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37signals Introduces "Once" - Buy software one time

once.com

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

#31

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.

If it's an option – good. If it's the only option – not so much.

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

#32
The Ruby on Rails stack may shine with this. Every cloud provider has hosting instructions. With the gem ecosystem, you can eliminate 3rd party SaaS dependencies that most startups rely on. That's why tools like Gitlab, Github Enterprise, etc. are so easy to self-host.

I'm most excited to buy Once software so that I can study the source code as an educational resource.

This reminds me of TailwindUI, but for SaaS.

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

#33
> We give you the software, you get to host it.

People can't host their own software. The handful of people who can host software won't install security updates or deal with backups. It's a drag. It makes no sense for millions of people to individually manage servers and server updates when it can be done centrally for a fraction of the cost. That's why SaaS won, ultimately.

I don't believe for a second 37signals is going to make desktop apps that you just install to your machine. These will be dockerized web apps with many fragile dependencies. This is a step backwards, frankly. If you want to make buy-once-zero-maintenance software the client software should automatically join a fully distributed peer-to-peer network. The alternative is for 37signals to offer the digital service part at cost.

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

#36

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.

If it's an option – good. If it's the only option – not so much.

per seat (5 seat bundle) (annual pricing)

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

#37

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.

The problem is when it adds up: you pay for FCP, for Adobe, for Office, for Figma, for X... at the end, you are paying 200 dollars per month in software (without counting Netflix, Spotify, hosting, etc).

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

#38
post #6
post #4

I wonder if they're going to offer Basecamp with this model, and if so, how much is that going to cost? I imagine it would have to be in the thousands.

I feel like this is going to be something closer to Tada list than Basecamp.

Highrise also comes to mind.

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

#39

My favourite licensing models for self-hosted software are perpetual fallback licenses. Jetbrains does this well and their description of it is: A perpetual fallback license is a license that allows you to use a specific version of software without an active subscription for it. The license also includes all bugfix updates, more specifically in X.Y.Z version all Z releases are included.

This is great until a company starts making file formats completely incompatible with back versions, making it impossible to use with friends or anyone else. Oh or when they just change the plan to subscription only anyways.

I'm looking at you, Sketch.

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