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Comment by tiffanyh | Hacker News Reader

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tiffanyh

I don't disagree with what you saying, but ...

People seem to forget what the cost of a perpetual license use to be.

Licenses would easily equate to 3-years (36-months) or more, of what a monthly subscription would cost.

Case in point:

$439, you can buy a perpetual license of Microsoft Office

$7/mo, you can get the same functionality + hosting + storage as a monthly subscription

It'd take over 5-years to breakeven.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/p/office-profe...

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/buy/compare-al...

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There has to be a reason all these companies love SaaS vs yearly upgrades and I think it’s because “subscriptions” get forgotten or ignored or “it’s not worth worrying about”.

Having predictable revenue is a huge reason.

As opposed to super lumpy revenue due to bursts of revenue coming in after a new version release.

There's also a lot of business risk because if you have a new version people don't like, they don't have to upgrade and now you don't get that burst of revenue your company needs to stay afloat.

EDIT: also, perpetual licenses create the wrong incentives. We've all complained about software bloat before. With a perpetual license, you only get paid on upgrades ... creating a situation where the software vendor jams in more (unneeded) functionality in order to justify creating a new version release.

The first can be solved with “pay over time” setups (which can be relatively easy to setup even if it’s just internal accounting, or you can literally buy appropriate bonds on the open market).

I suspect the second is a bigger driver; companies don’t like people not choking down whatever idiotic change they’ve made in the latest version because it makes whichever exec pushed it look bad. With subscriptions you usually HAVE to keep updating.

Also, just the fact that it is easier to soak a person a little at at time ($7 per month) rather than hit them with a big price all at once ($495).

Yup, I wouldn't mind subscriptions so much if it was a simple "one and done, keep it going if you want" deal. Ask me for $10 per month, not $10 a month, with auto-renewal enabled, impossible to turn off or difficult to find the button due to a million toxic UI patterns trying to trick me into giving up, and 2 or 3 pathetic "pwease don't go!" prompts once I do.

If I buy a month, and never renew, it means I'm done using it or I didn't find it valuable. Don't send me emails reminding me, don't notify me. I'll find out when I open the thing up again and see my sub is gone. If I want it back, I'll buy another month.

The value in a sub for the end user is that I don't have to sign my soul away for a program I'll use once or twice a year. But the common pattern tries to hide that away and fool me out of money. Frankly, it's offensive and gross, hence, fuck subscriptions.

All subscriptions should be the way Apple's store handles them; you can subscribe to Disney+ today, immediately cancel, and have access for the remainder of your subscription time. Then you don't have to remember it, and if you DO find you want it when you go to access it after your subscription is over, you can easily resubscribe.

Usage based pricing?

It sounds like you want usage based pricing where for example, you pay $X for each day you use the tool and then get billed at the end of the month accordingly.

Similar in concept to how AWS bills for most of it's services.

I took it as “let me pay for this month, and if I need it next month I’ll pay then”.

it’s because it’s easier for the customer to decide to buy, i think obviously

It also saves a ton of $ and resources supporting older versions.

It's less about the number on the end of the invoice, it is more about the personal control of my finances, and _even more_ about the ability to keep on using a version without risking an update breaking stuff because. Sometimes it's perfectly good to not upgrade. Why should I then pay for a version I may not like, a version which may break the workflow I set up and worked great in the previous major release?

Subscription: access the hosted MS Word with a browser installed on a device.

Perpetual: instal MS Word on the device.

“hosting” may supports subscription tech needs but doesn’t affect my experience asside from a new point of failure.

Storage is nice but I already have my HDD, USB key, Google Drive and it’s works great. I understand MS has interests to make me store my stuff in their cloud. I don’t. Bonus point: you own your data in addition to the soft (not with g-drive of course)

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