
Subscription is the only way to do software - mobitar
https://journal.standardnotes.org/subscription-is-the-only-way-to-do-software-cb5474c00dc7
======
jerguismi
I used to made iPhone apps which cost few dollars back in the days. Worked
great for me the time being, now I have moved to other stuff. Not everything
needs to work indefinitely, software or business can have a lifespan, and I
think that's fine.

My advice is that don't try to push the subscription model everywhere. For
some things it simply doesn't work that well and you might make better buck by
just selling packages.

~~~
jwong_
I've come to the same conclusion. Why do one-time wonders get a free pass on
indefinite business?

I believe a business should have to innovate to keep recurring business.
Artificially tying it to a subscription is just milking a cow for more than
it's worth. Or in this case, charging for access to an unlimited cow that you
sometimes augment.

------
Veratyr
This clearly isn't the case, there are numerous successful developers that
don't use the subscription momdel:

\- In the photography space: Capture One Pro, DxO Optics Pro, ON1.

\- In the video space: Avid, DaVinci Resolve, Sony Vegas.

\- In the illustration space: Corel, Clip Studio Paint, Painttool SAI.

\- In the audio space: ProTools, Ableton, ACID Pro.

\- Nearly all video games.

\- JetBrains, which has a novel subscription + purchase model where you can
cancel your subscription and keep using the software.

I'd argue that the only case where you need a subscription model to stay
afloat is when you don't add enough value that your users will be willing to
purchase an upgrade.

~~~
have_faith
> Nearly all video games.

Have any games development studio attempted a subscription model to games
development and release? Not promoting the idea, wondering if it's been
considered. Some popular studios with a good track record could certainly
entertain the idea.

~~~
mbesto
World of Warcraft is a monthly fee and has been for 10+ years now. They also
charge for major releases. It's incredible how much commercial value the
Warcraft brand has generated and how it's been able to do it in light of other
games not being able to do so.

~~~
jwong_
Initial users got on, and people stay because the game exploits human nature.

The IP helps as well.

------
arihant
No. Just no. Charge a subscription if it's an ongoing service. If you're
moving bits for me, running code on cloud for me on ongoing basis, charge me a
subscription. If you gave me a binary to run, I pay you once. This is exactly
why I shifted from Adobe to Affinity.

Comparing a pile of binary to Starbucks is less than stellar. Coffee is an
ongoing service. You make coffee for me everyday, fresh. The cup does not last
me years. There are a lot of things I pay for once in years, and it costs less
than a fresh brew. A pen is a good example. A book is another. And frankly, a
book is far more comparable to a copy of binary than Starbucks.

Unless the author buys a book and pays for it every month until he returns it,
I won't take his word on selling binary. This advice will just lead to people
reverse engineering your binaries and pirating it. Just ask Adobe.

~~~
bitL
Adobe scored record profits as they switched to subscriptions so it might not
be the best example.

For businesses subscriptions are better; for individual users worse. Why not
cover both bases instead of force one way or the other?

~~~
nhtoe78hnt
That may be true, but it's difficult to separate that out from the other
things that happened at the same time. They also started a cloud service for
users and offered discounts on subscriptions. Who's to say that it wouldn't
have worked out just as well if they made the cloud service and offered
discounts on boxed copies of the software? Unfortunately, you can't do the
experiment twice.

~~~
bitL
I am still running on CS6 so for me personally CC doesn't work ;-) I was
willing to buy CS7 but it never happened.

------
archagon
Not going to happen. At least, not for me. $ per month is a financial and
(perhaps more importantly) mental burden, and I'm certainly not going to have
it hanging over my head over a text editor (or a text replacement utility, or
a password manager). I'm usually not political in my software choices, but
subscriptions make me see Stallman-red. If my favorite app goes subscription,
I automatically move on to a competitor or (more likely) an open source
alternative. Over time, I've realized that the only _real_ way to guarantee
longevity for your essential tools is to either use big-name products (Google,
Apple, etc.) or to switch to open source alternatives. In the long run -- or
even five years! -- subscriptions won't help your indie app survive.

I'm also a developer, and I hate subscriptions from that side too. I'm
interested in making software, not providing personal support or maintaining
servers. Most apps don't need to spend a decade in development; you're just
finding new ways of burning valuable programming time. I prefer to release my
software and move on while still providing occasional updates, making up for
lost repeat business with a polyculture of products.

In my opinion, the way forward is to have a system for collectively funding
open source projects of all sizes. Let the software be free, but fairly pay
developers for their efforts. (Snowdrift[1] wants to do something like this,
but I haven't seen much activity there in the past few years.) Most of my
essential day-to-day software now is open source. We need the best talent,
from code gurus to UI wizards, working on these applications, because I am
convinced it will be the _only_ software still standing a century down the
line.

(In fairness, I think Standardnotes is doing it right. Their code is open
source and you can host your own instance if you like. This does not apply to
closed source software in the midst of the subscription craze like Ulysses,
1Password, TextExpander, etc.)

[1]: [https://snowdrift.coop](https://snowdrift.coop)

