Yup - I had that exact conversation on their forum, and that was the given reason.
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Hey, the price sure is right! Thank you!
I think Keyboard Maestro is a very capable text expansion tool. With regular expression triggers, input dialogues for multiple values, tokens, output typing (instead of pasting) and all the available actions one can create some pretty advanced snippets. You can even use Keyboard Maestro to create new Keyboard Maestro snippets.
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Since this is your first post, I am highly suspicious.
which one are you? 
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I don’t always agree with your posts but your sense of humor has several times given me a good chuckle. 
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PhraseExpress is also a subscription if I am reading their sales page correctly. It’s $50 for a year of updates. I didn’t see their renewal fee so I assume it’s another $50.
The non-subscription alternative seems to be Typinator. https://www.ergonis.com/products/typinator/
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Or, many here have recommended aText for $5. I’m currently using aText for Windows. I’d think the Mac version is equally wonderful.
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No. 
It is no subscription. You are entitled for any version that is being released within 12 months after your purchase (you can download it also after 12 months have expired). They call that Maintenance. And you can keep on using that product as long as you wish. There is no enforced update.
So, what happens, if you decide to get the latest and greatest, after your “Maintenance” period has expired?
Maintenance expired?
- The first four-digits of the license key represent the maintenance expiration date of your license (e.g. “0419” would mean April 2019).
- You can continue to use the version, that you have been able to download within your purchased maintenance term. However, you won’t get support or feature, security and maintenance software updates anymore which may be required if you upgrade your OS, for example.
- You can renew maintenance for your license with discount to enjoy latest improvements and to maintain compatibility with your operating system.
See: PhraseExpress - Info about software maintenance
Eventually, almost any software product stops working and a new license has to be “bought” again, if you want to be able to get a new version. Some products have a yearly schedule, others “offer” paid updates less frequently.
If this is the definition of a subscription, then lean back and enjoy: everything IS a subscription… 
I agree to disagree on that one.
Thanks for the doing the deep dive. The wording of the “maintenance” means no bug fixes after one year right? This is how Codeweaver Crossover works and thats a yearly subscription unless you want to just live with the bugs, no updates, etc.
not true. I see no issue with an upgrade cost for a new version i.e. Version 2.0 to new Version 3.0 but this software is saying you have to pay for updates to Version 2.0 that would be 2.1 or 2.2 after a year. Thats a subscription in my book. (the version numbers are hypothetical)
“Not true” is a bold statement. Like I said: I agree to disagree.
EDIT:
@webwalrus explains it nicely. +1 Exactly like that.
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I realize this is hair-splitting to some degree, but here’s how I look at it.
When I “buy” a given piece of software (the correct phrasing is “license”), I expect it to work as-is, on the current OS. The software I bought should continue to work, as-is, on that operating system. And if I were to need to reinstall that computer, I would expect to be able to reinstall that OS and software.
If they include some updates in that initial purchase, that’s cool. And in today’s environment, if a new OS is going to be released in a couple of weeks I generally expect them to include the update to that version.
But beyond that, I figure that updates = work, so whatever they want to do for updates / upgrades is their choice.
Version numbers are all arbitrary, so the version number doesn’t really matter. Case in point - I saw somebody saying that while Windows had gone from Windows 7 to Windows 10, Mac had never even had a “major release” because Windows increments the first number, and Mac was incrementing the second. That logic is kind of silly.
An “update subscription” is what I call what @Christian is describing here. Those practically translate to “if you keep current on our software, we give you a discount”. The software won’t stop working, but you don’t get any more updates if you stop paying.
“Subscription” is what I use to refer to software where the software itself stops working after a period of time.
In most cases I’ve seen, I hate subscriptions. But update subscriptions seem much more reasonable to me.
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It’s a semantic game that some devs are playing right now because they think they can get away with it. The word “subscriptions” is a negative buzzword. If I buy version 3 of sofware, the devs have the responsibility of making sure version 3 works until they release version 4. I have paid for version 3 and that includes version 3.1, version 3.21, etc. Now if the devs want to charge me again to ensure version 3 keeps working after a year, that is a subscription, even if they call it a “maintenance fee”, a “feed my baby mama fee”, or whatever.
Now if they release Version 4 during my “year” and I get it for free, thats because I am paying a yearly subscription cost. Codeweavers call it renewing your license, but its a subscription as there is no guarantee that a new Version will be released during the year… maybe just some .x updates. If I still used the Mx Macs, I would pay it. I don’t have a problem with all subscriptions, but call it what it is. If the product has value, people will pay for it. My yearly subscription for Codeweavers Crossover is 50% of my purchase price.
Broadly speaking, I think that practice from a dev is admirable - but what I’m effectively saying the “next major version” criteria amounts to a distinction without a difference.
Consider that I release version 2.0 of my cool app today. I could call next month’s release 2.1 or 3.0, at my sole discretion. As evidence of this, we can note that macOS kept the same major version number for well over a decade, whereas on the other hand Drafts is currently on version 29. These numbers are so completely arbitrary - in any sort of objective sense - as to be meaningless.
That’s not saying I don’t intuitively think things should be roughly the way you describe. “We finally fixed the major bugs in v3 - click here to give us more money so your software will finally work properly” is a very jerk-y thing to do to customers. So is “we fixed the bugs in v3 by releasing v4 - a paid upgrade”.
But on a very real level I also realize those expectations aren’t founded on anything more solid than my ephemeral notion of “what seems right to me”.
yes but a dev who did this would be labled a “bad actor” if they tried to charge an upgrade fee a month later. Parallels’ “permanent license” treads this line if I remember correctly. Most devs would probably give you 3 to 6 months or so before having to pay again if they release a new version.
same as above if not a major upgrade.
IMHO Parallels doesn’t tread the line - they outright cross it. I bought Parallels about 45 days before an OS release - i.e. “while the new version was actively in development”. The OS released. I was told, in no uncertain terms, that I’d have to purchase the new version because I’d bought the standalone license instead of “yearly updates”.
Regarding “bad actor”, I think that the market is pretty good at sorting this stuff out overall.
My broader point is that our definition of “subscription” isn’t as much based in a hard reality as in what we feel is reasonable for support. And we all have our own ideas of what that looks like. Mine roughly comports with yours - but there’s no ontological reality where I can expect it to be a given. 
Yes, I was sure they had done that to me also. I just could not remember the time frame but I knew it was an unfair one.
but they are not as dirty as Rock★ for inserting online DRM into a game purchased for offline play years ago. New DRM after purchase should be an automatic class action lawsuit regardless of their precious little EULA
You mean the DRM was added after you gave them money? Yeah, that’s a crock - unless it came with a refund.
yeah and it wasn’t just any DRM, it’s the you have to be connected to the internet to play single player DRM. Blizzard has done the same thing with the new Diablo. and people still just give them money…