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Subscription fatigue and related musings

morrick.me

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Re: Subscription fatigue and related musings

#91

Post by shrx »

MichaelNolan wrote: post #41
xoa wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It doesn't make sense whatsoever to receive one time payment and provide updates forever. Duh? This is written in English but I genuinely have trouble making sense of your words. We had this for decades without subscriptions, they're called UPGRADES! You buy 1.x, or 2.x or whatever, and then when 3.x comes out new customers pay full price but existing ones get it at a much reduced price. But they can do so on their…

> UPGRADES! You buy 1.x, or 2.x or whatever, and then when 3.x comes out new customers pay full price Upgrades like that kind of suck for everyone though. The users, the developers, the businesses. Users expect software to get bug and security fixes. By having 1.x, 2.x and 3.x versions, developers have to maintain 3 different versions. It also forces developers to add new features even if no one wants them. Plenty of…

> Plenty of good apps are essentially feature complete, but in an upgrade centric world there has to be constant new features.

No, there don't have to be, this "upgrade centric world" is a poor straw man.

Re: Subscription fatigue and related musings

#92

Post by lmedinas »

Yeah, this is sad. I even see apps which ask you 20€ per year OR 100€ for Lifetime. This is nonsense. I don't mind paying for a subscription if: there are major updates being delivered with a concrete roadmap and a service which i need to use everyday. Otherwise I'm not interested and i dont see the point of offering subs.

Apple plays a major role on this by motivating Developers to use subscriptions, now there are subscriptions for everything!

Re: Subscription fatigue and related musings

#93

Post by atchoo »

ghaff wrote: post #43
deergomoo wrote: post #39

My biggest issue with App Store subscriptions is that I'm effectively only renting the software, as opposed to buying into future updates. If I cancel my subscription to a JetBrains IDE or the database client I use, I get to use the most recent version I paid for forever. Those are more like auto-opting into paid upgrades, which I'm totally fine with. For an iOS app, if I cancel my subscription I'm left with nothing.…

>I get to continue to use the most recent version I paid money for forever Or until it stops working with an OS upgrade/update.

Not just OS updates but language/framework updates too.

For something like Rider, .Net releases a new version every year so the Jetbrains deal tastes pretty sour to me at the moment and makes me regret getting tied to a commercial subscription.

Re: Subscription fatigue and related musings

#94

Post by thenipper »

candiddevmike wrote: post #82
thenipper wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at this your pricing strategy is totally reasonable. Like I’ll try something like that out and if it’s worth it pay just the lifetime cost. Question: I couldn’t find this with a quick skim of the site on my phone. Do you have an API?

Thank you, that's quite reassuring actually. There is an API, here are our docs: https://web.homechart.app/api/docs . There's also a python library: https://github.com/candiddev/homechart-python .

Thanks!

Re: Subscription fatigue and related musings

#95

Post by melagonster »

mrtksn wrote: post #4

Some apps that I purchased before in full, later turned into subscription based apps(giving me a year of free subscription). This made me feel bad and I lost my warm and fizzy feelings towards these apps. That said, I understand why they are doing it. It doesn't make sense whatsoever to receive one time payment and provide updates forever. Also, despite that people claim that they want "one time payment apps" that do…

many game offer an option that you can pay for remove advertisement.

Re: Subscription fatigue and related musings

#96

Post by logn »

MichaelNolan wrote: post #41
xoa wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It doesn't make sense whatsoever to receive one time payment and provide updates forever. Duh? This is written in English but I genuinely have trouble making sense of your words. We had this for decades without subscriptions, they're called UPGRADES! You buy 1.x, or 2.x or whatever, and then when 3.x comes out new customers pay full price but existing ones get it at a much reduced price. But they can do so on their…

> UPGRADES! You buy 1.x, or 2.x or whatever, and then when 3.x comes out new customers pay full price Upgrades like that kind of suck for everyone though. The users, the developers, the businesses. Users expect software to get bug and security fixes. By having 1.x, 2.x and 3.x versions, developers have to maintain 3 different versions. It also forces developers to add new features even if no one wants them. Plenty of…

Upgrades can be fun for end-users, like anticipating a new music album. And after feature complete there are features that can be added without muddying a product, e.g., adding plugin support, skins, additional language support, new platforms, performance improvements. And at a certain point in time it's reasonable to no longer make bug fixes in legacy versions.

Re: Subscription fatigue and related musings

#97

Post by jwr »

The article says the author has no solution to propose.

I do have a solution to propose. Accept subscriptions, but be very selective about the apps that you use. It's what I do — I happily pay the subscription fees, because this is the only way to sustainably maintain an app. And I'd much rather have a few really good apps than a plethora of half-baked ad-ridden garbage.

In other words, I don't have "subscription fatigue", I have "app fatigue": I don't want too many apps, but the ones I do want, I'd like to see maintained over the long term.

Re: Subscription fatigue and related musings

#98

Post by AlexandrB »

brookst wrote: post #15

Subscriptions align developer and user interests and produce better products and less wasted money in the long run. One-time up front purchases only reward developers for expanding the target market of their product; whether the product improves over time has no bearing on revenue. From a developer’s perspective, the one-time price should be the CLV of what they’d get with a subscription. For users, that means much h…

> Subscriptions align developer and user interests and produce better products and less wasted money in the long run.

This is not true. One particular problem is that developers no longer have to compete with their "n-1" release, which means a product can regress but the customer is locked in regardless. Especially if proprietary data formats or some kind of cloud storage is involved.

Re: Subscription fatigue and related musings

#99

Post by AlexandrB »

mrtksn wrote: post #44
swatcoder wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting that in your thoughtful survey of alternatives, you don't consider simply challenging the assumption "and provide updates forever". Subscriptions do indeed fund perpetual development in a way that one time purchases don't, but the implication that comes along with that is that features are to be added along the way. If you only released maintenance patches, you subscriber satisfaction would dry up re…

I actually considered that, just didn't call its name explicitly. > Maybe the AppStores can implement something like version limiting and you can ask for a payment for upgrading to the new version. I'm also not sure how I feel about it. Having people using multiple versions of the app in the wild seems wrong. Also, many apps have a server component which has ongoing costs and as a result user who choose not to pay fo…

> Also, many apps have a server component which has ongoing costs

Many apps have a server component to justify charging for a subscription. Sure you might need a server if you're doing something novel, but apps that operate on documents should just use iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.

Re: Subscription fatigue and related musings

#100

Post by AlexandrB »

hgsgm wrote: post #74
lapcat wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Subscriptions align developer and user interests and produce better products and less wasted money in the long run. This is incorrect, as evidenced by the entire history of software development before the App Store, as well as software now that is sold outside the App Store. When developers can choose their own business model, outside the constraints out the App Store, they overwhelming do not choose subscriptions.…

Software was incredibly expensive before the subscription era.

True in the sense that I stopped paying for any software that went subscription. Saved me hundreds of dollars a year that would otherwise have gone to the developers.
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