Most of the HN users reading this thread do understand the difference between licenses and subscriptions. It may seem strange but this is not the case for the vast majority of the users. We have customers emailing us about having a 1Password account/subscription since before 2015 (when we only had licenses).

We originally started with offering both licenses and subscription as equal options. Here is how it looked: https://web.archive.org/web/20160420141241/https://1password...

There was a lot of confusion with this design because people simply had no idea what to choose. It is ridiculous but we had many hundreds of customers purchasing both.

The subscription is a better option for most of our users because it takes care of so many things:

- no need to purchase separately on every platform

- no need to learn the difference between iCloud and Dropbox sync, and why sharing is not possible with iCloud option

- no need to learn how to set up a shared Dropbox folder

- no need to worry about backups when your computer or phone dies

- and more

Many of our long-time customers still use licenses and are happy with the existing setup and we want to keep them happy. This is the main reason we keep the licenses going and releasing new version for Mac and Windows support for licenses and standalone vaults.