As a consumer I really dislike subscription services, they quickly add up to a lot of money. I can see how it works for businesses but by definition that means its not so good for me.
I like Discourse's pricing model: https://www.discourse.org
Their plans start at $100 / month, which is not a problem for real businesses. For everyone else, the software is full open source and it's reasonably easy to install on that $5/month cloud server instance.
The "free or $100+" model conveniently eliminates the support hassle of $10 / month users who typically are the most clueless and demanding.
It’s also a good “eat your own dogfood” way to make sure your platform is up to commercial standards for UI/UX and feature sets. A lot of enterprise software is garbage specifically because the people doing the procurement aren’t the people using the tools.
That seems like a reasonable business strategy. Software companies have long offered heavily discounted products to home and educational users, or simply turned a blind eye to piracy within those demographics. Then everyone leaves school and equates "word processor" and "spreadsheet" with Microsoft Office, "graphics program" with Adobe Creative Suite, etc. These days a lot of those big players seem to be trying to pull in more direct revenue from those markets with lower-priced versions of their subscription offerings instead, but that doesn't mean their previous business model wasn't good for them.
Anyone even slightly computer literate known that it’s a simple as fk login system that won’t cost more for 2 than for 50 users. So how exactly I’m supposed to suggest your product to my boss? He will just laugh. You must provide free "reader only" accounts or at least propose a bundle offer for small business. Unless it’s not your target, but really why go with per/user plan in the first place then?
The only worst business model for BI is bandwidth based payement for anything that involve open-data. Because I would then fear that my dataviz make some buzz on Twitter an that I blow my budget.
Adobe's switch to the subscription model for Photoshop/Lightroom is an excellent example. I'd much rather pay $10/mo for both (plus a bunch of cloud storage) than a few hundred bucks outright (especially considering that we had to re-purchase the software anyway roughly every two years when a new version came out anyway). The subscription model is much cheaper for me, I don't have to decide between $$$ and new features anymore, and it guarantees Adobe will continue to provide support and updates to the software. The added benefit is that suspending a subscription is quite easy (away for vacation for a few months, busy semester at school, etc etc).
The downside is, of course, is that subscription software can look artificially cheap but can add up quickly.
$10/month is more palatable to many than $120 all at once, but it nullifies the threat of customers leaving.
That's a huge business risk. And as searching for 'Creative Cloud suspended' shows, it's not theoretical.
See also: http://www.barrypearson.co.uk/articles/dng/products_y7.htm
That seems to assume that transactions between businesses and consumers are zero sum games. It's possible for something to be good for a business and good for you. For example, I subscribe to The Economist. It's good for me (cheaper than buying individual issues, and cheaper that suitable-quality alternatives) and good for them (up-front payment, lower distribution costs).
It's all well and good to say "well, I just mean for me, personally" but I'm not sure it's adding to the public discourse without any further qualification.
Compare subscription to Netflix vs. buying a movie on a DVD (and maybe ripping a personal backup copy). The former is a subscription - you stop paying (maybe because of financial emergency), no movie. The latter is a one-time purchase, after which you keep the thing you bought forever (so when shit hits the fan, you still can cheer yourself up with your favourite movie.
I know I definitely prefer buying over renting/subscribing. Businesses prefer the reverse. It's a conflict of interest.
It doesn't work with things like cloud storage. Stop paying, you lose your data. It also assumes that Netflix in this example wont go out of business.
The mental model is what is different. I pay X per month for Y value per month. Rather than, I pay X now for Y value forever. I may not use that Y value now, I may use it in 12 months time (for example, I still have DVDs in sealed packaging because I thought I needed the value up front).
Then I use Audible where I subscribe for X credits and once I use it on a book, I can use it indefinitely. I like that middle ground.
If the business is still around.
You could also never sever your Netflix subscription and still lose access to your favorite movie because their licensing agreement ran out.
Even in your example, ownership wins out because you have the -option- to sell your residual assets in a financial emergency. There's nothing you can resell with your Netflix subscription money since you're just paying for the temporary privilege to watch a movie you don't own that might not be there tomorrow.
That's a good comparison, because it makes clear that both approaches can have merit.
For content I'm likely to enjoy watching or listening to again in the future, I too would always prefer to have a permanent copy. The medium doesn't really matter, but having the control does.
However, I've also seen a lot of content on services like Netflix that I enjoyed watching once but maybe wouldn't ever want to watch again. I got to watch it for far less money than I would have had to pay to buy a permanent copy, but Netflix still got some money from me in return. This was a mutually beneficial arrangement.
Also Dropbox and services alike might be cheaper to host for yourself, like many other things in life - car repair or home improvements, but that only cuts it if you are savvy enough in that particular trade. Thats the first part where it adds value - it simplifies things a lot. The second part is the ecosystem of integrations and sharing, and this goes to many other services as well. I usualy host my own for a large majority of services since its low volume use a free or small instance on any cloud provider does the work, however I still have Netflix, GSuite, Drive, Play Music and a range of others since they give to me more value than just doing it myself or are not worth the time effort.
Also as a software engineer by trade I really hope more people start understanding that if you want baddass apps and games which constantly update and run on online servers, it has to cost money perpetually and you have to either pay for a subscription, look at ads, or have a freemium type of model to support the cost and eventually earn a couple bucks.
The issue I have is when this model is applied to certain software that doesn't directly provide added value over time (like Office 365 or Photoshop).
When I purchase software, I want the ability to clearly compare the available features (value) vs the cost at that specific time. This is why Sendy (https://sendy.co) received my business over MailChimp (https://mailchimp.com). The software I sell is also a pay-once model and I feel much happier knowing my customers are getting good value for their money.
As a professional photographer, Photoshop does provide value over time for me and my colleagues.
Why would you pay for something that you don't use?
I honestly don't understand what the problem is, if something doesn't add value, then why would you pay for it?. I don't see a real "issue" here.
It's a lease vs. buy calculation -- one site who did the math says:
> However, once you get past the two year mark, all bets are off—the subscription is more expensive than buying, even if you plan on upgrading every two years.
https://lifehacker.com/5904416/rent-vs-buy-is-adobes-creativ...
DropBox and Apple charge $100 a year for a terabyte of storage alone.
I really like JetBrains perpetual license, after a year, you get a permanent license to the version that was current 12 months from the time you subscribed - if you cancel your subscription in April 2018, you get to a license to whatever version was current April 2027.
The subscription trends seem like an attempt to sidestep that and remove people's freedoms so companies can dictate how their products are used.
The mentioned price thing is definitely bad too though.