~~~
AndrewKemendo
_I 'm interested in making software, not providing personal support or
maintaining servers...I prefer to release my software and move on while still
releasing occasional updates, making up for lost repeat business with a
polyculture of products._

What you basically just said was: I want to build products, not a business.

Ok, that's fine, but realize that's the freelancer's life, not someone who is
actually trying to make a business around their product.

~~~
archagon
Sure, agreed 100%. But I've also noticed that many products from "businesses,
not product-builders" tend to start out cheery, then thrash around with new
business models for a while, then ultimately die or get consumed by the big
fish. In light of this, I think there should be more ways to collectively fund
those derelict product-builders. Imagine if Inkscape got a few million to hire
some talent, bringing it up to the quality level of e.g. Affinity Designer?
Nobody would be using Illustrator in a few years!

------
goatlover
> But when will we finally learn that the digital realm is real, if not
> realer, than the physical?

This is a silly statement since the digital depends on the physical for
existence, and digital content only makes sense in the context of culture
formed by flesh and blood human beings. A massive EMP pulse or collapse of
civilization will show just how "real" the digital is.

------
payne92
> This has all but confirmed a belief that I have long suspected: >
> subscription is the only way to survive as a software company.

No, no, no -- not at all.

The subscription model may be the best way to thrive for _certain_ kinds of
software companies, at _certain_ price points. But that doesn't make it a
unilateral principle.

For software with one-time or fleeting value (e.g. games), a classic perpetual
license (pay up front) is often the best.

For software with real upgrade value in releases (I'm NOT looking at you,
Quicken), a perpetual + upgrade charge model may be the best fit. (Which is
kind of like a subscription, but users pay when there's real value, not just
elapsed time).

And there's the evolving new world of in-app purchases, add-ons and hybrids:
for example, you might sell an app up front, but then charge monthly/yearly
for a related cloud-based service that has ongoing value (such as backups).

------
kylehotchkiss
I can't help but feel companies take advantage of people not reading credit
card statements (and forgetting they signed up for subscriptions). I don't get
email payment receipts from Dropbox or Creative Cloud, I have to go digging in
their websites to find them. There seems to be less accountability to develop
new features...

Lightroom for example, it's still the 2015 version. Adobe doesn't seem too
interested in modernizing it beyond adding some sync features. If they weren't
doing the subscription thing they'd need to focus on it to make it innovative.

~~~
ghaff
To be fair, the Lightroom CC enhancements are mostly around mobile and online
(which I don't care much about personally). Lightroom does seem to have
stagnated a bit though I don't really have a list of new features that I
really would like to see.

In any case, the fact that Lightroom is at least theoretically also still
being sold as a standalone non-subscription product should increase the
incentive to do a new feature-laden release, not decrease it.

------
anonacct37
All of your complaints about how hard it is to make it as a developer are
probably legitimate, but understand that there are 2 sides to every market.

It's highly unlikely your app provides enough value to be worth paying for
every single month for most people.

Be honest, you've seen that the best way to monetize someone is to get them to
pay you every month without thinking about it. This is we're bombarded with
"first month's free, write to us via registered mail to cancel or you'll
automatically be paying $100/month" offers. A subscription model is equivalent
to a "I know a good number of people don't read their credit card statement
every month and will forget to cancel" model.

And that's fine. Attempting to get more money from people who are rich enough
to not need to read their credit card statement is probably a more honest way
to live than monetizing customers via ads or in app purchases like the rest of
the "unicorns".

[edit]

I would like to tone down one sentence. When I say "your" I'm actually not
referring to the author of this article, instead I'm referring to "A developer
who currently sells his/her app for a one time fee of 0.99-3.99".

