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

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

#151

Post by jokethrowaway »

I agree with you, as a user I simply don't buy subscriptions.

As a developer I sell subscriptions.

As a business, it's repeatable income which makes it easy to calculate how much you'll roughly make. I'm also much more inclined to purchase a subscription as a business: you have more money and generally you're buying something trying to save you time or making your more money.

I agree that offline software sold as a subscription is ridiculous; I'd much rather purchase a software and then buy updates if I want to.

That's the reason I do online SaaS: I don't know how I could sell an offline app as a subscription with a straight face.

I think the problem is that companies started understanding how important it is to have repeatable source of income, the cornerstone of your business and they tried to make everything a subscription.

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

#152

Post by xtracto »

pimterry wrote: post #40

I don't think this is fundamentally about subscriptions. They're a different business model, but there are positives too: for example they align what users pay far more closely with the value they get from a product. If you use a tool for one month, you pay a small amount, if you use it every month for years you pay more. In the old world, if you wanted to use purchase-once software just once, then you had to pay far…

Ha! You are on to something regarding banks.

A couple of months ago I blocked allcky cards via App (so that only when you unblock it payments go through).

At the end of the month all my subscription services whined that they couldn't charge me they sent an email saying that my subscription was at risk.

Tidal, YouTube, Google Storage, AWS, among others.

AWS and Google Drive did the right thing: it provided me a page where I could manually run the payment (after temporarily unlocking the card).

YT and Tidal were terrible: after contacting their support (For YT I had to go to twitter... what a joke), they told me they had no way for me to pay manually. The only way was to wait for their automatic billing.

Tidal was the worst: After two days they cancelled my plan (OK) and THEN I was able to repurchase the plan to ge charged there... and immediately after I paid , THEY BLOCKED MY IP!!

Automated billing should be prohibited. Or at least companies should be forced to provide manual renewal option.

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

#153

Post by teekert »

It's often preferred for b2b because updates, predictable cost (opex vs capex) and support. It also provides the right incentives: Suppliers work hard to prevent outages because you won't get paid per hour for fixing your own stuff anymore. I guess it's leaking into b2c, where is has some nice uses, but indeed it's getting pretty out of hand. What does help is a bank (app) that lists all your subscriptions, would be even nicer if I could cancel from there.

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

#154

Post by toyg »

coldtea wrote: post #101
toyg wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's not really about free software; it's about paying salaries. Recurring expenses inevitably result in business models optimized for recurring revenues. That was always the case; it just so happened that the expansion of industrial production of goods was so vast for so long, that this was kinda hidden (and it was hard to justify - there are only so many widgets you can continuously supply to customers). Now…

> Yeah, it's not really about free software; it's about paying salaries Well, that's on the software maker. Why pay salaries in perpetuity for something made and sold once?

Almost no software these days is "made and sold once" because of network support - even the most "local" apps will have stuff like saving settings or document to remote servers, talking to network peers, receiving updates when new OS versions are released, and so on. Anything sold on Apple platforms, for example, nowadays has to be updated at least once a year just to keep up.

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

#155

Post by thomassmith65 »

Consumers do not want the subscription model. Consumers never wanted the subscription model. That will strike some here as obvious, but it's the important point in all this.

The root issue is that big tech has too much power. It is thrusting a model onto the public that primarily benefits itself.

I'll bet some of the people here on HN who argue for the subscription model work at smaller businesses, not for big tech. That seems crazy to me: customers can't afford to experiment when it comes to subscriptions. A customer who shells out for 'essential' subscriptions (ie: Netflix, Adobe, Microsoft, Google, Apple, etc) won't have money left to subscribe to your Shopping List app.

If a 'conversation' is needed, its aim should be how to defang (pun intended) big tech. A conversation about 'subscription software' alone is pointless unless you have the ear of Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai, etc.

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

#156

Post by 29athrowaway »

Nah.

Years ago, if you wanted to use Adobe Photoshop, you had to pay thousands of dollars for a license. Now you can pay for a subscription for the period of time you use the software.

It is easy to justify the subscription cost if you are making money using Photoshop.

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

#157

Post by toyg »

tjoff wrote: post #90
toyg wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's not really about free software; it's about paying salaries. Recurring expenses inevitably result in business models optimized for recurring revenues. That was always the case; it just so happened that the expansion of industrial production of goods was so vast for so long, that this was kinda hidden (and it was hard to justify - there are only so many widgets you can continuously supply to customers). Now…

Recurring expenses very often isn't necessary though. For software the initial costs are big, but after that it can be pretty low maintenance or at least costing much less to develop new features when the foundation is set. When you start to think about recurring expenses that's when you have to find a way to justify those expenses. And that is usually by adding bloat and unnecessary features that those that already…

Companies are not made of 100% engineers. Production costs are only part of recurring expenses in a business. At the very minimum you have to pay an executive team, a marketing team, a network/security team, a legal team, an accounting team... these guys don't work for free, and want to be paid every year at worst - more often, every month. Even if each "team" is one person in your garage, you have to pay them. And when you scale up, now you have investors to service, and they also would very much like to get regular dividends from their investment (or see constant growth in the value of their share).

Note: I'm not defending the practice (if you dig in my comment history, you'll see pretty incendiary stuff against SaaS abuse very recently), I'm just saying that it's what business naturally tends like - in the same way it naturally tends towards paying people as little as possible, exploiting them, etc etc. This is what the market becomes when left to its own devices. If we don't like it, we need to proactively intervene in law.

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

#158

Post by fy20 »

Macha wrote: post #34
porcoda wrote: post #18

This sort of began when we all got the impression that software should be free, or that we pay a low price once and get indefinite free upgrades. Given that developers need to be paid, and resources cost money, there needs to be a way to rectify that gap between the consumer and maintainer. At one point we did so by paying for an initial version of software, and then paying for updates. Now that we don’t do that, but…

> or that we pay a low price once and get indefinite free upgrades. To take IntelliJ as an example, I can't think of an improvement since 2018 that I really would pay for. Largely enabling that is why they moved to the subscription process because people like me would use IntelliJ 18 for five or so years then update for OS support or whatever. €100/yr is way more than I used to pay for intelliJ, €240/yr is way more t…

Photoshop CS2 in 2005 was $599 for the full version. Today that's the equivalent of $850. That would pay for 3.5 years with the current subscription model. So if you were upgrading every 2 years it's actually cheaper now, but of course if you wanted to keep the old version for 5 years it would be more expensive.

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

#159

Post by gefhfffh »

tempodox wrote: post #138
Hnrobert42 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not blaming the victim as there are no victims. OP’s is wrong that SaaS is rent sending. Software should not be free (in cost), yet always receive new features and updates. Indeed, the alternative is the ad-tech surveillance state.

Not true. I prefer paying for upgrades on my own schedule to a subscription any day.

Including skipping upgrades?

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

#160

Post by gefhfffh »

jtbayly wrote: post #144
tjoff wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recurring expenses very often isn't necessary though. For software the initial costs are big, but after that it can be pretty low maintenance or at least costing much less to develop new features when the foundation is set. When you start to think about recurring expenses that's when you have to find a way to justify those expenses. And that is usually by adding bloat and unnecessary features that those that already…

For example, 1Password. I’m happy to pay for a new version if my current version stops working. OS or browser update broke the app? I’ll pay for the new version. But they are trying to force me to pay every month, therefore they remove my ability to use the app at all unless I pay for their cloud storage which I neither need nor want.

Well, they don't stop working on an improved app and new features while you don't want to update.

You don't only get compatibility with X with the new version but all that as well.

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