37signals Introduces "Once" - Buy software one time

Man, talk about a ship that has sailed. I was 100% anti-subscription pricing for a very long time. Eventually I realized, it's better for the software vendor and the customer. Final Cut Pro used to cost $999 upfront, now a teenager can use Final Cut on their iPad for $7/month, and subscribe only when they need it.

My favourite licensing models for self-hosted software are perpetual fallback licenses. Jetbrains does this well and their description of it is:

   A perpetual fallback license is a license that allows you to use a specific version of software without an active subscription for it. The license also includes all bugfix updates, more specifically in X.Y.Z version all Z releases are included.

> We’ll be launching the first product late 2023, with more coming in 2024.

Looks like this is an announcement of an announcement. Those are off topic on HN.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

Sounds good, but I mean, it's just pros and cons with the SaaS model, or with the pay-once...

Before SaaS there used to be a massive pool of native apps, doing all kinds of different things... You indeed paid your license and lived with the product until the next major version, but there was little chance to just use something for a month or two, so the prices were higher.

With SaaS you do end up renting stuff all over the place, and never owning anything, but the prices are more affordable... Think about an AutoCAD license, that shit is privative for a hobbyist... With SaaS you can in fact afford something to begin with.

I’m 40 years old and generally hate subscriptions for desktop software. Local tools that work offline should be “ownable” in the licensed sense.

When I built my indie app “Label LIVE” it was designed to work offline and be paid for ONCE. After a few years there was enough user demand for a less expensive subscription-based license. Today, about 20% of customers purchase the subscription and the rest buy one-time licenses.

Why would someone buy the subscription? Here are some good reasons: 1) seasonal need, 2) monthly price is small enough for company credit card without manager approval, 3) extend the 14 day trial without larger commitment, 4) can’t afford one time license due to cash flow.

Another unintended benefit to me (as a solo developer) is the inexpensive monthly license lowers the demand for pirating and cracking. That’s a nice plus, because it makes the app accessible to all.

Pretty vague announcement, I find it hard to believe 37 signals will stray too far from the SaaS cash cow they arguably helped to create with basecamp..

I’ve fully flipped the bozo bit on 37Signals. They just keep smelling their own farts. Their attitude is incredibly off putting and while it’s been many years since I last used their software I found it lackluster.

Subscriptions are preferable for 90% of the software I use. I’d rather pay a lower upfront cost and be able to cancel whenever I want. If it’s for business I rarely want to self-host at my scale and I self-host a ton of little things locally (open source). If I’m already paying I’d rather have someone else maintain it for me.

> Add up your SaaS subscriptions last year. You should own that shit by now.

I know a lot of companies are adopting a more irreverent marketing approach, using words that 20 years ago would have been bleeped out.

The swear word itself does not offend me. But to me its use here suggests a lack of restraint, and that makes me form a negative opinion about how the business is managed, especially when the words are coming straight from the CEO.

Purchasing the domain Once.com alone was likely a large investment, and so I would expect this announcement to be more polished. Yet this copy reads more like a blogger's grumpy manifesto.

Typical of 37Signals: self-importance presented as courage.

"IT departments are hungry to run their own IT again." Really, are they now? I can't imagine anything scarier: an organization that is ostensibly shy to spend on Big Tech's cloud bills, somehow also has the bandwidth and resources to support and maintain someone else's software.

This is just silly. Is there a way to personalize HN's algorithm to hide marketing ploys?

Let's go back to wax cylinders, horses & buggies, and the old crank phone while we're at it!

Jokes aside: What kind of new features and tangible improvements are coming?

I get that "owning" a piece of software can have tangible value; but it depends on the purpose of the software and how it's used. I don't see a sudden revolution where all companies decide they want to run their own email servers and and host their own copies of Office 365. Instead, there needs to be use cases where the old-style purchase model and host-it-yourself model makes sense.

And these use cases are...?

> In the early 2000s, we were among the early pioneers leading the industry into the SaaS revolution. Now, 20 years later, we intend to help lead the way out. The post–SaaS era is just around the corner.

