Unfortunate that people who make more than $100/hr won't pay $60/year for an app they use every day.
Unfortunate that companies that used to sell products are choosing to rent them out instead.
Spark email client goes subscription path
21–30 of 61 posts
Re: Spark email client goes subscription path
#22I wish Apple Mail would fix how it handles attachments. They just get scattered at the bottom of the email haphazardly or hidden behind a dropdown which itself is hidden until you mouseover it.
Re: Spark email client goes subscription path
#23Unfortunate that people who make more than $100/hr won't pay $60/year for an app they use every day.
'Americans earning >200K/yr' is a pretty small market to be targeting.
The average earner, especially outside the US, is already overburdened by recurring bills and subscriptions, especially during the energy crisis.
When even Netflix is losing subscribers rapidly, you've got to be offering something pretty special to get a regular low/mid-income person to subscribe.
Re: Spark email client goes subscription path
#24laughs in Superhuman Puny mortals.
Isn't Superhuman still limited to Gmail only? If so, meh.
Re: Spark email client goes subscription path
#25Unfortunate that people who make more than $100/hr won't pay $60/year for an app they use every day.
By that logic we should be sending thousands of dollars a year to our operating system vendors. Are you by chance a Red Hat employee?
Re: Spark email client goes subscription path
#26Unfortunate that people who make more than $100/hr won't pay $60/year for an app they use every day.
Thunderbird is free, Outlook comes with an office subscription, most people probably just use Gmail. Then there is Apple Mail if you are on Apple. These are all good clients. I have never heard of Spark, is it that much better? Edit: looking through their feature set, the answer is no. It doesn't seem to have a feature Thunderbird doesn't.
I used Spark for a while, as it supported Exchange/O365 out of the box which was one advantage over Thunderbird. It also has decent mobile support.
But Thuderbird is a superior email client, IMHO
Re: Spark email client goes subscription path
#27Subscriptions are uncontroversial when there's a perceived cost to the user of the ongoing usage. In fact I believe it tracks very closely with the "Cost of Goods Sold" (COGS). No one questions whether Dropbox should be a one-off price or a subscription, there's obviously ongoing cost to storing the data. However for apps that don't have this there's always going to be push back. Developers typically point to custome…
For ongoing development there already exists a model where you buy a license that lets you use the current version plus maybe any upgrades happening in the next X months. I'd be happy to regularly pay 5 or 10 bucks for an app I love if it gets updates but that's not what we're seeing I think. The current model is based on subscriptions because of exactly one reason. Hope that the consumer forgets about the recurring…
I think that's a cynical view of the model. People are unwilling to pay a lump sum price that'd justify the development costs, many SAAS companies offer a lifetime license that matches the average life time value of a customer but people don't want that.
The long ramp of death for SAAS products is something like 12 to 18 months (if I remember right), without the subscription model I don't see customers paying enough money to sustain the time, energy and risk involved. We're talking thousands of customers paying 100$ licenses just to match a normal software salary and that's not counting the benefits of a normal job, the work-life balance, the stress, the risk factor and so on.
Re: Spark email client goes subscription path
#28I love the fact they have a Windows client now.
However, I cannot seem to get back my side-by-side email view. I prefer to see my list of email headers vertically, and then when clicking one, I see the email to the right. Now they have some full screen nonsense as if my Windows computer is a mobile phone.
If they're going to change the design and try to start charging, of which I fully support, at least don't change the design in a way that hinders they're existing user base.
Re: Spark email client goes subscription path
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
For ongoing development there already exists a model where you buy a license that lets you use the current version plus maybe any upgrades happening in the next X months. I'd be happy to regularly pay 5 or 10 bucks for an app I love if it gets updates but that's not what we're seeing I think. The current model is based on subscriptions because of exactly one reason. Hope that the consumer forgets about the recurring…
From what I understand the iOS App Store doesn't support that model. I've heard complaints from developers who have used that model with success on the Mac, and are frustrated that they can't do so on iOS.
There are apps using this though. Two that ring a bell for me are Agenda and Hook though only the first one has an iOS app that also utilizes this model.
I assume they give each feature a date of availability and compare to the last purchase made via the App Store receipts and make features available or unavailable based on that intersection.
Edit: Edited for URLs, I wish this stupid site would support at least basic markdown... So mind-blowing it doesn't.
Re: Spark email client goes subscription path
#30Compared to eM Client for which you pay once per version and it had ~20 months between last versions. The cost for Spark is more than twice that of eM Client.
A subscription model should enable them to set a lower price as their revenue will be more reliable.
Make it $9.99/year instead and I'm in.