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Comment by sokoloff | Hacker News Reader

When people say they don’t like subscriptions and companies want to push subscriptions, it’s almost always a pricing-vs-value issue at the core.

If you want to sell me a subscription where I have a new Porsche for $1/day, and I can trade it in every 2 years for a new one, I’ll take 3 or 4! If you want to sell me a subscription to heated seats for $1/day, I’ll take zero and take pains to find a way around it and publish that.

It’s not that subscriptions are bad, but rather than overpriced subscriptions are bad, IMO. I’d love to “buy” an underpriced subscription for many of the things that today I own.

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I'll add that locking things behind a subscription also means that I lost access if I stop paying. Which puts me in an adversarial position against the company if they keep raising the price to see what the market will tolerate. And at some point people are likely to question if they continue to receive the value that justifies the ever increasing prices

With a one off purchase I don't immediately lose my access if for example, I get laid off and need to cut back on my monthly spending. I may lose support, eventually run into an OS that won't run it, etc, but for the most part I don't lose my data and access.

True, but if the subscription is priced roughly equivalently, you will have enough money still in your pocket to keep paying for that subscription even after you’re laid off, at least for a while.

Yeah, nah, I would start searching for someone who has built an interference module that goes between the cars computer and the heated seats and allows me to manually toggle the heated seats without BMWs permission.

If someone gave me a brand new free BMW I would gladly spend $600 to make sure that I didn't have to send BMW $15/month, but I bet it wouldn't even cost that much.

"Subscribe vs buy" feels like deciding between "rent vs own".

Sure, if I can snag a rent-controlled apartment for well under market price, that would be a good deal. And yes, if I buy a poorly-designed money pit to live in, that could be a bad deal.

But in almost all cases, I would prefer to own the place where I live. The biggest reason to rent is, "I cannot afford to buy", which seems like a reasonable way to restate your framing of subscriptions as a pricing-vs-value proposition.

So, would it be reasonable to conclude that allowing people to buy software like Photoshop or MS Word (or removing add-on subscriptions from paid products) would result in most people being priced out of the market? Could the recent rise in subscription models be seen as a form of software shrinkflation?

I mean, yes, if I negatively value subscriptions, that's a pricing thing, and you can overcome it by choosing a ridiculous example that vastly overcompensates for how much I negatively value subscriptions.

But I still negatively value subscriptions.

I strongly prefer purchases as well*, but it’s still a matter of price vs value. Nearly everyone who today prefers subscriptions and nearly everyone who today prefers perpetual purchases can be flipped based on nothing but changing the price.

For the right price, I’ll give away all of our (totally paid off and perfectly usable) cars and lease cars forever.

* at the currently offered prices for both, of course.

I would point out Adobe's Creative Suite which was a few thousand dollars in the day. I think many people couldn't find that much money in one place but more people can afford $65 a month. That $65 a month is starting to add up, it will be a lot more over the course of ten years, but with the subscription you always have the latest version.

Their $10/month subscription for Lightroom, Photoshop, behance and an online portfolio is actually a good deal. Covers a photographer’s needs very well.

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