I’m never sure why this is a debate.
- If you don’t want to buy something; don’t buy it.
- If you prefer Chardonnay to Merlot, don’t buy Merlot.
- If the benefit of the software is more than the cost, you’re golden.
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Obviously subscriptions aren’t right for all, or possibly most apps (subscription fatigue is a real thing) but that 2nd point can’t be overstated. Most people don’t understand the economics and marketing decisions devs have had to make with regard to app product cycles and sales, and how it wreaks havoc on company budgets and development.
I can’t tell you how many devs I’ve spoken with over the years before subscriptions who were unhappily holding back on releasing feature updates because they needed to bank them. Why? To make paying for the next upgrade more appealing to users.
With subscriptions devs can roll out updates to users regularly and add support new standards and features outside of the confines of a standard product cycle, and by doing so they’ll know they’re bringing all their users with them (which also reduces support costs otherwise spent on old versions which increasingly tend to have issues with new OS versions).
In the sales model devs make big sales at the outset and then there’s a feast-and-famine cycle as they survive off long-tail sales. R&D plans and budgets can’t be reliably predicted because there isn’t a constant, reliable or predictable revenue stream off which to budget. It’s a much more volatile situation for developers, and overall customers get fewer regular updates and more of a chance the dev will stop supporting the app compared to a subscription (since successful subscriptions result in a steadier, less volatile income stream so devs can better plan projects and updates while having a good idea of what can be budgeted based on predicted income streams).
I hadn’t thought about point #1 but it makes sense.
A corollary to point #4 is that with Apple dropping its take of subscription apps to 15% (from 30%) after the first year of a subscription it strongly incentivizes developers to make apps for users that not only are good enough to use for a year but that they want to continue using.
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I can honestly say that over the years the hardest thing that I ever did was to try to sell an software application package.
Selling hardware, no problem. I think it is physiological thing but people’s mindset loathe paying for software.
This is probably part of the reason that Apple gives away a lot of its software while keeping hardware costs high.
I think the race down to $0.99 have created a large number of financially unsustainable businesses.
Case in point the Quoteskeeper app that should have been an app once written be done but Apple’s constant changing of underlying structures forces revisions to keep on working. There is not any priority on back compatibility.
In that regard, UNIX/Linux is more stable.
Like the IA article in another thread writes, Apple is pushing the model for subscriptions not necessary to make developers make apps that people will use but to have more visibility on stable revenue from the App store.
I would love to have a business to take 30% off of the top.
You’re doing the same to your boss every month I hope?
As @bowline says, we pay far more per month on other bills and don;t even think about it.
My cable bill is about 70,- (TV, High Speed Internet + Landline)
And the TV part has 220 channels, of which I only watch 4-5
So I’ll gladly pay subscription money for an app I need, and a dev I want to support to make that app. I think it’s all about your needs. When subscriptions came around I dramatically reduced my apps and made a deal with myself not to spend more than 50,- per month on ALL content subscriptions (Apps + Apple music/TV+) So far I’m still below that amount.
I am strongly opposed to subscriptions for software. I have no issues with paying a subscription for a service (e.g. Apple Music, Netflix, etc.) that provides content that I like to consume, but subscribing to a piece of software like a notes app or a text editor or a calendar makes no sense at all to me.
Note that I have a good track record of buying software apps (even expensive Pro apps), and also buying updates to those apps, but I am averse to the idea of subscribing to apps.
BUT… If I’m reading the iA Writer blog correctly, they seem to be planning to offer both paid and subscription options, but with an amazing and very welcome relative pricing difference.
They seem to suggest that the paid-for option will remain at about $30, whilst the subscription option will be $5 PER YEAR!!! (Not per month, like the mad, greedy Ulysses subscription, but per YEAR).
At $5 per year, it will take 6 years to reach the same outlay as the paid-up-front price of $30.
That is a total no-brainer. If iA Writer goes this way, then I will instantly become a very happy subscriber (a first for me for any app)
Or have I read the blog-post wrong?
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You’re reading it right. That’s really aggressive pricing, and certainly unsustainable if the rest of the company ran that way. Pricing a subscription to equal an upfront purchase after 18-30 months is what seems to work for users and developers. I was very surprised to read half the users who convert are opting to spend $30.
@MereCivilian Thanks for posting the article! The length made it really interesting. I appreciate their thoughtfulness around this.
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I have to agree. At the end of the day it is a business transaction. If I don’t like the price, I don’t buy.
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Kind of reminds me of the end of this…in a good way. 
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I think the second drives the first.
Way, way back (early 80s, maybe?), you’d get a computer that would come with a very, very limited amount of software. For the Apple II or the IBM, you had a relatively simple DOS disk, and MAYBE a simple program or two that would let you type a document. Maybe.
You still didn’t really like the idea of paying for software, but you budgeted it into the cost of acquiring the computer because there wasn’t an alternative.
And when you got free or cheap software (remembering Apple floppies from MECC for education, people swapping floppies of shareware / freeware at geek shows, etc.) you didn’t have much expectation of support from the people that provided the software. Even when you paid a fair bit of cash, you basically expected the software to run, rather than to have a given specific feature.
Now the shoe is on the other foot. There’s a ton of free stuff out there, and people have started expecting highly-detailed end-user support for everything - even from the free software.
That end-user support has a pretty significant cost. And so does the prospect of running back-end servers for many apps’ sync engines, etc. And it’s not reflected in a one-time $2.99 purchase.
