Honestly, it’s really difficult sometimes trying to figure out to pay or not to pay for a subscription. I think also sometimes it might be due to how we ‘function’. How deep is the workflow for productivity?
Example: E-mail apps. (Mail vs Spark)
I think when I got my first iPhone, I was having a lot of difficulty with managing e-mail via Apple Mail. Setting up each account was manual labor, aside from whatever the technical limits were back then. I don’t recall how they are now.
Background: I manage 23 email accounts (don’t get me started - this can be a thread on its own). Yes, I check them daily and with all the filters/rules in place. It can still be a tedious task, but it has a time slot in the day.
Enter Spark
Sync all accounts across a device (time saved)
Customizations (gestures, send later, snooze)
Integrations (sending stuff to apps I use)
I’ve never looked back since, maybe Apple Mail has improved?
Caveat: the free version of Spark does all this already, so not paying for this really. If they did charge, I might pay.
Probably the better example is Calendar vs Fantastical, or Passwords vs 1Password.
Quick Stab at Calendars/Fantastical
Managing 10 Calendar with Calendar Sets seems easier on Fantastical.
I will pay for multiple calendar sets
If anyone has better experience with Calendars and managing multiple calendars, I am listening.
I find the concept of “total cost of ownership” is helpful here, especially if you broaden it to include the value you gain for the total cost.
There’s no such thing as a free lunch. Any software will cost you. Even the built-in apps do because it means you have to pay the Apple Tax. Open source depends on you (or at least some of the users) “giving back” to sustain development and support and many low cost apps make money by selling your attention and your data.
In the end, whether you “buy” or pay a subscription, you are going to pay a certain amount per year or three years or major version.
You don’t need a detailed spreadsheet to work it out, but it is important to keep things under review to ensure you are not being ripped off in one way or another. One o the downsides of subscriptions (which is part of the point) is that it’s often easier just to let them run when you are not really benefitting, while paying big bucks for a new version tended to make you stop and think if you really needed to.
I find that for anything where the subscription is a trial type thing, it’s helpful to go in and cancel the subscription as soon as I create it. That way it expires instead of auto-renews.
I have spent my entire career in technology (retiring in 2 weeks!). Truly great software is hard. The point about recurring costs for servers and such is a great argument in favor of a subscription (ongoing costs offset by revenue stream). I also want to support devs who make the stuff that makes me money. My #1 example with that is Drafts by Greg Pierce. I happily pay the subscription as the better outcomes I achieved using Drafts (organizing work, etc.) made me far more successful in my career. I have a harder time with the subscriptions for things like MS Office (who really needs more features in Word?) which feels more like a tax. That is one I will not be renewing once I am out of the corporate grind. At least Apple makes the subscription management easy for those apps in the App Store.
