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Ask HN: Is anyone making money selling traditional downloadable software?

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Re: Ask HN: Is anyone making money selling traditional downloadable software?

#81

Post by tomcam »

elemcontrib wrote: post #79

Slightly tangential but perhaps somebody could answer this question: So having decided that rather than trade as a fictitious company and go the "personal brand" route, I'm interested to know who has successfully sold their own desktop apps from a website with their personal domain eg. JoeBloggs.com. Do buyers really care so long as the software meets their requirements, or does the psychology of a trading entity rea…

Corporate customers are allergic to one-person shops because software price considerations pale next to stability of your company. They care much more about being able to depend on an SLA than whether the software costs $499 vs $999.

In fact, they prefer paying too much for software because that impresses management and keeps budgets increasing.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone making money selling traditional downloadable software?

#82

Post by anonzzzies »

stakhanov wrote: post #72

Legal changes are making it increasingly very difficult to sell perpetual licenses. For example, in Germany, a new law recently took effect that clarifies that if you sell a software license for a given period of time, you're liable to provide whatever updates/support the customer may need over the course of the software's licensing period to enable the customer to keep running it, at no additional cost, regardless o…

But it can be possible to have a license that allows you to run it at your own risk forever right? I mean, open source licenses do that, so you can make those and sell those as well. The 'support' being whatever updates happen to appear. Or the support is separately sold (again, like open source), so you pay once and for all year and you get updates forever, however, no support after 1 year; you can buy more. I have used support for downloadable paid products (turbo pascal, delphi, visual studio etc) in the past exactly 0 times, so not sure if support isn't just a check box for larger companies and they can buy it then yearly.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone making money selling traditional downloadable software?

#83

Post by coldtea »

cageface wrote: post #58
vunderba wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm very well-versed in the field, what DAW(s) are you referring to? Cubase, Ableton, FL Studio, Logic Pro X, Bitwig, Reaper, etc. are all flat fees. Studio one has a subscription model but it's tied to access to splice assets and it's completely separate from their one time fee model.

Logic Pro iPad is a subscription. It remains to be seen if the desktop version goes this way. Reason is pushing a subscription model hard. Online services like Splice are sub based for sounds & samples. Bitwig is a yearly fee. You don't have to upgrade but you're probably going to have issues with newer OS versions before long if you don't. Overall I agree it's sill a better space than most for software you actually…

>Logic Pro iPad is a subscription

That's the exception that proves the rule, and it's not really that popular though. They're pushing it more than there's actual update, and I think it's more for the "wanna try a music app" crowd atm (than the 'DAW using crowd'), mostly due to the limitations of the iPad.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone making money selling traditional downloadable software?

#84

Post by satvikpendem »

hulitu wrote: post #80
Gigachad wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need updates these days or stuff stops working fast. Everyone at every stage is quite happy to make breaking changes without long term backwards compatibility other than a transition period because it’s understood that everything can be quickly updated. Every time I updated macOS I find that some program stopped working and I just have to update it and it works again. As well as the fact that most software these…

> You need updates these days or stuff stops working fast. Maybe some engineering course will help. If you make a product that breaks in 6 months, i won't buy it from you. This really means that the amount of testing is minimal and, instead of fixing bugs, you just rewrite the "app" keeping the bugs.

You misunderstand, it is not the application code that changes, it is the code of the environment that the app lives in that changes, macOS is one of the most famous examples of breaking APIs.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone making money selling traditional downloadable software?

#85

Post by fxtentacle »

I know that Houdini (that VFX software used for Dr. Strange portal effects), Marmoset Toolbox (an alternative to Adobe's Substance Painter), and zBrush (a sculpting software) were all perpetual licenses when we bought them. And we chose these softwares specifically because they had perpetual licenses. SaaS vendors want to capture the margin of their power users, which means by necessity they price out casual users of their software.

=> For any software that might be used for hobby or casual use, perpetual licenses target a different market than SaaS offerings.

That's one of the reasons why the Spatial Audio Designer - targeting freelance audio producers and very popular with musicians - sells best with a perpetual license tied to a hardware USB dongle: https://www.newaudiotechnology.com/products/spatial-audio-de...

In my opinion, USB dongles also help with marketing because you make it easier for your power users / evangelists to borrow out the software to others.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone making money selling traditional downloadable software?

#86

Post by numba888 »

stakhanov wrote: post #72

Legal changes are making it increasingly very difficult to sell perpetual licenses. For example, in Germany, a new law recently took effect that clarifies that if you sell a software license for a given period of time, you're liable to provide whatever updates/support the customer may need over the course of the software's licensing period to enable the customer to keep running it, at no additional cost, regardless o…

> you're liable to provide whatever updates/support the customer may need over the course of the software's licensing period to enable the customer to keep running it

Does this include new layers for games, so that customers don't get bored? More seriously, this law is probably targeting big US companies. But smaller companies are suffering the most.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone making money selling traditional downloadable software?

#87

Post by cageface »

vunderba wrote: post #45
cageface wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately even in this area there is now a strong push towards subscription models.

I'm very well-versed in the field, what DAW(s) are you referring to? Cubase, Ableton, FL Studio, Logic Pro X, Bitwig, Reaper, etc. are all flat fees. Studio one has a subscription model but it's tied to access to splice assets and it's completely separate from their one time fee model.

Looks like Native Instruments is pushing a subscription too:

https://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/subscription/...

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone making money selling traditional downloadable software?

#88

Post by GoblinSlayer »

satvikpendem wrote: post #84
hulitu wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You need updates these days or stuff stops working fast. Maybe some engineering course will help. If you make a product that breaks in 6 months, i won't buy it from you. This really means that the amount of testing is minimal and, instead of fixing bugs, you just rewrite the "app" keeping the bugs.

You misunderstand, it is not the application code that changes, it is the code of the environment that the app lives in that changes, macOS is one of the most famous examples of breaking APIs.

That's just Apple life: users must constantly pay to keep their stuff working. But if you evade the system API entirely with SaaS, you don't need updates for broken system API. Might as well go with PWA, java or wine.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone making money selling traditional downloadable software?

#89

Post by SideQuark »

thayne wrote: post #78
lylejantzi3rd wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A little off topic, but, if you'll indulge me: Why do you think nobody has been able to make a successful alternative to Photoshop? Everybody I know complains about it constantly, and yet it's still the industry standard.

Because Adobe photoshop is what people are tought how to use. It is the same thing with excel. It isn't enough to have a superior product, you also have to overcome the momentum of the prevailing software. That's not to say it is impossible, but Photoshop has a significant advantage.

Photoshop isn’t on top simply because people know how to use it. There’s simply no better tool for most users who need that level of photo editing tool.

I’ve never seen a superior product to either Photoshop or Excel. Have you? Maybe they’re on top because they really are good products.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone making money selling traditional downloadable software?

#90

Post by anonzzzies »

stevenjgarner wrote: post #48

I don't know if they're making money, but they're charging money and I'm paying it. a) Audio Hijack [1] - software that should be part of macOS where you can route the audio output of any program to the audio input of any other program. b) Eazy Draw [2] - I have clients with massive legacy libraries of commercial AppleWorks drawings, and EazyDraw is the only product I could find that would open/convert them. I know I…

> a) Audio Hijack

Ah yes, I paid for that even without thinking and forgot about it even though I use it rather often.

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