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37signals Introduces "Once" - Buy software one time

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Re: 37signals Introduces "Once" - Buy software one time

#151

Post by joe5150 »

scarface_74 wrote: post #128
Calavar wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That pricing sounds fair. Unfortunately, I feel that's the exception. Adobe Dreamweaver CS6 was $400 [1]. Now Dreamweawer Creative Cloud is $250 per year [2]. So after 1.75 years, you've already taken a loss. [1] https://prodesigntools.com/products/adobe-cs6-pricing-list.h... [2] https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/plans.html

And for that $400 you got to run on one computer. Office used to be $600 for one copy that could run on one operating system. I can now get an Office 365 subscription for $99 a year for five users and I can use it on my Mac, a Windows PC, iPad, iPhone and all five users get 1TB of storage each

Plus the latest version of the software. I would still be using Office 2013 if I had to pay what I paid for it to upgrade every release (multiplied by the half a dozen or so O365 licenses I'm currently using.)

Re: 37signals Introduces "Once" - Buy software one time

#152

Post by imoreno »

themagician wrote: post #136

Software and hardware move too fast now. Even if you buy it, there is no guarantee it runs properly in 4-6 years for whatever reason. If Apple had LTS versions of their hardware and software that guaranteed backwards compatibility for 15 years that be great. But now they will drop or replace an API or function within 6 years that breaks your application—almost guaranteed. I have spent thousands on apps and games that…

It's hard to guarantee what will happen in 5 years. Even if the vendor was really principled, who will honor their support commitment when they go bankrupt?

Instead of a "guarantee that it will run properly in 4-6 years" you should be looking for "guarantee that you can find a workaround when it breaks in 4-6 years". Avoid lock in, proprietary formats and protocols, poor compatibility, requirement for exotic platforms... Many DirectX games work great in Wine. It's the ones that do crazier tricks that are harder to deal with.

Re: 37signals Introduces "Once" - Buy software one time

#153

Post by TechRemarker »

Do you only get updates once? Since they even have to provide updates forever for free, which is unstainable, or provide no updates and then your software is aging from day one, and eventually won't even run on modern infrastructure and now teams have a to hire people with more unknown costs to handle all that vs a set monthly fee, or they have to charge for occasional updates in which case it's essentially a self hosted subscription. So unless they have some how solved those problems, not sure of any future for this, other than for some enterprise that already buys once and rarely ever updates and is okay with those downsides for the sake of what they believe to be better security.

Re: 37signals Introduces "Once" - Buy software one time

#154

Post by daft_pink »

turnsout wrote: post #28

Man, talk about a ship that has sailed. I was 100% anti-subscription pricing for a very long time. Eventually I realized, it's better for the software vendor and the customer. Final Cut Pro used to cost $999 upfront, now a teenager can use Final Cut on their iPad for $7/month, and subscribe only when they need it.

Until you look at Intuit, you used to be able to buy their accounting software and have the critical records for your business. Now their accounting software requires an internet connection and a subscription and puts your critical records behind a paywall and gives them access to your data for whatever purpose they want. And they keep ratcheting up the price and putting more and more features behind higher tier subscriptions.

Re: 37signals Introduces "Once" - Buy software one time

#155

Post by whelp_24 »

mattbgates wrote: post #87

While I love the idea for simple software services, it doesn't work to support the actual lifetime of the software, though it can work to an extent. Adobe would be a good example of offering a one-time payment. You get a lifetime for that version of the software. However, you'd have to upgrade/pay another fee to upgrade to the next version, perhaps for a reduced price, and this is likely to be many versions. The issu…

You seem to be against actually selling software, and tactily agreeing that the main beneficiary of the saas is the business renting the software to consumers. We already know that company benefits from not actually selling you software.

Re: 37signals Introduces "Once" - Buy software one time

#157

Post by whelp_24 »

crazygringo wrote: post #138
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now you just sign up for a month and then cancel. Or you sign up and then Adobe does everything in its power to stop you from cancelling, including lying to your face: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10930079 ( https://web.archive.org/web/20170324161306/http://www.geek.c... ). Just because subscriptions can work out well doesn't mean they don't get abused by companies.

