive one time payment and provide updates forever. Also, despite that people claim that they want "one time payment apps" that do…

> It doesn't make sense whatsoever to receive one time payment and provide updates forever. Duh? This is written in English but I genuinely have trouble making sense of your words. We had this for decades without subscriptions, they're called UPGRADES! You buy 1.x, or 2.x or whatever, and then when 3.x comes out new customers pay full price but existing ones get it at a much reduced price. But they can do so on their…

Updates have disappeared because most software today is no longer full offline (as was the case of those CD-ROMs you’d use to install softwares back in the days), but a hybrid of offline and online, with a local client making calls to an API. A software company can’t ship a hybrid product and stop running the API, the API has to be kept up, which is often no small feat, and costs money. On top of that, if they had to deploy different endpoints for different versions of the client, the backend management would become absolutely chaotic and cost the company even more.

Tldr: online softwares cost money to run, even after they’re sold. They’re not standalone softwares.

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