------
pjmlp
Subscriptions only works with business users.

Outside some outliers like Office and anti-virus, the majority of consumers
won't buy into subscriptions for software, they would rather pirate it.

~~~
Eridrus
As more and more software has moved to app stores & web apps, I think piracy
rates for software have plummeted, simply because it's so much harder.

I don't think subscriptions are always negative for consumers; Adobe is
probably the poster child here because $800 is a huge price to pay to just try
things out, but $20/month is something you can try out, and people keep paying
for it because they can't go without it.

I think honest subscription pricing like that can work great if your software
is something you expect the user to use and gain value from repeatedly.

While some people would say Spotify is a content business, which is why it can
charge a subscription, I think the fact that users keep getting value from it
is the more important fact.

~~~
pjmlp
Piracy on iOS is the main reason why most consumers root their iPhones.

~~~
Eridrus
I think you greatly overestimate the number of people who root their iPhones;
using numbers from Cydia you get about 0.4% of people with jailbroken iPhones:
[https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-iPhones-have-
been-j...](https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-iPhones-have-been-
jailbroken)

Even if you assume it's 10x larger than that number for whatever reason,
you're still only at 4% of users.

~~~
pjmlp
I don't know about numbers, but I know it is quite common in southern and east
european countries.

Then there are the Android and WP sideloaders as well.

------
AznHisoka
"Consider the nonsensical way software is currently done: developers spend
endless hours researching, developing, fixing, and providing support for
software, the hardest of which is probably the last of that array of
responsibilities. "

None of which matters. Only capitalism and consumer demand for your service.

------
jodrellblank
_consider if Starbucks customers visited the store only once every 10 years to
buy a single cup of coffee? How soon do you imagine they’d go out of
business?_

Imagine if one cup of coffee "worked" for ten years, how much you'd care if
Starbucks went out of business?

Consumers aren't there as a substitute welfare state to provide eternal
employment for hungry programmers.

Nobody pays a subscription to an author instead of buying a book. "Oh they
rewrote chapter one?"

It's just a case of holding information hostage in the cloud because you can.

[Stallmanning intensifies]

~~~
Clubber
Software companies used to survive through maintenance contracts for
enterprise software and upgrades for consumer software. With the Apple App
Store model, all upgrades are required to be free. This of course took a huge
chunk of revenue away from software shops.

>It's just a case of holding information hostage in the cloud because you can.

Or because they have to.

>Consumers aren't there as a substitute welfare state to provide eternal
employment for hungry programmers.

Software is expensive. Developers are expensive. I much prefer the upgrade
model to the subscription model, but the marketplace in a round about way,
decided it would rather pay eternally rather than one version at a time.

Photoshop use to cost around $800 for a license, now it's $20 a month. That
works out to 3.33 years until you pay as much as an outright license. I'm
fairly certain that the Photoshop upgrade schedule was shorter than 3.33
years, so in the end, you end up paying less, assuming you constantly
upgraded.

*The upgrade prices was usually cheaper than the original full license, but I don't know how that works out long term with the subscription model.

~~~
nhtoe78hnt
> With the Apple App Store model, all upgrades are required to be free.

That's not true at all. You can, at any time, take your FooSoftware 1.x off
the store and make a new product called FooSoftware 2.x and charge the new
price for it.

~~~
Clubber
Yes, but that's a workaround. All the effort you put into marketing an app
called "FooTime" is now devalued because the actual app name is now "FooTime2"
Furthermore, if you remove "FooTime" from the store, there are now a bunch of
dead links.

------
turc1656
I think free vs one-time vs subscription depends heavily on the
product/service being offered. I am of the belief that a recurring
subscription should provide something meaningful that can't realistically be
done on my machine(s) or requires ongoing research, data, etc. For example, I
see no justifiable reason for Adobe's decision to go the subscription route.
Software like Adobe offers has clear features that are unique to each version.
As they build the feature set they also work to ensure compatibility with the
modern operating systems and platforms. A customer pays for the version they
need at the time. Should their needs grow or they require support for a modern
OS that their existing product version doesn't support, then they should pay
for the upgrade. If not, why would they continually shell out money on
features and support they do not require? On the flip side, data hosting
services are the exact opposite. A monthly fee for ongoing storage is the only
thing that makes sense. Similarly, a website that maintains a searchable
database of retail product information for internet vendors/sellers to use
requires constant maintenance and that also justifies a subscription model.

One other thought - the whole app game is basically one of trying to hit it
big and getting hundreds of thousands of users so you can either reap the
rewards from recurring advertising revenues or the one-time purchase fees.
Articles like this exist because app stores are overcrowded with choices and
they usually don't tend to fan out evenly in terms of users. Usually there are
1-3 that are heavily used with the rest just being noise in the competition
for that type of app. Those publishers get the lion's share of the revenue for
their specific app type.

------
ThomPete
Yes and no.

I am doing quite well with my app
[http://www.ghostnoteapp.com](http://www.ghostnoteapp.com) which is a one of
purchase.

However I am exploring various services around. At the end of the day though I
want people to be able to buy it as a stand alone and then if they feel like
they need it and I need to use some sort of server storage/activity I will
charge for it.

Already working on one subscription service.

