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Comment by Otek | Hacker News Reader

I know people hate Subscriptions but honestly I quite like them. I can pay for one month usually not very high price to use software when I need it. Problem is to be solved by developers, they should give more often option to buy lifetime license, or allow you to use software for lifetime after you payed for 1 year of subscription (without updates). It’s just not profitable enough I believe. Maybe we will have appropriate laws in the future - that’s the solution I would like to see

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Subscriptions just becomes unmanageable when you have to many. I do like your example of some software where you just need it for a month, but I don't think that should be a subscriptions then. That should just be paying for one or two months upfront.

The issue that I have with subscriptions is, as I said, they become unmanageable and they are frequently dishonest, betting on you to forget to cancel them. You do a one year subscription for something, forget to cancel in time, and now you're stuck paying for two years.

Both SaaS and many other type of subscriptions really need to drop the recurring part and just let you "rent" the product. That seems more honest to me.

I just use single-use card whenever I don’t use AppStore for subscription. That way they won’t charge me again and if I end up using and liking the software I will remember to change card or provide another single use card

I don't mind subscriptions if they deliver consistent value and if I can cancel them easily when I want.

A lot of hatred of subscriptions comes from hard-to-cancel dark patterns that should be illegal.

Paying for one month every once in a while for software that would otherwise be very expensive is about the only benefit I can see for subscriptions. For instance, Apple seems to be moving Final Cut Pro to a subscription model, and a $5/mo subscription is pretty great if you just need to use it once or twice or very sporadically.

Subscriptions always feel a little scummy to me, due in part to the way they're often advertised. I think that "Only $5/mo!" followed by tiny print saying "Billed annually" should be illegal, because it's clearly deceptive advertising.

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