Ask HN: Pricing models – subscription or extend license | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Pricing models – subscription or extend license

I use the word license in the most open way possible.

I'm looking at designing and building an app (I won't go into too much detail here) and looking at pricing models - whether to have a monthly subscription or a "license" which you'd extend if you wanted to carry on using it (imagine buying a new sketchbook/journal/diary once you've filled it).

There has been a massive shift towards subscription based services e.g Wunderlist, StandardNotes, etc, and articles stating that they are now the only way to survive in the current market but I've always preferred to "own" the software even temporarily look at Affinity Designer and Sketch.

Is there a one size fits all when it comes to licensing or would it simply be based on the type of product and service?

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It seems like the best solution is to have monthly subscription model. That's what most companies are doing.

Personally, as a customer, I like the idea of paying for an update. Let's consider Adobe CC subscription. Currently it's standard monthly subscription, if you don't pay, you don't have access to it. I would prefer to pay only if I want new features and security updates. If I decide not to have them I could stay of the last version that I updated to. Of course to make sure that you earn enough you should have to have a limit of minimum 1 year subscription payed monthly, so nobody would scam you by buying one monthly subscription once a year.

This of course changes is cloud services are involved (storage, streaming, etc.). For those you need monthly subscription to be on)

That's how I tend to feel, I'm just not sure whether a one off payment would work for this.

With AWS, storage and cloud storage is fairly cheap so that shouldn't be an issue.

The pricing model should be based on customers. Time spent thinking about it before building something and setting it in front of actual human beings and getting feedback and responding to that feedback with further design and implementation looks like productive work. It is not. It is just easier than building and showing and soliciting feedback and acting on that feedback until there is something people care about enough to pay.

It is also easier to build a payment system than something people are willing to pay for. Having to decide how to accept payment is a good problem have, but usually not the first one.

Good luck.

To be honest that is one of the reasons for this question, to ascertain what customers would prefer between the two different options.

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