So for me, personally, I still try to avoid subscriptions for things where the dev doesn’t have an obvious, recurring expense related to the software (sync server, great end-user support, etc.) - but I’m also more than fine paying a higher cost up front. And if there’s a subscription, I don’t have a knee-jerk “subscriptions are evil” reaction, but rather I look at the amount of the subscription, consider it (basically) as a yearly upgrade type of cost, and see whether that’s worth it.
I’ve seen coloring book apps that want $100 per year as a subscription, and that feels insane to me. But splitting 1Password Families with my other half and being able to share the vaults? Worth $60 a year for all the time/hassle it saves.
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I am happy with subscriptions when there are not plastered with ploys to try and keep you hooked. These ploys are common.
- You cannot set your preference to opt out: i.e. if I do not actively renew subscription it dies.
- When you initially subscribe you are not given an opportunity to cancel the subscription after the year. You have to wait a few months before you can take this action.
- Your only option is auto-renew
- You get no notification that you are about to auto-renew.
- If you do get a notification, it is obscure perhaps hidden in a marketing email. Everyone in a different format.
- Unsubscribing is a bit of a chore. You have to go to some other website and search on some half-hidden page for some tiny button.
All of these things are very common. They can be overcome by the diligent consumer who lives in OmniFocus. But I am not that guy and obviously many others have the same failing because the vendors shamelessly exploit these human frailties. That gives me an adversarial relationship with many subscription models. I get the notion that they are trying to fool me and that hardly makes me feel warm and fuzzy about the vendor. But it is so key to their business model that they cannot resist. And I do make mistakes, and they get me for another year, and they get my money for that even when I have lost interest in the product.
The subscription itself is not my problem. In fact, I think the model makes sense. Apple sends me an email before it is time to renew. The notification is not “obscured” in any way. It looks the same. And they make it easy to unsubscribe. An app store could enforce such a model. Any app through that store would have to send out a notification. Those notifications would all look the same. Those notifications would all contain an obvious link to unsubscribe.
I support subscriptions because software is a service. The vendor has continuing costs related to support and upgrades. And my worst experiences in the software realm are when a piece of software that I have invested time to learn and for which I have muscle memory dies because the buy once and done model does not work.
You missed my least favorite ploy:
When you cancel, your benefits will terminate immediately.
I don’t see it as much with software, but I definitely see it with services and “membership” type stuff.
If I paid for a year, I want a year. The idea that I have to set the proverbial Ominfocus task for 360 days out in order to get my year worth of value is ridiculous.
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I consider it smart.
My prepaid Adobe subscription is up in a month and a week or so before I have a Todoist alert to remind me to cancel, because Adobe always offers an extra 2 free months the next year if you do.
Nothing ridiculous about using a task manager to manage tasks.
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I don’t disagree that task managers should be used to manage tasks - and I definitely don’t see a problem with optimizing cancellation dates if there’s a user-centric benefit to it.
What I think is ridiculous is the idea that there’s a long-range task (as opposed to a 2 minute action that can be done now, in GTD parlance) to manage in the first place.
Basically it’s ridiculous to me that the dev / website / whatever won’t just take my cancellation (which is more of a “cancellation of auto-renewal” in most cases, because you can’t opt out of auto-renewal without cancelling) at the point I’ve decided I don’t want to renew the software / service / whatever, and leave the remainder of my subscription time active.
If I cancel 6 months into a 1-year subscription that I paid a 1-year price for, I shouldn’t lose half of the value I paid for.
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I don’t at all. I subscribe to several magazines and newsletters whose end-date I have to make note of to decide whether to cancel or allow the auto-renewal. This is nothing unusual for many types of subscriptions, and that includes insurance policies, so I see this as a gripe I can’t go along with
I’m not talking about prepaying for something for a year and losing the features if I cancel renewal after a month. If you can point to a subscription in which you prepay for 12 months and lose that prepaid time when canceling a renewal (who did you quote when you wrote “When you cancel, your benefits will terminate immediately”) I’d like to know.
When you say “magazines”, are you talking about physical paper media? I’ve never seen that, honestly.
I would, of course, suggest that just because a number of companies insist on doing it, that doesn’t alter whether or not it’s a ridiculous practice or not.
I still use my task manager to track the cancellations. But the world would likely be at least a slightly better place if that weren’t necessary.
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Another thing that is different now is that most people want all this connectivity between mobile and desktop. This did not exist years ago and this infrastructure is costly to provide.
I think some apps already section this off if you want cloud syncing services you should taxed a higher fee.
Apple should allow the vendors to collect update costs especially when they cause the reason the app needs to be updated as a change in underlying OS and Cloud infrastructure. They in effect passing all this cost on to their developers while keeping 30%. Apple praises their Software Devs at WWDC then in the back room just have them bend over and $%&^
It’s not a direct quote, it’s a pretty close paraphrase of language I’ve seen at least a few times. I honestly can’t remember the last time, because I’ve mostly (considerations given above aside) tried to steer myself away from subscriptions in favor of owned content, perpetual licenses, etc.
You’re confused, misremembering Apple’s policy of immediately canceling free trials. It’s not the same as for prepaid subscriptions, period. If people don’t want to set a calendar reminder so be it. And complaining about that is unnecessary, captious caviling IMO.
Nope. I wouldn’t be complaining about losing access to something I didn’t pay for in the first place.
And FWIW, with Apple I can cancel my paid subscriptions whenever I feel like it, and keep access through the end of the subscription period. Which is exactly the behavior I feel is appropriate.
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Then you shouldn’t be quoting something you can’t really remember as if you were. Again, I call bovine scatology on any stealing of prepaid subscriptions as you describe and can’t support.