
My problem with the 1Password subscription model - BuleBule
https://medium.com/@guisebule/to-catch-a-liar-1password-edition-4bfa30fbd7e4
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valuearb
Software companies absolutely need recurring revenues to survive, new users
are hard and expensive to get, and you need to keep an active development
team. Historically it was upgrades, you gave customers new features in trade
for upgrade revenue, which was usually a great deal for all.

But nowadays that's lots harder, upgrades don't exist on iOS at all. And when
their key features are already in the product, lots of users won't see the
point of upgrading.

But what they and the author miss is that keeping software operating is a
great deal of work. In 1Password's case just compatibility and bug fixing on 4
or 5 operating systems is likely a substantial ongoing effort. On iOS alone my
guess is they have to support 3 different major OS versions at a time.

The disconnect is users who bought a version that worked on iOS 7 or Windows 7
and never paid a dime since expecting a free Windows 10 and iOS 11 update.

~~~
evgen
Then charge for the upgrade by doing the standard major version bump (Foo2,
just like Foo but now with more Bar!) and don't try to bullshit us. Companies
don't need recurring revenue to survive, they need to sell product to survive.
If their biz model consists of trying to bleed their current customer base one
drop at a time I will look elsewhere.

-current 1password user and evangelist who will drop it in a heartbeat if forced into a subscription

~~~
BuleBule
This is the correct answer. Every time I hear that a software vendor needs
recurring revenue to survive, I think back to the entire history of the
software industry where this was clearly not the case until every recently.
Its gotten to the point now where anyone who makes some sort of software
believes that are a service that must be paid for by subscription.

Don't be those guys, have a good long hard think about why you deserve that
recurring revenue and if its not immediately obvious, chances are you are just
chasing the dollar rather than trying to solve a problem.

~~~
valuearb
You don't know much about the history of software sales. I've worked at
software companies for 30 years and you are wrong. The first company i worked
for folded down from 12 employees to 3 because revenues couldn't support us.
We got our first upgrade out ($29 for existing customers on $99 retail) and it
saved the company. Two years later we had 4 products and 30 employees.

If we had been forced to give the upgrade away for free to existing customers
like iOS requires, we would have shut down.

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tw04
They can say they support both until they're blue in the face. Version 6 for
Windows doesn't support local passwords and they keep kicking the can further
and further down the road with no actual roadmap for it. The bullshit that
it's a difficult feature to implement is infuriating. There's absolutely no
way it's a massive effort to enable writing new passwords on a local safe when
you can open and read existing safe's just fine, and create new passwords in a
local cache if I'm tied to a "cloud database".

You want to push everyone to subscription and you know it. Don't be "that guy"
\- right now they're 100% "that guy".

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norea-armozel
It's definitely worrying to me that everyone is going to SaaS on everything
since it removes the basic purpose of having a PC or even a smart phone: to do
the computing as close to myself as possible. Some things fit SaaS as a
natural consequence of their implementation but password managers and image
editors aren't good fits for that and they're clearly a cash grab. Eventually,
I plan to ditch 1Password when I have the time to find a roughly analogous
application (which I've seen a couple but not good enough IMO) since they
can't provide local storage for my existing vaults.

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BlackjackCF
I'm still using 1Password on my Macbook, but since I've gone full time Linux
at home, I had to migrate off. Keepass + SyncThing is more than enough to keep
everything synced for me.

~~~
omnimus
Exactly same here.

Macpass for osx with browser plugin works awesome for me.

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krishna2
Why can't one of those big cloud/disk providers (Dropbox or Amazon or
Microsoft or Google or Apple) come up with such a Password Manager? In fact,
they can integrate it really well too.

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rjohnk
I think that those that think the upgrade model will suffice are missing a few
things: The increase in free/customer-as-the-product solutions that undercut
existing software and by extension, the race to the bottom when it comes to
app prices.

Back in the 90's, you bought a thick box with a thick manual and physical
media for $25 dollars. You didn't have to worry about some App Store selling
just as good software for $0.99

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deedubaya
Seems like they're going to keep things as they are, if that's what you'd
like.

[https://twitter.com/1Password/status/884791799138615296](https://twitter.com/1Password/status/884791799138615296)

~~~
Torkgin
For now but who knows what will happen next year? Once they make enough money
with subscription they will stop caring.

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reiichiroh
So Windows users have to use the crappy EOL v4 client?

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nvr219
That's what I'm using now. What's crappy about it? Works great for me.

~~~
reiichiroh
it's abandoned feature-wise and ui-wise it's inconsistent with the rest of the
product offerings while they are clearly putting their time in the v6 with its
cloud focus.

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socalnate1
I had the exact opposite reaction. I have been long hoping that they would
move to a recurring revenue model.

I WANT my password manager to be backed by a financially stable, healthy
company who invests in updates and maintenance. This is an area I am happy to
pay a premium for and I am thrilled that 1Password is moving this direction.

~~~
Torkgin
Having a recurring revenue model does not mean you have a stable company. You
might love it but many others don't and if they don't have enough customers on
subscription it will be worse for you because you depend on their servers to
operate and if they shut down your software stops working.

