Subscriptions are uncontroversial when there's a perceived cost to the user of the ongoing usage. In fact I believe it tracks very closely with the "Cost of Goods Sold" (COGS).
No one questions whether Dropbox should be a one-off price or a subscription, there's obviously ongoing cost to storing the data. However for apps that don't have this there's always going to be push back.
Developers typically point to customer support and maintenance as reasons, but customer support is not typically part of COGS as it's not part of the product, most users won't use it, so counting the cost per user doesn't really work. Any user can justify why they won't use support. As for maintenance, this wasn't a problem when software got new versions every year or so with upgrade pricing.
Devs looking for ways to build sustainable business is great, but it's also reasonable for users to reject subscriptions where there's no explicit cost to providing that software.
For ongoing development there already exists a model where you buy a license that lets you use the current version plus maybe any upgrades happening in the next X months. I'd be happy to regularly pay 5 or 10 bucks for an app I love if it gets updates but that's not what we're seeing I think. The current model is based on subscriptions because of exactly one reason. Hope that the consumer forgets about the recurring charge.
I think that's a cynical view of the model. People are unwilling to pay a lump sum price that'd justify the development costs, many SAAS companies offer a lifetime license that matches the average life time value of a customer but people don't want that.
The long ramp of death for SAAS products is something like 12 to 18 months (if I remember right), without the subscription model I don't see customers paying enough money to sustain the time, energy and risk involved. We're talking thousands of customers paying 100$ licenses just to match a normal software salary and that's not counting the benefits of a normal job, the work-life balance, the stress, the risk factor and so on.
Many companies do, it's generally advantageous from what I've read.
At the start you go for the slice of the market where (size of slice * price the slice will pay) is the maximum. So not the largest slice that will pay 1$ like in an app store, nor the smallest slice that will pay the luxury prices. And then once you've got that middle slice nailed down and product market fit you expend your pricing plans to account for price sensitive customers with lower prices and fewer features, and luxury customers with higher prices and more features.
Going off what I've read and a few talks I've seen, I'm not an expert.
From what I understand the iOS App Store doesn't support that model. I've heard complaints from developers who have used that model with success on the Mac, and are frustrated that they can't do so on iOS.
There are apps using this though. Two that ring a bell for me are Agenda and Hook though only the first one has an iOS app that also utilizes this model.
I assume they give each feature a date of availability and compare to the last purchase made via the App Store receipts and make features available or unavailable based on that intersection.
Edit: Edited for URLs, I wish this stupid site would support at least basic markdown... So mind-blowing it doesn't.
It doesn't explicitly support but today people work around it with one-time in-app purchases for all the functionality. Two apps I can think of doing this are Halide and Darkroom.
But yes, you can't just pay $X upfront in the App Store directly. The app makes you this offer, not the store. I agree it's not ideal.
I wouldn't be surprised, but I don't think it really matters. What matters is that customers attribute some cost to the providing of the service, rather than it being entirely free of variable cost.
When apps like Ulysses and 1Password went down the subscription route, I had no issue with it because Ulysses has continued to get better and better over time (by adding great new features), and I use 1Password's cloud sync service (and I think there's an argument to be made that password management apps need to continue evolving with the web to maintain usability).
I realize Spark is doing a bit more than your run-of-the-mill email client, but I see that as an implementation detail / architectural decision more than I see that as a feature as an end user.
The email client space is mostly commoditizated, and the feature set is mostly standardized. I think that's why putting some of these features behind a subscription tier feels so gross to me.
Syncing my contacts to some cloud service and doing something special with them? Sure, charge me for that. Running my emails through some special spam service? (not that this is necessary if you use a decent provider), sure, charge for that.
Mute Thread and Group by Sender cost $4.99/month? No thank you.
I've been a Spark user for a long time, but I have no intention of paying for "Group by Sender", thank you very much.
As a long-time Spark user who has become increasingly frustrated that Spark does not have the ability to show full headers and the developers refuse to add this simple feature, this subscription move is the last straw for me. Back to Apple Mail I guess.
Well, that was an easy decision: I just deleted both Spark and Calendars. These are just not products that fit a subscription model. Back to default apps I go, apps that provide 99.5% of the functionality I need, even if they are missing some of the conveniences of the third-party offerings.
However, I cannot seem to get back my side-by-side email view. I prefer to see my list of email headers vertically, and then when clicking one, I see the email to the right. Now they have some full screen nonsense as if my Windows computer is a mobile phone.
If they're going to change the design and try to start charging, of which I fully support, at least don't change the design in a way that hinders they're existing user base.
Warning for folks using or considering using the Spark client. I downloaded and set up the Spark email client back in 2019, thinking I'd enter my IMAP credentials for local email usage.
My fault for not reading how it works, including storing my email credentials (username and password) on their servers, and storing my emails on their servers to send push notifications.
What's worse is that I've got almost 1000 email aliases (company@mydomain.com) set up over the years to filter email and block companies that send spam or get hacked. And I started to receive marketing email from Readdle (company behind Spark) to my main email address (which I would never give out to any company).