~~~
bitL
Do individual users with one-off and businesses with subscription. Don't force
either. For businesses stability and the fact that the SW is supported
matters. For users the cognitive load of not needing to pay another tax on SW
that is used from time to time matters.

~~~
ThomPete
Thats actually a really good point, food forthough. Thanks for that.

------
antaviana
We've been selling B2B desktop software on a subscription basis since we
started 5 years ago. Previously it was freeware.

One of the things that I like most is that entitling all your user base to
your latest and greatest version software makes many users install the latest
version, which is what also happens with freeware. The lack of need to support
older versions greatly simplifies support.

Also a good thing of subscriptions is that because the monetary incentive of
acquiring a new user is exactly the same as having an existing customer renew,
you do not start adding features just for the sake of justifying a major paid
upgrade.

------
dgudkov
There are two different behavioral models for customer and enterprise
software:

Buyers of consumer software want to _own_ it. They use it for own benefit and
it frequently has short lifespan. That's why they don't like subscriptions.

Buyers of enterprise software want to create added value from it, so it's not
about owning it's about _leveraging_. Like with any other business expenses,
software expenses don't really matter as long as they generate more value than
cost. Also, subscription model suits corporate better as it doesn't require
pulling large amounts of money out from working capital.

------
kuschku
> Businesses can only survive if people have to pay for the same products over
> and over again, or if they break frequently enough that people have to rebuy
> them constantly

That's basically the thesis.

And that's bullshit. If I buy something, I want it to work for eternity. The
subscription model costs a massive amount of money for the customer, and is
just further rent-seeking, bankrupting customers and transferring wealth.

No thanks.

If you want me to pay continually money, you should continually provide
something in return for that. Just to continue using something I already paid
for is not a good enough justification.

~~~
ttoinou

       If I buy something, I want it to work for eternity
    

Software are always installed in a specific environment, which is prone to
change. The associated service of support cannot be given for eternity just
for a one time purchase.

~~~
kuschku
Of course, they can sell a new version optimized for a different environment.

And I can emulate the old environment.

And of course I am okay with MMORPGs or cloud services charging continually,
as they have server costs.

But I don't want to pay just to keep using a product I already paid for.

------
slackoverflower
The current status quo for consumers is software should be free. Changing that
is going to be very, very tough.

~~~
prodikl
i remember back when my dad bought lotus 123 for like $60 at the local store.
that was a fair value

i think the app store and ad-supported software really devalued a lot of forms
of software for most lay people. my wife still gasps when i spend a buck on
software

~~~
ghaff
Just looked at a random PC Magazine from the mid-eighties. Lotus 1-2-3 was
$319, which is about $700 in today's money. And that was by no means an
outlier. A lot of PC software used to be very expensive.

------
ocdtrekkie
I refuse to pay a subscription for software. If you want recurring money from
me, sell new versions that have things I want. (I do not buy new versions of
Microsoft Office, because repainting the same thing and adding features I
don't use anyways isn't worth money to me.)

Mandating that my software stops working unless I pay more for it is a
surefire way to make me go somewhere else for software.

I used to buy Adobe Photoshop, and have since moved to Affinity Photo ($50,
one-time, does everything I used Photoshop for) since they moved to
subscription-only. I outright will never have "Office 365", and strongly
recommend to anyone who asks to buy the full retail editions instead. If
Microsoft ever switches to 365-only, no big deal, open source software is more
than adequate in this area.

