Man, talk about a ship that has sailed. I was 100% anti-subscription pricing for a very long time. Eventually I realized, it's better for the software vendor and the customer. Final Cut Pro used to cost $999 upfront, now a teenager can use Final Cut on their iPad for $7/month, and subscribe only when they need it.
That pricing sounds fair. Unfortunately, I feel that's the exception. Adobe Dreamweaver CS6 was $400 [1]. Now Dreamweawer Creative Cloud is $250 per year [2]. So after 1.75 years, you've already taken a loss.
Office used to be $600 for one copy that could run on one operating system.
I can now get an Office 365 subscription for $99 a year for five users and I can use it on my Mac, a Windows PC, iPad, iPhone and all five users get 1TB of storage each
Office is also just cheaper, it's 1/4 the price for the lifetime license than it used to be. The family offering is still the best deal I've seen to get it though. Not all subscriptions allow multiple users or even you to use it at the same time on multiple devices though, Office is just pushing that sale.
Plus the latest version of the software. I would still be using Office 2013 if I had to pay what I paid for it to upgrade every release (multiplied by the half a dozen or so O365 licenses I'm currently using.)
You say that, but then stuff like OnePass and Dropbox decide to reneg their subscription services down-the-line or simply make their clients worse. A lot of the time, a subscription to a program gives the developer no incentive to iterate on what already exists.
And then you just drop them for a competitor. Since you have no sunk costs, you lose nothing by hopping to whatever the best option is other than a small amount of pain migrating, But for something like dropbox, there isn't that much lock in.
I've never heard of OnePass so I have no idea, but Dropbox is very easy to replace. I'm also not even sure how you'd expect a "pay once" model to work for cloud storage.
For cloud storage a subscription model makes perfect sense, since the entire point is that you're renting server space on an ongoing basis. What I don't want to do is have to rent simple machine code that should be executable by my processor perfectly fine without any third party involved. Why should I have to rent Photoshop if it runs perfectly fine without internet access? I'm not renting server space from Adobe. It costs them nothing for me to run the software. They just want to charge me on an ongoing basis for no good reason.
For a password manager KeePassXC is better than all proprietary offerings and it's free and plenty of implementations are available on all major platforms.
They don't, It's just a better result for the users who get newer and better software, and a better result for the sellers who only have to support one version and get a consistent cash flow.
But what if it is newer and not better?
Lightroom regularly breaks plugin compatibility, increases resource consumption and processing time, or simply stops working.
If your workflow depends on software, that no longer works after a forced update, what are your options?
There are people running ancient MacOS versions, because that allows them to keep using professional firewire audio interfaces they have.
How would subscription model that breaks expensive hardware compatibility, breaks all your existing photo/video projects (aperture/final cut), or breaks compatibility with really expensive plugins needed for work be better for users?
Agreed, frequently "newer and better software" simply isn't and for something that you rely upon, such as audio processing software or image/film editing tools, cannot be left to the whims of tech companies who have proved themselves over and over again to be unworthy custodians of these important tools. It's better to get a hardware+software combination that works and then just use that forever without modifying it. It will always perform as well as it did on day one, it's only pesky updates that make computers slower.
That's not a fair comparison. Final Cut Pro's price on macOS has been $299.99 since 2011, and Apple sells a "Pro Apps Bundle for Education" available to everyone that includes Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, and other macOS apps for $199.99 (https://www.apple.com/us-edu/shop/product/BMGE2Z/A/pro-apps-...).
I'm sure a lot of users would appreciate a one-time payment option for Final Cut Pro or Logic Pro on the iPad, including teenagers who have some money saved up.
Especially consider the need to update your software for NLE is highly selective. H.264 and H.265 were used over the years for LongGOP, while ProRes and DNxHD/DNxHR were all supported a long time ago. There are no reasons to update unless you need latest blackmagic RAW or ProRes RAW, which are well beyond normal consumer realm. AV1 may be a new thing, but that's it.
There are no continuous vital features updates like being able to read newer camera RAW files for ACR. I find a one-time payment much more suitable for FCP.
With LPX and anything remotely in music production area the subscription just seems dumb. Omnisphere, Komplete, FL Studio, Cubase, Pro Tools, Ableton Live were all in the realm for decades, and while subscription did became a thing (especially for very expensive samples like Hollywood, Spitfire, etc.) features in a DAW are sufficient for a long life cycle in production, and mandating a subscription for "keeping latest" just seems odd.
If you used to need to use software for a weeklong project, you'd have to pirate it because there was no way to justify the cost.
Now you just sign up for a month and then cancel.
It's a huge improvement in flexibility and paying for what you use. Not to mention the software is always updated, so you don't need to worry about whether your image editor you purchased 7 years ago supports the RAW format of the camera that came out 2 years ago.
> It's a huge improvement in flexibility and paying for what you use. Not to mention the software is always updated, so you don't need to worry about whether your image editor you purchased 7 years ago supports the RAW format of the camera that came out 2 years ago.
I see this the other way. I don't want to be forced to upgrade. If you add valuable features, I'll pay for them. Otherwise, I'm happy to stick with what I have. Oftentimes the upgrades come with a new UX to learn, are slower, and remove functionality I relied on all to add new stuff I have no need for.
I think JetBrains hits an interesting middle ground. I can run whatever version of the IDE I want (as far as I can tell) but pay to have access to the full suite.
I'm not a huge fan of subscriptions but like the way JetBrains handled a few things:
- if you're subscribed for 12 months, you get a perpetual license for the version at the start of that period (unfortunately not the end, but better than most subscriptions)
- fairly significant discounts for second and third+ years.
- they had a price increase either 2022 that was in line or below inflation, which they announced it clearly three months in advance -- no "beware of the leopard" -- and gave users an opportunity to prepurchase three years at the old rates in advance.
I was apprehensive about the JetBrains one at first, but they sold me on having the perpetual license. It may have even just been a mental block. I was paying almost annually to upgrade IntelliJ IDEA (and sometimes RubyMine) as it was. The package that includes all of the IDEs was more than what I was paying just for IDEA, but cheaper than paying for upgrades on two products. I've dutifully subscribed since and enjoy access to all of the IDEs.