Perhaps I am wrong but was SaaS really a revolution? Perhaps for us mortals but in enterprise wasn't a common model during the mainframe era?

I share this feeling that our industry is constantly rehashing the same concepts over and over...but kudos to people that can monetize on that.

They didn't actually launch anything though. And self-hosting is also a real pain. There can be reasons but I seriously doubt many IT departments yearn deeply for the on-premise deployment days of yore.

I realized recently that I used to buy iOS apps a lot, but then they started moving to a subscription model and I stopped buying them. It has been years since I last purchased an app on my phone. I am willing to pay once forever for an app, I am not willing to enter into an recurring payment model (whether monthly, yearly, or anything else).

The issue of subscription apps came up a lot in recent months on ATP [0] regarding Casey's new app Callsheet [1]. They've been arguing heavily FOR the use of subscriptions, and I came around to agreeing with them. The part that especially convinced me is that subscription revenue creates an incentive for the developer(s) to keep working on the app, in particular after the big wave of launch sales is gone. (You could argue that a lot of apps don't necessarily need new features, but I feel like especially on macOS and iOS, you want the app developers to check if their app still works properly on the new major releases, and issue fixes if something breaks.)

The very important thing is the cost of the subscription though. It needs to be reasonable. I'm fine with paying a subscription even for a small app as long as it's a low yearly price (like 5-10$). I feel like that's the bigger issue with subscription apps nowadays - the prices are often unreasonable considering the type of app, and they end up charging 3-6$ A MONTH for apps that should be at most 1-2$ a month.

[0]: https://atp.fm [1]: https://www.caseyliss.com/2023/8/7/callsheet

While IT depts might be keen to put the genie back in the bottle they may find their ‘clients’ are less keen on waiting months to years for their needs to be met. AWS sold as an insurgent into many organisations precisely because it meant you could stand up a service in minutes, not quarters.

Consumers often talk about one-time payments but balk at the prices that are required to have them while also being able to have the devs pay for their expenses. For example, look at this recent r/apple thread [0], the dev made the perpetual license 2.5x the annual license, which makes sense from a ARPU perspective, but people don't want to pay 70 dollars, even though tools like YouNeedABudget are more expensive.

The psychological impact of one-time purchases cannot be removed from the decision and that is also likely why SaaS is so enticing, the prices are much lower in the short term, but can be higher in the long term, just like getting a loan vs paying in full would be.

[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/168shog/after_almost...

> We give you the software, you get to host it.

People can't host their own software. The handful of people who can host software won't install security updates or deal with backups. It's a drag. It makes no sense for millions of people to individually manage servers and server updates when it can be done centrally for a fraction of the cost. That's why SaaS won, ultimately.

I don't believe for a second 37signals is going to make desktop apps that you just install to your machine. These will be dockerized web apps with many fragile dependencies. This is a step backwards, frankly. If you want to make buy-once-zero-maintenance software the client software should automatically join a fully distributed peer-to-peer network. The alternative is for 37signals to offer the digital service part at cost.

Do you only get updates once? Since they even have to provide updates forever for free, which is unstainable, or provide no updates and then your software is aging from day one, and eventually won't even run on modern infrastructure and now teams have a to hire people with more unknown costs to handle all that vs a set monthly fee, or they have to charge for occasional updates in which case it's essentially a self hosted subscription. So unless they have some how solved those problems, not sure of any future for this, other than for some enterprise that already buys once and rarely ever updates and is okay with those downsides for the sake of what they believe to be better security.

As the kind of person that loves running a home lab this really appeals to me. That said, there's a take away here that's easy to miss, imho, and that's that the pricing for a piece of software needs to make sense.

The real issue with SaaS is the blanket "$5/user/month" pricing scheme, if you ask me. If using your service means each call is some heavy GPU computation, fine, charge me that cost + profit margin / markup, ie: usage based billing.