Tl;dr: they store your email credentials and send marketing emails to your main address.
Compared to eM Client for which you pay once per version and it had ~20 months between last versions. The cost for Spark is more than twice that of eM Client.
A subscription model should enable them to set a lower price as their revenue will be more reliable.
It's the dream of any software vendor to go subscription only. You need recurring revenue. Once off 'lifetime licenses' are not sustainable in the long run, and are subject to piracy and 'cracked' versions of your software distributed on underground warez sites.
Look at 1Password. I own a lifetime license of their (old) password manager software, but have since switched to their subscription based offering, since it's a service that does the job well and I want to support them, and I trust them to be a good steward of my data.
I wish Apple Mail would fix how it handles attachments. They just get scattered at the bottom of the email haphazardly or hidden behind a dropdown which itself is hidden until you mouseover it.
last time i researched mac email clients a few years ago, i found that spark was one of the worst in terms of privacy and tracking. i settled on canary mail (https://canarymail.io/) as it was better in that regard, while still supporting gmail (which i no longer use).
If an app doesn't have recurring costs involved in serving their product (server costs, etc), it's hard to justify a subscription model vs charging a one time cost to purchase the app.
To fund/incentivize continuing development of new features, they can have reasonable in-app purchases to unlock those new features.
What would be an example of a functionality that has ongoing server costs? The email itself is hosted by the email provider that they're pulling from, and I don't see any features on their site that would involve any intensive server costs.
I went through my credit card statement this month and am cancelling a bunch of things I barely use. The mess of subscriptions most of us are forced into is getting absolutely insane and the "software makers need to do this to be able to eat!" excuses I see here are just silly.
I don't want my card dinged every month. I don't want to "manage" dozens of different subscriptions across different companies that all have different systems and methods for managing your "relationship" with them.
Switching to yearly subscriptions wouldn't accomplish much for me other than forcing me even deeper into the relationship (because now I am committed for at least a year instead of having the option to cancel on any given month), and inevitably I will forget to cancel if I don't want the service anymore and then be "dinged" for another years worth of subscription fees at some point.
Gmail's bad/nonstandard IMAP is one of the reasons my Gmail account has long been relegated to a spam bucket address. Anything important is going to either Fastmail with a custom domain or iCloud mail.
I don't mind paying monthly fees for tools that I get regular value out of. But I hate that feeling of paying for ongoing subscriptions that I rarely use. Plus deciding whether or not to cancel adds to my overall decision fatigue.
I paid for Spark once when I bought it, can't remember how much. It currently have every feature I need. Can you please explain why would I pay on a monthly basis for it, when I don't want new features, I don't want UI redesign just keep the app in a working state while we are going through the regular OS upgrade cycle.
My general experience with subscription based apps is that sooner or later they will introduce features I don't care at all, they remove features I use, they redesign the UI, in some cases they release a fully new version which does not even have feature parity with the previous version. (Looking at you 1password) and I simply cannot justify paying to a team who is obligated to do some feature work on a software I consider complete because I'm paying them money and ending up with something with a different look and feature set.
Charge me enough once to cover you development cost for the current state of the app, even charge me even for the upgrades needed to make your stuff working on a newer OS version.
It is sure a nice thing to get a continuous stream of money for a feature which had a one of cost, but on the consumer side, you will end up with an empty pocket very fast, if you are getting charged for every software/car/TV you use on a monthly basis.
So my carpenter should be happy to keep paying for his drill or his circular saw?
He should be grateful for the subscription to the lathe that he inherited from his grandfather?
Drills and saws don’t depend on an operating environment that changes constantly. Imagine if your drill and saw relied on an electrical source that got updated, requiring them to update the saw and drills themselves. Would you want to buy it with a one time fee, knowing that it could mean they go bankrupt? You’d end up with a drill and saw that no longer worked — then for no amount of money, subscription or otherwise, could you do what you wanted to do with it.
Yes, but you are not forced to subscribe to a monthly fee to access those replacements (on a replacement schedule that doesn't even match your own usage of the tools), or have any access to the tools whatsoever.
'Americans earning >200K/yr' is a pretty small market to be targeting.
The average earner, especially outside the US, is already overburdened by recurring bills and subscriptions, especially during the energy crisis.
When even Netflix is losing subscribers rapidly, you've got to be offering something pretty special to get a regular low/mid-income person to subscribe.
Because the people got there did so by making sensible fiscal choices, maybe?
Just because someone decides to slap a subscription onto an email client (whose feature set is pretty standardized across the internet), doesn't mean it's worth it.
No one questions whether Dropbox should be a one-off price or a subscription, there's obviously ongoing cost to storing the data. However for apps that don't have this there's always going to be push back.
Developers typically point to customer support and maintenance as reasons, but customer support is not typically part of COGS as it's not part of the product, most users won't use it, so counting the cost per user doesn't really work. Any user can justify why they won't use support. As for maintenance, this wasn't a problem when software got new versions every year or so with upgrade pricing.
Devs looking for ways to build sustainable business is great, but it's also reasonable for users to reject subscriptions where there's no explicit cost to providing that software.