I may never use the perpetual license, but it made me feel better about the whole thing. I don't have to worry about what happens if my fortunes change and I can't afford one year. Or, I don't have to worry about vendor lock-in and a huge price increase. I don't want to invest time into a tool when the future of it is uncertain or where I could be cut off on a whim. This is a rare situation where I think everyone wins.
I mean, that's one customer service rep who was being difficult (not necessarily representative of Adobe policy at all), and the user was trying to cancel a yearly subscription on the 365th day when it was already being charged for autorenewal that day.
That's not even remotely representative of someone who signs up for a monthly subscription and then cancels it before the month is up. But yes, obviously you have to put it in your calendar to remember to cancel it. It's not that hard.
There are complaints about everything all over the internet.
In my experience, I've never once had a problem cancelling SaaS. There will always be bad actors out there, and maybe Adobe has been one, and maybe they still are, but on the whole I haven't found SaaS to be any worse than anything else.
And it's not really where the economic incentives lie -- someone who is cancelling is someone who is likely to sign up again in the future, so it's generally not in a business's best interests to piss them off.
The problem is when it adds up: you pay for FCP, for Adobe, for Office, for Figma, for X... at the end, you are paying 200 dollars per month in software (without counting Netflix, Spotify, hosting, etc).
15 years ago most teenagers i knew had the full office suite, photoshop and most other softwares for free. I'm not gonna tell you how, but it's easy to imagine.
Guess what, those people wouldn't have paid for a license anyway, so no real license money is lost.
More importantly, it needs to be said that if you got an older computer you could just use an older version of the software, no problem. Now you can't do that anymore. You not only have to pay the 7$/month, you also need to buy a new ipad every once in a while.
I'm still anti subscription. I do pay for software (paid 150 euros out of my personal pocket last year for a SecureCRT license and i love it).
Its always been an open question to me in the case of Adobe if rampant piracy in the 2000s helped rather than hinder them. If these teenagers went on to work in industry, they already knew the adobe suite inside out and likely ended up advocating the software and buying licenses in the workplace... As you probably rightly state, almost none of the folks pirating the software would have converted to real sales anyway.
> Its always been an open question to me in the case of Adobe if rampant piracy in the 2000s helped rather than hinder them.
it's not an open question, there are studies about how piracy helps industries (it was about media, it was financed by the EU, but when they got the results they didn't like it so they didn't advertised it much).
if not for product advocacy, consider product training: training is expensive and takes time, and most teenagers would do that themselves for free on your product. so if you're a company and pick a product that's heavily pirated, chances are some random applicant already knows the product.
how do you think microsoft office got so widespread ?
> paid 150 euros out of my personal pocket last year for a SecureCRT license and i love it
I'm curious what makes SecureCRT better than PuTTY or even Windows Terminal enough to be worth paying for - am I missing out on some amazing experience, or does it have certain amazing features others lack, or...?
i like the fact that i can have a list of session at mouse reach. i like that i can do stuff like have sessions with different color schemes, or sessions that run a command on startup.
i like the fact that it's scriptable. at my previous job i had a python script (that i could recall from a button within securecrt) that would enumerate stuff off consul and create/update sessions on the fly, with all the necessary hoops in place (eg: setting a jump host).
i have to say, i also have some nostalgia of my first job where we used securecrt heavily (or maybe i'm just nostalgic about being 24 years old? i don't know...).
I, for one, am very grateful for Adobe's shitty subscription model, as it has allowed companies like Serif to launch fantastic products with perpetual licenses.
Sure, as long as Adobe doesn't arbitrarily decide to permanently ban your account and no longer accept your money. Also, speaking of ships that have sailed, you could just as easily check out Final Cut Pro or Adobe subscriptions from some libraries for no additional fee.
Have you ever looked at Affinity (https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/)? I bought their universal license a year or so ago and would definitely recommend it over Adobe for anybody who doesn't necessarily need to use Adobe, it's a lifetime license and the product is pretty comparable to Photoshop/Illustrator for whatever a hobbyist could need. I would strongly recommend giving them a look if you haven't already.
Although as lovely as it would be. Sadly me knowing my mother she'd tell me its wonderful, use it once and go back to her old ways and keep telling me otherwise.
She has her system of plugging in her digital camera, scanner for her prints and then work for hours.
When windows 11 decided to update itself on her machine, it really threw her in to a spin. Luckily she was within the Ten Day "don't like" uninstall limit. That was my latest fiasco.
Just be aware: the workflow is entirely different for someone with a lot of Photoshop or Illustrator muscle memory. I couldn't figure out how to do a lot of stuff without googling (and then frequently still).
It’s a no brainer, the vendor gets paid for the continued work they do and the user pays over time as long as they get value out of the product.
However, For some apps it makes sense to have it as a one time payment - things like offline games or utilities the solve a problem and don’t need continuous updates.
Other than that, subscriptions are the way to go because software is a service more than a final product.
But that's not how the subscription pricing goes. Final Cut Pro X was $299, not $999 so it's not even a good example.
One the other end of the spectrum are all the mobile apps that start as a $2.99 one time purchase, add a bunch of features, and say "Actually it'll be $11.99/year forever thanks."
That particular case feels better because the original price you mention was incredibly high, not because the model is better for the customer. Especially when more than 1 application does that.
I have an iOS app that I love and rely upon, but it’s effectively abandonware because the developer didn’t charge enough. I too am pro-subscription: take my money, please.
Until you look at Intuit, you used to be able to buy their accounting software and have the critical records for your business. Now their accounting software requires an internet connection and a subscription and puts your critical records behind a paywall and gives them access to your data for whatever purpose they want. And they keep ratcheting up the price and putting more and more features behind higher tier subscriptions.
My favourite licensing models for self-hosted software are perpetual fallback licenses. Jetbrains does this well and their description of it is:
A perpetual fallback license is a license that allows you to use a specific version of software without an active subscription for it. The license also includes all bugfix updates, more specifically in X.Y.Z version all Z releases are included.
My gripe with the JetBrains license change is that the perpetual license is for a version that's already 12 months old when they have an aggressive release schedule that put's your perpetual license as a _large_ step backwards.