I mean, that's one customer service rep who was being difficult (not necessarily representative of Adobe policy at all), and the user was trying to cancel a yearly subscription on the 365th day when it was already being charged for autorenewal that day . That's not even remotely representative of someone who signs up for a monthly subscription and then cancels it before the month is up. But yes, obviously you have to…

There are complaints all over the internet about this, it's not particularly isolated.

Re: 37signals Introduces "Once" - Buy software one time

#158

Post by amatecha »

pb7 wrote: post #51
eldaisfish wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn’t address a major gripe with the subscription model - taking away the option to purchase software outright. Were both to exist, we would not be having this discussion. In reality, corporations are driven by greed and greed pushed the subscription model. For some situations, subscriptions work well - music is one. For others, it is terrible. CAD software is a great example especially at larger orgs. Why sho…

Funny that you talk about greed when one of the reasons everything went the way of subscriptions is because of piracy. Even here and today, people defend pirating movies when you can rent one for a few bucks in 4K HDR with Dolby. Nothing but greed by people making top 1%-10%ile incomes.

No, the invention of subscription models is not because of piracy. It's because you can keep extracting money from customers "forever", rather than just once, and continue funding your business instead of having large gaps of reduced revenue when a product has not been recently released. A moment of consideration easily reveals that SaaS was inevitable with cheap hosting/networking and readily-available worldwide payment processors.

Sources which are speaking solely about the increase in revenue (and related benefits) and not a peep about piracy:

https://hbr.org/2023/04/the-rebirth-of-software-as-a-service

https://bebusinessed.com/history/the-history-of-saas/

https://smartbear.com/blog/the-pre-history-of-software-as-a-...

https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/history-of-saas/

Re: 37signals Introduces "Once" - Buy software one time

#159

Post by drewda »

Since 37signals has been having challenges hosting SaaS and hiring for dev/ops roles, it naturally makes sense that they'd be looking to shift that operational burden to their customers :)

I'm being extra snarky. But I must admit that I've grown a lot more skeptical of this company in recent years.

Their marketing about their products as well as about their open-source components has too much bravado.

They can't just say that administering their own Kubernetes control planes and network stacks feels like more trouble than its worth for a smallish organization like their own -- they have to announce that the status quo is wrong and their new solution is right.

HTML-over-the-wire makes sense for some use-cases and not for others, but according to 37signals there are exactly zero situations where it makes sense to transport JSON or PB between a back-end and a front-end.

It's been a few years since I evaluated Basecamp for my employer — at the time, the functionality was fine, but limited compared to other options for project management on the market and included some very opinionated portions that couldn't be customized. Integrations and client apps were also more limited compared to other options. It was the same story back when they offered Highrise CRM. Nothing wrong with their software, but there's a reason that larger players are able to satisfy a wider range of customers for business productivity and project planning software.

I was excited to try Hey, and found it similarly opinionated and underwhelming in terms of actual functionality. Maybe this has changed in the meantime, but I didn't see enough movement in the product at the time to want to commit to using it personally.

And while others can interpret their leadership team's management decisions however they wish, what I saw was them needlessly alienating some key long-term staff members and contributors to their open-source components. What a waste of talent and good will.

All this to say that I don't doubt that some of 37signals's products and some of their open-source components are indeed useful and valuable to some folks and some use-cases. At the same time, their approach to self-promotion and marketing has just started to leave an off taste in my own mouth, making me skeptical of a substance-free announcement like this.

Re: 37signals Introduces "Once" - Buy software one time

#160

Post by satvikpendem »

Macha wrote: post #134
satvikpendem wrote: post #11

[flagged]

Haven't Teams and Slack eaten their market in the intervening time? Even Discord and Matrix are moving into the space. If they're still profitable, it's because they're extracting more money from a shrinking pool of customers. I guess Oracle has shown that can last a while with many of their products, but I'm not sure that's the kind of influence they once had.

Slack and Teams aren't in the same category as Basecamp which is more of a ClickUp, Asana or Monday competitor, ie a project management tool.
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