~~~
scarface74
_I refuse to pay a subscription for software. If you want recurring money from
me, sell new versions that have things I want._

Do you want your old software to keep working with new OS upgrades? In the
case of iOS:

\- If you bought an app that was created before the iPhone 4, do you want
higher resolution images?

\- If you bought an app that was created before the iPhone 5 do you want the
app to take advantage of the full display?

\--If you bought an app before the 5s that was 32 bit, do you want the app to
keep working with iOS 11?

\--If you bought an iPad app do you want it to take advantage of larger iPad
sizes? The new multitasking features? The new drag and drop features?

Either you pay a subscription or you pay for new versions.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
I am entirely okay with paying for new versions, especially if they are
updated to take advantage of new features or support for new devices.

~~~
Fifer82
I agree with you entirely. I will pretty much never pay any subscription. I
was even happy to throw my 1999-2011 Adobe Suite bread and butter in the bin
over the cloud thing. It just doesn't work for me. It is indeed a complete
mugs game.

------
bitL
I don't know, this sounds really silly. It's better to raise purchase prices;
of course nobody would make living off $0.99 apps. But how many people would
be willing to pay you a recurrent tax on your software either? Very few. How
many apps would you be willing to keep if you needed to pay subscription? Yes,
there was a race to the bottom in mobile apps, as the space was pretty new and
trivial apps were feasible; for those it worked very well. The situation is
different, ad revenue is falling and one-off prices are too low. Just increase
them then!

------
jwr
Yes, please. I was happy to see Ulysses switch to subscription-based pricing
and I would be happy to see other apps I use do the same thing (Yep, for
example).

These are apps that I use every day. I need them to work. I don't need new
fancy flashy features that bring in new users. I need reliability,
maintenance, minor improvements, constant optimizations. This is not possible
without subscriptions.

I'd much rather pay regularly for a small number of good, well-maintained
apps, than have hundreds of crappy cheap one-shot apps that get released and
then slowly fall into disrepair.

------
open_bear
Subscription is the best way for companies to do software in capitalism. Take
Microsoft Word 2003: perfectly good word processor, still works fine. I've
spent 60$ 14 years ago and had no intention to switch.

But Microsoft needs money, so they force the upgrade to 2007 by, among other
things, inventing the docx format. And then 2010, and then 2013, and then
2017. Logical conclusion is Office 365, where you are forced to pay 100$ every
year.

Is it a stable source of income for the company, better, than selling box
copies? Yes. Is it in customer's best interests? No.

------
aaron-lebo
If you believe this, then I'll let you know that there are exactly two ways
that I'll pay a subscription fee for your software (generally, not aimed at
author):

1\. It is providing a service (Spotify).

2\. It is open source.

You might not want to try to or know how to monetize the second option, but
I'm not paying you a monthly fee for closed source software that you or your
company are going to inevitably neglect/abandon/sell to someone who cares even
less.

I'm happy to pay a monthly fee so you can make your open software better,
though.

 _Welcome to the way this was always going to play out; the only way it could
have played out._

Indeed.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _It is providing a service (Spotify)_

How are you defining what is and isn't a service independent of pricing
frequency?

~~~
kuschku
Does it create recurring costs for the developer, or is it something where the
costs are single-time?

I won't pay subscription for a software I install locally with no online
features that never gets updates and has no support. (Even though Adobe thinks
I should)

------
sputknick
I've had an idea in the back of my head for a while, that micropayments (and
maybe blockchains by extension) might have an answer to this. What if
installing software was free, but you paid a fraction of a penny for every
minute/hour that you run it? Right now this isn't practical, but what if the
friction around payments was able to drop to near zero?

~~~
ghaff
It exists in the SaaS world. For example, charges based on volume for field
marketing campaigns. And, of course, most of AWS is pay-per-use (either time
or amount).

It's probably not more widely used even in the SaaS world because people
generally don't like the thought of there being a meter ticking while they're
using something. Which in turn discourages use and that in turn means that
users don't get as much value out of a product or service than they otherwise
would.

------
laythea
This is a glorified ad! Shame on you!

------
thescribe
I guess I'll be buying a lot less software.

------
sp00ls
ze

~~~
sctb
The thing to do with articles you feel don't belong on Hacker News is to flag
them. The name calling and gratuitous negativity are against the guidelines
and end up discouraging submitters who might have something on-topic to share,
and we don't want to miss those.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
sp00ls
please delete my account here.