I say this as a personal subscriber to the JetBrains Toolbox. I'm unhappy about the mechanics of the fallback license, but I also find utility in paying the subscription for right now (really the last few years).
This is great until a company starts making file formats completely incompatible with back versions, making it impossible to use with friends or anyone else. Oh or when they just change the plan to subscription only anyways.
I KNEW you were talking about Sketch from the moment I read your first sentence. I have a hypothesis that Figma never would've become so big had they not screwed up so badly with their licensing and lack of seamless collaboration features.
This happened with me for Evernote. Incredibly frustrating. I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised with how well the latest versions of Microsoft Office still support most non x formats (eg .doc, .xls).
Even better is the licensing model where you can keep using the version as-is after the subscription ends. You just don't get any new features. It's even possible to do on iOS, as Working Copy [0] is doing it. (You also get all the bug fixes and stuff, only new features are behind a flag that requires you to purchase another year of updates. I would also argue that Working Copy specifically is too cheap, but I guess it's working for them.)
This is what Binary Ninja (Reverse Eng. tool) does, and why its a community favorite. https://binary.ninja/faq/#subscription. However it seems they don't keep download links public, but my old license/dl link from my email still seems to work.
I would rather have them offer a full purchase option, with, say, 10 years of upgrades included. I could pay 750 EUR for it once, and be set for the rest of my career, basically, instead of having to deal with purchases every year.
My problem with Jetbrains' software is that it comes with DRM so, sure, i can buy their thing once but i'm still reliant on them regardless. It isn't like i can pay them once and forget about their existence afterwards.
Agreed. Admittedly, 37 Signals does have a great history of actually delivering on its announcements, but I'll withhold judgement until I actually see some real software.
Sounds good, but I mean, it's just pros and cons with the SaaS model, or with the pay-once...
Before SaaS there used to be a massive pool of native apps, doing all kinds of different things... You indeed paid your license and lived with the product until the next major version, but there was little chance to just use something for a month or two, so the prices were higher.
With SaaS you do end up renting stuff all over the place, and never owning anything, but the prices are more affordable... Think about an AutoCAD license, that shit is privative for a hobbyist... With SaaS you can in fact afford something to begin with.
This doesn’t address a major gripe with the subscription model - taking away the option to purchase software outright. Were both to exist, we would not be having this discussion.
In reality, corporations are driven by greed and greed pushed the subscription model. For some situations, subscriptions work well - music is one. For others, it is terrible. CAD software is a great example especially at larger orgs. Why should software be a recurring cost in the name of development and support?
I agree with the majority of what you wrote, but I'm utterly confused by this statement
> For some situations, subscriptions work well - music is one.
I've only ever purchased albums. Why in the world would I pay a monthly fee for something I presumably want to listen for for the rest of my life? 10-15$ for a one time purchase is far preferable to a monthly fee of nearly the same. I'm also weary of the idea of the services that have the right to stream music from labels X, Y, and Z suddenly pulling out, cutting off my access to the albums from artists I want to listen to at any given time.
I hope none of that comes off sounding "snobby" or whatever, I just don't understand how subscribing to listen to music is adventitious. Is it just not having to transfer music from the computer to your devices? Or is there something deeper I'm not getting?
When you have a subscription to music, it's not about your collection as much as it is about discovery. You hear about a new artist and you want to sample their stuff. You don't have to hunt it down - you know where to find and listen to their entire discography in exactly two clicks (not counting having to type in the name of the band). If you decide you like it, nothing is stopping you from buying an album for your collection if that's your thing. Also, instead of your budget of one $10-$15 purchase per month, you can do this process multiple times a day.
I used to own a lot of albums and CDs. Worked in a music store, and would get new albums often. Even after that, music was... a big part of life. As I got older, I got fewer albums, as other things took precedence.
I subscribed to Spotify about 7 years ago, and... I'm spending about what I might otherwise spend on 'albums' now (maybe one per month) and I get a lot more - back catalogs, for one. But discovery and sampling are the biggest 'wins' for me. Might switch to apple music at some point, but probably 95% of what I want is now streaming, and the utility/affordability balance is fine for me.
Was cleaning out a room last night and found a couple boxes of old CDs and tapes. In that box of 50+cds, there were 3 I know aren't on any streaming service, as they were special 'bonus' things in specific box sets from the 90s. And I still have them, just nothing outside my car to listen to them on. And given that I haven't opened that box in 15 years... my life has been OK without using those specific CDs.
I really enjoy being able to find other versions of the same song, exploring some new genres that I would never have bothered to spend $12-$15 on otherwise, and finding some new artists (found Real Estate, which then led to all the 'related' artists, and they're all now part of my music life). Family or friends recommend some new band, I can take a listen in a few seconds, add it to a list if I want, and usually find something I like about many artists.
Spotify is, let’s say, $120 a year. After 10 years, let’s say $1200. If an album has 5 songs, and an album costs $12.00 (dunno, middle of your range plus easy math), you can buy 100 albums in that time. 500 songs.
After 500 songs for 10 years, your model costs more and offers no value (in fact, it’s less convenient for a dozen reasons)
I don’t know about you, but I listen to way more than 500 songs… a year. Let alone a decade.
Except with Spotify the songs can go away, so it's not necessarily equivalent - you don't get access to the same music as long as you're subscribed, you get access to whatever Spotify is currently serving up.
I was an early Spotify user and that annoyed me enough to stop and go back to buying music instead.
That's fair. Hmm...maybe it's my listening habits, then?
For myself, when I listen to music, I insist on listening to it start to finish, in the order it was recorded. I hate skipping around. I find it distracting and frustrating. If I start listening to an album, I am "locked in" to finishing it.
Most albums I own are closer to 12 songs per album, with each song being in the 2-5 minute range, that makes listening somewhere around 24-60 minutes of solid music.
When I find an artist I like, I generally start to buy the other work that they've made, and will queue up their newer and older work together, too.
I will usually queue something like: new album, old album 1, old album 2, old album 3, translating close to a few solid hours of music. By the end of it, my ears will be pretty exhausted and I'll either continue in silence, or switch to an audiobook or YouTube video.
I might have a dramatically small collection of music that I listen to compared to other people, because of how I listen. I can essentially repeatedly listen to the same songs many times, but because there's a lot of stuff in-between it still feels new because I haven't fully memorized each note yet.
