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Comment by Abishek_Muthian | Hacker News Reader

>and I believe the market will ultimately reject it too.

Na, Remember the time we used to pay once for a software and own it forever?

Hardware manufacturers have been biting their teeth to get those sweet SaaS recurring revenue in anyways possible and EVs have provided a perfect opportunity for the vehicle manufacturers for that.

Future of cars could be irreparable, vendor-locked in(parts), e-waste after 3 years if governments don't strengthen and extend their existing repair laws (if any) for EVs.

But if consumers have to take a stand we have to start with the SaaS products. Something which we might use twice every three months shouldn't be getting monthly payments from us.

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Most consumers don’t pay for software at all, though. That’s why all the “pay once for this software-in-a-box” companies basically died except for TurboTax. Saas started in B2B and is still largely a B2B phenomenon.

Consumers buy content subscriptions like Netflix or Spotify, and hardware like phones and laptops, but they largely do not (and will not) pay for software tools. Google/Facebook/Microsoft/etc has trained them this way. And no, HN readers are not normal people, so just because you do, doesn’t mean most people do.

For business customers, a monthly subscription is highly advantageous due to it turning capex into opex on the balance sheet. It reduces the need for onsite IT staff, offloads data security onto an expert 3rd party, and allows for cloud based collaboration and continuous updates—-which “buy it once and use it locally” products never could do.

Saas is a model designed around the needs of B2B, and most big Saas companies make the consumer version free, so I wouldn’t count on consumers caring enough to push back.

I always thought TurboTax was worse.

It's an application you use precisely once and then it's no good upon the next tax cycle.

> Future of cars could be irreparable, vendor-locked in(parts), e-waste after 3 years if governments don't strengthen and extend their existing repair laws (if any) for EVs.

Future is now already for some cars, Nissan Leaf is a good example of this policy - insanely priced or just unavailable batteries make perfectly good cars unusable junk - this is worse than some ICE cars which are still repairable after 15 or 20 years of usage. I'm 100% sure other brands will follow this trend.

>Something which we might use twice every three months shouldn't be getting monthly payments from us.

Agreed, but if I pay for my actual usage I'm fine with that. There's no way I'm paying for an Adobe CS monthly sub, but I'd pay a few quid a day to be able to use it as and when. That's not a reliable revenue stream for the vendors though, so I can see why they're not keen on it.

Maybe saas service leasing out subscriptions on a daily basis?

Everyone wants the mob-buisness model, were you break the users legs, if they don't pay up all they can every fortnight. Open Source runs completely contrary to that and will clash - aka locked out due to vendor pressure. Aka, you cant have blender on a autodesk system.

> Something which we might use twice every three months shouldn't be getting monthly payments from us.

Counter argument will probably be along the lines of "but we store your data even when you don't use it".

Anyway my local gym charges me monthly even if I go there only once a year.

> Counter argument will probably be along the lines of "but we store your data even when you don't use it".

Yes the cost of building the product, infrastructure, running the company changes with the economy but even then the product pricing doesn't change frequently. If it does the customer will leave for the competitor anyways monthly billing or not.

So apart from locking-in within the platform, To show the MRR, ARR for that VC money is there really any merit for monthly subscription? Not everything needs to be a Netflix, Without complex licensing, two-sided market I'm not sure why every SaaS product has to compare itself to Netflix.

I've started offering lifetime subscriptions by default to my SaaS products, mainly because it seems hypocritical to not liking to pay monthly but expecting the same from my customers. One of the advantages of being an indie is that I can do this, I understand that a startup at the mercy of investors cannot.

Do you have the option of just paying for one gym session? Most of the gyms near me have yearly/monthly subscriptions as well as allowing you to pay for a single gym session

Going to the gym once is pretty useless though, if you're not going to go regularly, just don't go.

Can’t wait to pirate extra horsepower.

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