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Comment by chrischen | Hacker News Reader

It sounds like you feel like you underpaid. Then the solution is for them to charge more or charge for more of their products, not a subscription. A subscription basically forces you into paying for upgrades.

The only thing a subscription model is good for is it wrestes power from the consumer.

With the traditional model if they decide to stop updating the app, you wouldn’t buy the next version, and that would be your leverage. With a subscription model, they can decide to stop deivering updates, or deliver lower quality updates, and you’d be forced to pay perpetually just to keep the existing software operational.

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Here's a counterpoint:

If someone pays $40 for, say, 1Password 5, they have no incentive to upgrade. It works well enough, and there's no reason to pay again. So, 1Password is stuck supporting a legacy product (and servers / APIs for it), the user is frustrated by an old version of the software, and the company gets no money so they're at risk of folding (which would hurt both the customer and 1Password).

I agree that subscriptions can get annoying. However, if it ultimately is about the same price, it ends up working out much better for both sides. And hey, they can always stop their subscription and go somewhere else if things get bad. They don't lose their buying power completely.

If they have no incentive to upgrade, that's because the newer versions don't add any value for the user. This makes sense: 1Password is a pretty mature product at this point and there probably isn't much room to add new features, unless you want to expand the scope of the product.

That is to say that I personally (and again, this is just my opinion) don't care about any new features and would be unlikely to upgrade from version 6 on that basis. I may upgrade to ensure I will continue receiving security updates and OS and browser extension compatibility updates, but it would be nice to know how long such updates to version 7 are guaranteed for (presumably they will eventually release version 8 for a new fee and discontinue such updates to version 7).

> (and servers / APIs for it)

The users (like me) who are against subscriptions are only using local vaults (managing the storage sync ourselves) and do not care for or want the web/sync services.

> newer versions don't add any value for the user

I disagree. Security software (as opposed to boxed titles prior to the Internet era), subject to frequent review and that is updated regularly does offer continuing value in a steady stream of updates.

As another commenter said, the price of security is eternal vigilance.

They should not be supporting new features on old versions, and 1Password does not require servers or APIs. If you are paying for their cloud hosting then that is a justifiable subscription cost, but I’m already use Dropbox.

They should be supporting security updates and this should be built into their costs. Security updates represent flaws in their product.

If the user is frustrated by an old oversion and looks to upgrade (whether to a competitor or a new version), then that makes upgrading justified, transparent, and intentional.

Their subscription model just serves to make upgrading less intentional, less transparent, and takes away power from the consumer. Also at their current pricing it’s a massive increase in cost without really deliverying much more value. You’re paying more than what it normally costs in a year, to only be able to use it for a year. It’s like forcing me to pay for their product on an installment plan, but I don’t rven get to keep using it in the end.

Whatever benefits they claim a subscription provides can also be achieved by having more frequent, smaller, incremental updates for features you can pay for.

Yes. This.

But don't forget compatibility updates. Underlying platforms change all the time, it makes sense for users to have to pay for these updates outside a certain time period.

They're not stuck supporting it. The original purchase can come with an amount of support. If the user needs more, they can pay for more.

This is how software worked for multiple decades before subscriptions came about.

You can look at it from a different perspective.

The customer could pay $5 and then cancel the subscription if they do not like the service.

With the license purchase they have to make a large commitment upfront.

That's good for customers who ultimately cancel. For those actually using the service it will be a worse deal.

In the old days with perpetually-licensed software, this was handled with a trial period (30-day demo or similar), or, where feasible, a feature-limited demo version (e.g. a game with one level as a demo). This is not a new problem or a problem without solutions.

[To play devil's advocate:] which were often cracked and released as warez...

I'd be highly skeptical of running a warez version of my password manager.

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