Not OP but I agree with his sentiment. Maybe I'm not as "into music" as some people, but I do like finding new artists and songs, though probably only to the tune of 1-5 new artists a year and I buy on average about 5 new albums a year.
It's cheaper and better for me to own the stuff I want to listen to than sign up for a subscription in perpetuity.
> CAD software is a great example especially at larger orgs. Why should software be a recurring cost in the name of development and support?
But it always has been. Every larger org has always wound up purchasing upgrades. Not only for new features, but because professional tools often include all sorts of interoperability plugins and you need the upgraded ones to interact with other newer third-party products.
Maybe an individual hobbyist can get away with not upgrading, but upgrades have always been just a recurring cost for larger orgs.
Funny that you talk about greed when one of the reasons everything went the way of subscriptions is because of piracy. Even here and today, people defend pirating movies when you can rent one for a few bucks in 4K HDR with Dolby.
Nothing but greed by people making top 1%-10%ile incomes.
I get pretty annoyed paying $4 to rent a movie that was released 40 years ago. It used to be that I could pay $4 to own a copy of that movie I picked up out of the bargain bin.
I still pay it though because I prefer to support companies that at least make their media available.
or you'd pay $4 for new releases, $1.88 for older movies. We'd maybe rent a new release if it was a really good one or wait 6 to 8 months.
I honestly kind of miss those days, I mean I love Netflix and chill like the next guy, usually without the chill cause we have toddlers and no energy, but it was like an event.
My aunt or grandma would be like hey let's get a movie and I'd be like yay! it's a blockbuster night! We'd often get cassanos pizza and/or popcorn and treats and watch the main movie, and the cheap ones the next day.
I kinda miss libraries too, but no clue how any programmer could work without Google, and six months in maybe gpt4, etc...
No, the invention of subscription models is not because of piracy. It's because you can keep extracting money from customers "forever", rather than just once, and continue funding your business instead of having large gaps of reduced revenue when a product has not been recently released. A moment of consideration easily reveals that SaaS was inevitable with cheap hosting/networking and readily-available worldwide payment processors.
Sources which are speaking solely about the increase in revenue (and related benefits) and not a peep about piracy:
How do you know? My experiences and knowledge of the subject indicate otherwise. I'm not convinced. (btw, the burden of proof is on the person making the claim of the existence of something, as one cannot prove that something doesn't exist)
I’m 40 years old and generally hate subscriptions for desktop software. Local tools that work offline should be “ownable” in the licensed sense.
When I built my indie app “Label LIVE” it was designed to work offline and be paid for ONCE. After a few years there was enough user demand for a less expensive subscription-based license. Today, about 20% of customers purchase the subscription and the rest buy one-time licenses.
Why would someone buy the subscription? Here are some good reasons: 1) seasonal need, 2) monthly price is small enough for company credit card without manager approval, 3) extend the 14 day trial without larger commitment, 4) can’t afford one time license due to cash flow.
Another unintended benefit to me (as a solo developer) is the inexpensive monthly license lowers the demand for pirating and cracking. That’s a nice plus, because it makes the app accessible to all.
Pretty vague announcement, I find it hard to believe 37 signals will stray too far from the SaaS cash cow they arguably helped to create with basecamp..
It's exactly that. Jason and DHH have built their entire personal brands on contrarianism. It works for them, but at a certain point it feels inauthentic.
It's 100% not authentic. I have worked directly with one of the two you mentioned and it was an awful experience. The way they treated people around them (both people they knew personally and people at the company I worked with them at) was awful. Based on my experience with them I have never used another 37 signals product.
I’ve fully flipped the bozo bit on 37Signals. They just keep smelling their own farts. Their attitude is incredibly off putting and while it’s been many years since I last used their software I found it lackluster.
Subscriptions are preferable for 90% of the software I use. I’d rather pay a lower upfront cost and be able to cancel whenever I want. If it’s for business I rarely want to self-host at my scale and I self-host a ton of little things locally (open source). If I’m already paying I’d rather have someone else maintain it for me.
> Add up your SaaS subscriptions last year. You should own that shit by now.
I know a lot of companies are adopting a more irreverent marketing approach, using words that 20 years ago would have been bleeped out.
The swear word itself does not offend me. But to me its use here suggests a lack of restraint, and that makes me form a negative opinion about how the business is managed, especially when the words are coming straight from the CEO.
Purchasing the domain Once.com alone was likely a large investment, and so I would expect this announcement to be more polished. Yet this copy reads more like a blogger's grumpy manifesto.
On the other hand, i liked that part. Hell, the fact that it was straight and on topic made me read it, otherwise i'd ignore it - after all it is an announcement for a bunch of products they'll make.
These "polished" announcements you mention tend to be generic borefests that use a bunch of words meaning nothing and feel like some basic AI could write them. Often accompanied with a bunch of generic humans smiling on the camera or doing "work" by pointing/touching their devices. On a site with a white background and a couple inoffensive colors. You know exactly what style i refer to, there have been 283923 of them and i'm sure there are as many site templates for them in pretty much every sort of technology to make sites out there.
> But to me its use here suggests a lack of restraint, and that makes me form a negative opinion about how the business is managed…
If you dig a bit more, the use of the word "shit" may fall lower on your list of things that give you a negative opinion about how the business is managed.
I mean, they lost a good percentage of their top engineers a couple years back because leadership had a pretty serious communications issue with their employees. So not exactly surprised.
I think the usage of the swear word is to explicitly differentiate themselves from all the spineless companies that can't do that, potentially due to a bullshit "growth & engagement"/advertising-based business model. I like it.
Typical of 37Signals: self-importance presented as courage.
"IT departments are hungry to run their own IT again." Really, are they now? I can't imagine anything scarier: an organization that is ostensibly shy to spend on Big Tech's cloud bills, somehow also has the bandwidth and resources to support and maintain someone else's software.
This is just silly. Is there a way to personalize HN's algorithm to hide marketing ploys?
I'm not in IT directly but as someone who mostly does infra / SRE / platform / ops type of stuff I'd much rather run certain types of tools internally.
