This looks great, but I'm getting very sick of software with recurring monthly fees. I get that it's more profitable for companies, and maybe I'm being a curmudgeon, but what happened to software you could actually buy once and then use forever?
Also there are lots of SaaS products that have died in that time. A subscription isn't a guarantee that it'll last.
It's practically a guarantee that it won't. The whole business model reeks of VC types fantasizing about recurring revenues. These startups are a dime a dozen, they rise and recede on a daily basis.
That said, some apps still don't need frequent updates, and those apps should be offered as a traditional purchase.
Edit: this will be difficult for server hosted apps. It will work only for apks, exe, or client sided installs.
The only reason to not do this is that subscriptions are even more profitable, more rent-seeking, and more extractive
It doesn't work so well for software like this, where one of the main selling points is that all your notes are stored in the cloud and can be retrieved on any new device (or by opening the website in a tab). That's a marginal cost which is directly proportional to your actual use of the tool itself - not an R&D cost which relates to developing the code.
I understand objecting to software where the SaaS/cloud aspect is tacked on as an afterthought, to justify a subscription model – again Photoshop is an example – but that's not what's going on here. It's eminently reasonable for this software to be subscription-based.
In short: It's reasonable for a car to be a one-off purchase, but it doesn't work the same way for the gas.
Not that I like subscriptions (quite the opposite) but I think most client only software will eventually hit that saturation point where sales dip and ongoing support becomes questionable.
I think this is more true of indie/small devs than of gigacorps, though. Adobe probably could’ve massages their strategy to make things work with single time purchases, but an indie doesn’t have nearly as much latitude.
I think Obsidian has a much better model - I can run it independently as much as I like, and if I find it useful (or want to give them more support), I can sign up for their cloud syncing service.
Having to use it from the outset, or after I get 40 cards, no thanks.
So let me get this straight. You expect to pay for anything that naturally requires maintenance just once and then expect an unlimited amount of maintenance (i.e. cost for that provider) in perpetuity? Think about that for a second and then explain to me why any business would ever offer such a thing.
Just to be clear - there are endless amounts of software providers who support perpetual licenses but they either have annual maintenance contacts or support cycles tied to version support. In either case, you essentially are paying a recurring fee whether you like it or not.
Similarly, in the pre-cloud office days, you would still receive updates to your software after the purchase.
It's still the case with video games.
I'm getting slow in my old age, but Microsoft Windows came to mind in less than a second.
A way to get both the advantages of SaaS and desktop + mobile apps is yet to be invented and popularized to my knowledge. The only architecture approaching this that I'm aware of is Urbit.
Security and Bug Fixes? Not indefinitely, but I would expect the minimum generally accepted consumer warranty protections in modern economies: a year? Two? I'm also happy to help out keeping things up to date, if its open source (not everyone can do that, but not everyone has to, that's the magic of software. and this is HackerNews, not Facebook).
Look, here's the reality: software has changed. You don't just get to charge $10/month, fail to get traction, then cry "people don't want to pay for high quality software, its all these hackernews luddite types who think everything should be open source". Office 365 is $5/mo. Apple's suite is ~free-$2/mo, with a device purchase (Apple Notes is probably the most-used note taking app on the planet). Google Workspace is $6/mo; it could literally just be Keep, it'd be 70% as functional as this product, and nearly half the price; oh, and it comes with the global standard of email inboxes, with a custom domain, global standard calendar provider, a terabyte of file upload, global near-standard office suite... Notion is $4/mo. That's your competition!
Sure, none of them do exactly the same thing; but they're pretty close, and people have an inelastic amount they're willing to stretch their monthly spend beyond these high value services to perfectly hone in on a workflow that works. It's the same kind of inelasticity that keeps Excel wildly popular despite tons of more nuanced competitors.
Here's my expectations, above all else: that in ten years, the data I've given this service will still be accessible, no rug pull, no pivot, no dirty acquisition. That's the trade-off you seem to be forgetting. The biggest risk to the users of most products isn't "paying enough to afford the developers necessary to maintain it and build it out"; it's "charging so much that they never gain traction, and disappear overnight". The way toward alleviating that fear, today, is one of extremes; you can either be a huge megacorp with so much tangential revenue & momentum that a rug pull is unlikely, or you can go the Obsidian.md route, not necessarily open-source but at least open, standards-compliant, useful, locally stored data. This product instead goes the 2010s VC-backed "just build a pretty product and charge a subscription people will come lol" route, and that route is destined for failure.
Or, you can keep complaining that people won't pay for software. In an era where more money is spent on software than at any other point in computing history. People pay for software. That's the problem. So, figure it out, or die; but don't blame consumers because you've got a suicide wish to be customers' 22nd subscription service that's marginally different than two others they already pay for.
In this case, the product looks nice but I'm struggling to justify the cost (as I have for every other note taking app I've tried). I just need a convenient way to get Markdown docs synced across a couple of my devices and so far Joplin (originally synced via Dropbox but now synced via a Nextcloud raspberry pi server I'm running) has gotten the job done.
However, $8 monthly for a notes-taking app? I'm sticking with Org-mode and Evil. I'd consider it for $1 - $2 per month, but $8 is monthly is actually more than I pay Jetbrains. For a note-taking app.