For example, I'd rather pay $6 a month to self host WireGuard on a low powered server than pay 10-30x that for other SAAS apps in that space. Pop in Debian, lock the server down and turn on nightly unattended-upgrades and it's basically hands free maintenance.
I've had servers run for 8 years in this way where I spent a total of ~3 hours on assorted maintenance for the lifetime of the box.
Let's go back to wax cylinders, horses & buggies, and the old crank phone while we're at it!
Jokes aside: What kind of new features and tangible improvements are coming?
I get that "owning" a piece of software can have tangible value; but it depends on the purpose of the software and how it's used. I don't see a sudden revolution where all companies decide they want to run their own email servers and and host their own copies of Office 365. Instead, there needs to be use cases where the old-style purchase model and host-it-yourself model makes sense.
You do GIS projects infrequently as a hobby. Simple stuff. You want own some GIS software. Subscription is burdensome due to infrequent use and you don’t care about next year’s features.
the only good ones I can think of are ai related to own the data, and privacy, but the compute and tech needed, you'd be better to just have the whole system in a black box like old school cable tv receivers, with a rack of a100s, software that can receive firmware updates etc, but probably isn't that extendable.
> In the early 2000s, we were among the early pioneers leading the industry into the SaaS revolution. Now, 20 years later, we intend to help lead the way out. The post–SaaS era is just around the corner.
Perhaps I am wrong but was SaaS really a revolution? Perhaps for us mortals but in enterprise wasn't a common model during the mainframe era?
I share this feeling that our industry is constantly rehashing the same concepts over and over...but kudos to people that can monetize on that.
They didn't actually launch anything though. And self-hosting is also a real pain. There can be reasons but I seriously doubt many IT departments yearn deeply for the on-premise deployment days of yore.
This. People seem to forget that employee time costs $$$$. You take on a lot more operational burden and that has a real cost attached to it and in organizations of all sizes that makes the calculus interesting.
I realized recently that I used to buy iOS apps a lot, but then they started moving to a subscription model and I stopped buying them. It has been years since I last purchased an app on my phone. I am willing to pay once forever for an app, I am not willing to enter into an recurring payment model (whether monthly, yearly, or anything else).
Then you are only shooting yourself in the foot. I’ve watched too many pay-once iOS slowly break over time as new OS updates come out. It’s a mix of the UI looking dated, features not working correctly, or just missing features I’d expect (widgets, Siri support, etc).
The only way to make it work is have a subscription and I’m incredibly happy with a number of my subscription apps like Drafts, Carrot Weather, Infuse, Widgetsmith, Infuse, Call Sheet, and Day One. These apps are not expensive at all ($10-35/yr) and I can cancel at anytime if they start to drop the ball.
Apps like Prompt/Prompt 2 were great when they launched then slowly atrophied over time and required a new version which was annoying.
I’ll agree some subs are ridiculously priced but I just avoid those.
The issue of subscription apps came up a lot in recent months on ATP [0] regarding Casey's new app Callsheet [1]. They've been arguing heavily FOR the use of subscriptions, and I came around to agreeing with them. The part that especially convinced me is that subscription revenue creates an incentive for the developer(s) to keep working on the app, in particular after the big wave of launch sales is gone. (You could argue that a lot of apps don't necessarily need new features, but I feel like especially on macOS and iOS, you want the app developers to check if their app still works properly on the new major releases, and issue fixes if something breaks.)
The very important thing is the cost of the subscription though. It needs to be reasonable. I'm fine with paying a subscription even for a small app as long as it's a low yearly price (like 5-10$). I feel like that's the bigger issue with subscription apps nowadays - the prices are often unreasonable considering the type of app, and they end up charging 3-6$ A MONTH for apps that should be at most 1-2$ a month.
App Store is a graveyard of great kid apps and games, that are no longer available after their authors found out that the $3.99 one time payment doesn't even pay for developer account fees after a few years.
While IT depts might be keen to put the genie back in the bottle they may find their ‘clients’ are less keen on waiting months to years for their needs to be met. AWS sold as an insurgent into many organisations precisely because it meant you could stand up a service in minutes, not quarters.
Consumers often talk about one-time payments but balk at the prices that are required to have them while also being able to have the devs pay for their expenses. For example, look at this recent r/apple thread [0], the dev made the perpetual license 2.5x the annual license, which makes sense from a ARPU perspective, but people don't want to pay 70 dollars, even though tools like YouNeedABudget are more expensive.
The psychological impact of one-time purchases cannot be removed from the decision and that is also likely why SaaS is so enticing, the prices are much lower in the short term, but can be higher in the long term, just like getting a loan vs paying in full would be.
I will also add this excellent breakdown of why pricing SaaS is the way it is, by the OrbStack FAQ page and their section on their business model [0]:
Look, we get it: subscriptions suck. We don't like them either. But we think that subscriptions are the best way to align our incentives with yours, and we want to be transparent about it. If we're not living up to your expectations, then you can cancel.
We also plan to introduce online services to simplify developer workflows, which would not be sustainable to run without subscriptions.
Lifetime licenses are unsustainable. OrbStack's components need continuous updates: compatibility with new macOS versions, Linux kernel, and other assorted pieces, as well as new features to stay competitive.
Major version upgrades incentive us to withhold features for months when they would otherwise be released much faster; we'd rather deliver gradual improvements so you get continuous value. Also, major upgrades have a high risk of introducing breaking changes, bugs, and other issues due to a lack of gradual testing.
1-year updates + fallback perpetual: More or less a yearly subscription in disguise? Just cancel if you don’t want to keep paying. JetBrains does a hybrid of this + subscription — not entirely opposed to it, but it shares a lot of these issues (e.g. incentivizes slower feature development). Realistically, would anyone revert to a year-old version and stay on it forever?
People can't host their own software. The handful of people who can host software won't install security updates or deal with backups. It's a drag. It makes no sense for millions of people to individually manage servers and server updates when it can be done centrally for a fraction of the cost. That's why SaaS won, ultimately.
I don't believe for a second 37signals is going to make desktop apps that you just install to your machine. These will be dockerized web apps with many fragile dependencies. This is a step backwards, frankly. If you want to make buy-once-zero-maintenance software the client software should automatically join a fully distributed peer-to-peer network. The alternative is for 37signals to offer the digital service part at cost.
Do you only get updates once? Since they even have to provide updates forever for free, which is unstainable, or provide no updates and then your software is aging from day one, and eventually won't even run on modern infrastructure and now teams have a to hire people with more unknown costs to handle all that vs a set monthly fee, or they have to charge for occasional updates in which case it's essentially a self hosted subscription. So unless they have some how solved those problems, not sure of any future for this, other than for some enterprise that already buys once and rarely ever updates and is okay with those downsides for the sake of what they believe to be better security.
As the kind of person that loves running a home lab this really appeals to me. That said, there's a take away here that's easy to miss, imho, and that's that the pricing for a piece of software needs to make sense.
The real issue with SaaS is the blanket "$5/user/month" pricing scheme, if you ask me. If using your service means each call is some heavy GPU computation, fine, charge me that cost + profit margin / markup, ie: usage based billing.
If a consumer device can handily do all the processing for your software though, yeah just sell a perpetual licence of some kind, and charge for new major versions.
Will this software come with perpetual maintenance updates? For how long? Do I get any new features for free? If not, is it really pay "once"?
Software is never "done". Developers need to be actively involved throughout the lifecycle of a software product. Which, to me, makes this sort of model unsustainable. I'd rather know that software I rely on won't be abandoned once the base of new customers drys up. And I don't mind paying for that.
When buying software like this your perspective should really be "WYSIWYG". You should assume support ends completely tomorrow, and any patches you do get are a windfall.
That means key considerations for every purchase are:
* How easy would it be to migrate from it to something else?
* How easy would it be for someone else to develop compatible extensions and drop in replacements?
* How easy would it be to troubleshoot and patch it yourself?
Perfectly bug free software is of course difficult. But reasonable level of polish is very doable. It used to be the norm for decades, and they didn't even pay devs as much as now. Modern subscription software does not have fewer bugs than traditional waterfall software.
Since 37signals has been having challenges hosting SaaS and hiring for dev/ops roles, it naturally makes sense that they'd be looking to shift that operational burden to their customers :)
I'm being extra snarky. But I must admit that I've grown a lot more skeptical of this company in recent years.
Their marketing about their products as well as about their open-source components has too much bravado.
They can't just say that administering their own Kubernetes control planes and network stacks feels like more trouble than its worth for a smallish organization like their own -- they have to announce that the status quo is wrong and their new solution is right.
HTML-over-the-wire makes sense for some use-cases and not for others, but according to 37signals there are exactly zero situations where it makes sense to transport JSON or PB between a back-end and a front-end.
It's been a few years since I evaluated Basecamp for my employer — at the time, the functionality was fine, but limited compared to other options for project management on the market and included some very opinionated portions that couldn't be customized. Integrations and client apps were also more limited compared to other options. It was the same story back when they offered Highrise CRM. Nothing wrong with their software, but there's a reason that larger players are able to satisfy a wider range of customers for business productivity and project planning software.
I was excited to try Hey, and found it similarly opinionated and underwhelming in terms of actual functionality. Maybe this has changed in the meantime, but I didn't see enough movement in the product at the time to want to commit to using it personally.
And while others can interpret their leadership team's management decisions however they wish, what I saw was them needlessly alienating some key long-term staff members and contributors to their open-source components. What a waste of talent and good will.
All this to say that I don't doubt that some of 37signals's products and some of their open-source components are indeed useful and valuable to some folks and some use-cases. At the same time, their approach to self-promotion and marketing has just started to leave an off taste in my own mouth, making me skeptical of a substance-free announcement like this.
There's an implicit conflation between SaaS-only, desktop-only, and hybrid apps.
Although sometimes subscription-only or one-time costs appears to the user to be a Hobson's choice, the alternatives are not purchasing, pirating, and using alternatives.
Unfortunately, security updates, feature additions, and hosting servers and storage cost money. This is either baked into a perpetual license, an S&S contract, or into the subscription model.
The problem that needs to be solved cannot be solved by a regression in pricing models: the issue is the intent of publishers to act as rent-seeking, extreme profiteering by continually raising prices, pricing hobbyists and individuals out of the market because they only want to sell to large corporations who view high price as a signal of quality. Oracle, Microsoft, and Redhat are the best examples of these. OTOH, there are apps like Plex and Obsidian, and low-cost buffet app marketplace subscriptions like SetApp. For example, I refuse to subscribe to EA Play/Pro because it is heavily-marketed, expensive, lacks ownership, and selectively retains titles out-of-reach from outright purchase (perpetual licensing).
I wonder if they're going to offer Basecamp with this model, and if so, how much is that going to cost? I imagine it would have to be in the thousands.
Well, purpose of Tada list was to act as a funnel to Basecamp: they took part of the functionality and when you needed more you check the Basecamp. I think they are going to with this strategy again: limited subset of Basecamp and when you need, say, mobile app or more features you know where to go.
is the imagine including the hosting? I could see that, and even higher if storage space got into the terabytes.
I myself could see 3-$500 and self host on my own hardware / vps - with options to pay for future upgrades that include new features if wanted.
I like basecamp, and would consider buying in that way, but there is more and more competition in the space that makes others attractive, and with the speed of changes with the others paying 24 months of service in advance doesn't make as much sense at it would in a smaller space. For me anyway.
Buying software doesn't just cost money, it also has an opportunity cost. The software could become obsolete before you get the value you paid for. These days software advances rapidly so the opportunity cost is severe. When the (perceived) pace of advancement slows down, we should see a return to one-time purchases.
It's not just a matter of $x/month * y months > $z one time payment. It's actually that y is impossible to estimate so people prefer $x/month.
That's the rational buyers. Then there's the irrational. Some people get memed into paying $70 for a budget tracker app (lol) because "but you'll never have to pay a subscription!". Other people get memed into paying $5/mo because "it's the price of a coffee!". So I guess the opportunity cost argument is not even relevant so long as there's a market of grifting uninformed consumers with inflated prices and astronomic profit margins.
SaaS is an entirely appropriate, and often preferable model, but in the right context.
The context being that you want a service to be provided to you, with no infrastructure/support overhead, with regular updates, and you want the company providing it to be commercially viable so that the relationship can be ongoing and symbiotic.
And if you're a company buying software, rather than an individual, then all of the above becomes even more important.
I think people's growing aversion to monthly pricing is because it is becoming the default model regardless of the context or whether it's appropriate. And this is especially a problem for individual consumers.
Not everything should be a monthly subscription, but that's where we're heading, and that's where the pushback is.
So this announcement looks simultanesouly interesting, but also slightly odd to me, because I think the monthly subscription model is perfectly appropriate for something like, for example, Basecamp.
Prior to SaaS, we had software packages that weren't updated, and often became abandonware because companies could not afford to maintain the software without growing sales demand. It left us in a very insecure world with bugs that wouldn't go away.
Say what you will about recurring SaaS payments, but software is more secure and supported than ever before. SaaS companies don't go away like old box software companies did. When new platforms take over the old ones, they provide migration paths.
Yes, ONCE will give you the source, but what company is prepared to support another company's abandonware? This isn't a bad deal for software libraries, I've used libraries that became abandonware because the companies went under. I really though it would be good for companies to put their source in escrow and you get access to it in the event the company stops supporting you.
A model I would like to see is a variation of "buy once, and you own that software". Any and all fixes would be included. Extensions and features added on subsequent releases are also a "buy once" deal, and the price is calculated based on "distance" to what you own.
This incentivizes development of features a user might want, but also avoids the "lock in" and other predatory practices so many companies deliberately abuse.
Still possible to include other options such as SaaS models. Anyways, one can dream. Oh, wait, if I'm dreaming, societies by and large acknowledge the value of FOSS and fund this on a large scale. The cost of a small road bridge in a small country is enough to fund high level development of software used by the whole world for its whole lifetime.
What fixes? You already bought a software as is. If you expect n years of support, what happens after? Either you pay some more (=subscription), or you paid $ for n years of software (=subscription).
That either/or seems a little bit to bombastic, don't you think? How things are typically done, is not the constraint for how things can be done.
It wasn't "N years of support". It was much simpler of a suggestion of. X.Y.Z versioning, where any increment of Z is free, then the pricing of a upgrade on X. or Y. is just some measure of distance to what you already have.
Simplicity in marketing is still more important than any fairness in sale. So, what I'm suggesting isn't a very good idea. But, I think it is interesting enough to think about. You might disagree on that point as well, but, I'm not here to argue.
- Version 1.0.0 of a software priced at 100 USD.
- Version 1.0.5 you get for free.
- Version 1.1.0 becomes available and you can upgrade for 2 USD, but you wait.
- Version 1.1.6 becomes available and you can upgrade for 2 USD. You do so.
Pros:
- A very friendly pricing for casual users.
- Similar incentive to develop new features for users to upgrade to, and get access immediately.
Cons:
- Maybe a bit more confusing pricing models.
- Non casual users don't think twice about the pricing anyways, and the pricing model becomes less predictable than a flat X pr month/year.
I don't buy into this. I'd rather pay monthly, and have them charge monthly to all the users so they sustain in the long-term and not keep going out of business. I hated AppSumo LTD for this same reason.
I used to think the 37signals people were pretty smart. Then in one year they decide to abandon the cloud and recurring SaaS revenue. Am I just unable to see it or are they too high on their own supply?
> Installation and administration used to be hopelessly complicated, but self–hosting tech is simpler now and vastly improved. Plus, IT departments are hungry to run their own IT again, tired of being subservient to Big Tech’s reign clouds.
I must he living on another planet, because in my experience none of this is true. In fact the only “simple” sort of self hosting would be with a PaaS provider, which is of course back to paying a subscription.
To be honest I really dislike the live service model, but at least I’m not selling alternative facts.
Software and hardware move too fast now. Even if you buy it, there is no guarantee it runs properly in 4-6 years for whatever reason.
If Apple had LTS versions of their hardware and software that guaranteed backwards compatibility for 15 years that be great. But now they will drop or replace an API or function within 6 years that breaks your application—almost guaranteed.
I have spent thousands on apps and games that require VMs or other hacks, or simply no longer work at all. At least with a sub you can cancel when it gets shitty or no longer works.
It's hard to guarantee what will happen in 5 years. Even if the vendor was really principled, who will honor their support commitment when they go bankrupt?
Instead of a "guarantee that it will run properly in 4-6 years" you should be looking for "guarantee that you can find a workaround when it breaks in 4-6 years". Avoid lock in, proprietary formats and protocols, poor compatibility, requirement for exotic platforms... Many DirectX games work great in Wine. It's the ones that do crazier tricks that are harder to deal with.
I think the subscription model is fine. What's not fine is the cost of subscription software. With so much competition in the market the price should go down but unfortunately so far that has not been the case. We at neeto from get go are going for a low price. https://blog.neeto.com/p/neetocal-a-calendly-alternative-is
It seems they are launching their own products with once-off pricing. On seeing the title I had an image of a company that allowed you to purchase any service for a once-off payment. I am thinking something like, you pay an amount up front, that amount is used to purchase an annuity, the income from the annuity funds the ongoing subscription amount. Kind of like how pensions work. Once-off-pricing-as-a-service.
I am sorta surprised that the support of SaaS is so high. It seems that saas in consumer products is the cause of so many consumer issues. Few pieces of software really need that many updates, and being able to view the code is key for future support.
Yes this announcement seems to be focused on businesses, but the option to buy software is important for the price of renting software to be cheaper than just supporting it yourself.
My main problem with 37signals is that none of their products appeal to me. In theory, I've been in the target audience for all of them but their strange design choices often miss the mark entirely. But it's good people can make a living making niche things.
Also, I agree I don't understand the purpose of announcing a pricing model, but maybe they just needed something to put on their nice domain.
The Ruby on Rails stack may shine with this. Every cloud provider has hosting instructions. With the gem ecosystem, you can eliminate 3rd party SaaS dependencies that most startups rely on. That's why tools like Gitlab, Github Enterprise, etc. are so easy to self-host.
I'm most excited to buy Once software so that I can study the source code as an educational resource.
I would guess they just give you a Docker container, otherwise supporting different configurations and host machines sounds like too much of a hassle. Even some libraries shipping with the OS could influence the behaviour outside of pinned gems.
Exactly this - if a web app, it should be offered primarily as a container image for self-hosting support - the age of <insert specific program runtime here> artifacts that the customer installs and runs on an installation of said specific runtime are almost long gone. As a customer, I'd even question why I wasn't handed a container image if they tried to ship me build artifacts and a runtime of some kind.
The amount of money I have spent on subscriptions I have forgotten to cancel, or subscriptions I have misunderstood the agreement to(Adobe ahem) has to be in the few thousands or more...
This is of course my fault and I have learned to be very wary about what I sign up for, but it doesn't keep me from having an icky feeling of dark patterns that take advantage of psychological behavior.
The reality is that most software isn't designed like a car is. Especially with most organizations using some iterative+incremental development approach.
As a result, the development of software nowadays doesn't really lend itself to one-time purchases.
If we’re just talking about standalone software, say OG native desktop photoshop for instance, then sure. However, any web based service is, by design, going to need to charge a subscription given the downstream hosting and infra costs.
> "IT departments are hungry to run their own IT again."
Tell me you don't understand IT departments without telling me you don't understand IT departments.
You really should only have to buy software once. It is quite dumb that we have to be subscribed to everything. This is what makes me use open source everything. Subscriptions are services and if I need a service to write documents FML.
Failed in what sense? They're using it on all their apps except Basecamp, although I'm sure that will be converted in time. It's now called Kamal btw https://kamal-deploy.org
It's true that for library maintainers that TypeScript has been somewhat annoying, where many are now moving back to JS with JSDoc based types, but I'm not sure why one would replace application level code with pure JS. Basecamp likely already use Rails for the logic so I guess they don't need that much typing on the frontend.
But yes, generally DHH seems too absolutist in his takes.
While I love the idea for simple software services, it doesn't work to support the actual lifetime of the software, though it can work to an extent. Adobe would be a good example of offering a one-time payment. You get a lifetime for that version of the software. However, you'd have to upgrade/pay another fee to upgrade to the next version, perhaps for a reduced price, and this is likely to be many versions. The issue with this type of offering, is that Adobe would have to support those older versions -- for how long?
I had done some research on this topic... writing saas and thinking, "Wow, wouldn't it be a great cash grab to get that $1,000 for a lifetime for my product upfront? It saves money in my users' pockets and it gives me a large immediate sum." I mean, getting 100 people to sign up for a lifetime is $100,000 minus taxes upfront and sounds amazing. In fact, it would probably support the server hosting costs for quite some time. Until it runs out.
I even thought about offering a limited amount. It's especially a bonus for those who you consider investors of your platform. In other words, you are giving me so much money upfront to support this service. In exchange, I am giving you the rights to own whatever I do in the future, free of charge. However, most people "seeing" actual money hit their account every month is more motivation than that one-time payment.
So I had seen how StackCommerce handles this for their creators: you pay once for a limited supply of something. For example, an SEO platform that does scans of your website and suggests recommendations, you might pay $30 once and get 10 of those per month for a lifetime. Then what these companies would do is offer an upgrade or a trial period to try a subscription plan.
And this model can work. Again, the purpose of the one-time is really designed to at least get a user in and trying the service, feeling that they can "own" it. It makes the user feel good because they have something for a lifetime. It makes the creator feel good that someone actually paid for a "lifetime". However, this may be short-lived for several reasons.
You are taking a huge gamble.. for example, I might only need less than those 10 queries per month on my website, so they made their $30 and that's it. I use it but despite their "upgrade me" attempt, I don't care to upgrade. The other major issue is that if you get an interested buyer for your software, like someone who actually wants to own it, and sell it to others, then you now have to disclose that you have one-time paying lifetime users, which is now cutting into their costs and may depreciate your software for the buyer because they still have to support those customers. Of course, they can always say, "new ownership, we'll grandfather you in at this price... pay another... " or whatever, but that may not always work, and piss your customers off, so it has its complications.
The issue with the "pay once" model is that over time, it prevents the creator from having any real means to continue supporting the software and may even kill the motivation. We all have to work. Software is a part of life. Pay me to continue supporting my product, so I can keep providing it to you. So rather than offering a lifetime of the product, I offer a lifetime of reduced early bird subscriptions. I came to the conclusion that I'd rather give $200 off my service yearly than give it away for a lifetime. If I ever sold my software, there is still an attractive recurring. Once that person unsubscribes from the service and resubscribes, they lose their early bird, so the enticement to keep it at that price is to remain subscribed.
It's basically like letting someone live in your house because they paid you a bit more for rent upfront. It might seem great the first few months, but after a few months, maybe a year, maybe more, you'll likely come to regret this mistake.
You seem to be against actually selling software, and tactily agreeing that the main beneficiary of the saas is the business renting the software to consumers. We already know that company benefits from not actually selling you software.
It's selling it at the one-time price that may have long-term consequences. So it sounds great in theory and gives investors a chance to feel like they own it, but subscriptions are better in the fact that they are continued support for the product. I guess it just means not every product can be sold for a one-time price, though there is software out there where it works just fine to do so.
We helped pioneer keeping you on the hook perpetually for a solution! Now we've extracted maximum value out of that we're going to offer an ever wilder idea! One big fat payment for the same thing you've spent years paying and subscribing to.
Just one last attempt to extract every cent of good will out of a consumer before they truly cotton on.
At least, that's my sour angle of it. As much as I want this 'model' again.
Haven't Teams and Slack eaten their market in the intervening time? Even Discord and Matrix are moving into the space. If they're still profitable, it's because they're extracting more money from a shrinking pool of customers. I guess Oracle has shown that can last a while with many of their products, but I'm not sure that's the kind of influence they once had.
Additionally, I'd wager a good majority of their paying customers had no idea the controversy was happening, or weren't going to change their entire office operating procedures because the owners may have some caustic opinions.
Yes, that's the other thing. (Corporate) customers almost universally do not care about internal company drama unless it materially affects them (such as with the recent Hashicorp license changes). Even end consumers don't much care, otherwise Nestlé would not continue to be as successful as it is. There is only so much energy that people can expend daily to care about something, and usually other people's drama is not it.