If a consumer device can handily do all the processing for your software though, yeah just sell a perpetual licence of some kind, and charge for new major versions.

I'll give the 37signal guys the benefit of the doubt, but it's a difficult concept to talk about in the abstract.

Once the first product shifts, this might be a more meaningful discussion.

Will this software come with perpetual maintenance updates? For how long? Do I get any new features for free? If not, is it really pay "once"?

Software is never "done". Developers need to be actively involved throughout the lifecycle of a software product. Which, to me, makes this sort of model unsustainable. I'd rather know that software I rely on won't be abandoned once the base of new customers drys up. And I don't mind paying for that.

Since 37signals has been having challenges hosting SaaS and hiring for dev/ops roles, it naturally makes sense that they'd be looking to shift that operational burden to their customers :)

I'm being extra snarky. But I must admit that I've grown a lot more skeptical of this company in recent years.

Their marketing about their products as well as about their open-source components has too much bravado.

They can't just say that administering their own Kubernetes control planes and network stacks feels like more trouble than its worth for a smallish organization like their own -- they have to announce that the status quo is wrong and their new solution is right.

HTML-over-the-wire makes sense for some use-cases and not for others, but according to 37signals there are exactly zero situations where it makes sense to transport JSON or PB between a back-end and a front-end.

It's been a few years since I evaluated Basecamp for my employer — at the time, the functionality was fine, but limited compared to other options for project management on the market and included some very opinionated portions that couldn't be customized. Integrations and client apps were also more limited compared to other options. It was the same story back when they offered Highrise CRM. Nothing wrong with their software, but there's a reason that larger players are able to satisfy a wider range of customers for business productivity and project planning software.

I was excited to try Hey, and found it similarly opinionated and underwhelming in terms of actual functionality. Maybe this has changed in the meantime, but I didn't see enough movement in the product at the time to want to commit to using it personally.

And while others can interpret their leadership team's management decisions however they wish, what I saw was them needlessly alienating some key long-term staff members and contributors to their open-source components. What a waste of talent and good will.

All this to say that I don't doubt that some of 37signals's products and some of their open-source components are indeed useful and valuable to some folks and some use-cases. At the same time, their approach to self-promotion and marketing has just started to leave an off taste in my own mouth, making me skeptical of a substance-free announcement like this.

There's an implicit conflation between SaaS-only, desktop-only, and hybrid apps.

Although sometimes subscription-only or one-time costs appears to the user to be a Hobson's choice, the alternatives are not purchasing, pirating, and using alternatives.

Unfortunately, security updates, feature additions, and hosting servers and storage cost money. This is either baked into a perpetual license, an S&S contract, or into the subscription model.

The problem that needs to be solved cannot be solved by a regression in pricing models: the issue is the intent of publishers to act as rent-seeking, extreme profiteering by continually raising prices, pricing hobbyists and individuals out of the market because they only want to sell to large corporations who view high price as a signal of quality. Oracle, Microsoft, and Redhat are the best examples of these. OTOH, there are apps like Plex and Obsidian, and low-cost buffet app marketplace subscriptions like SetApp. For example, I refuse to subscribe to EA Play/Pro because it is heavily-marketed, expensive, lacks ownership, and selectively retains titles out-of-reach from outright purchase (perpetual licensing).

I wonder if they're going to offer Basecamp with this model, and if so, how much is that going to cost? I imagine it would have to be in the thousands.

So they’re announcing that they plan to announce software with old school licenses. I guess that’s neat, but why bother with the meta-announcement?

Buying software doesn't just cost money, it also has an opportunity cost. The software could become obsolete before you get the value you paid for. These days software advances rapidly so the opportunity cost is severe. When the (perceived) pace of advancement slows down, we should see a return to one-time purchases.

It's not just a matter of $x/month * y months > $z one time payment. It's actually that y is impossible to estimate so people prefer $x/month.

That's the rational buyers. Then there's the irrational. Some people get memed into paying $70 for a budget tracker app (lol) because "but you'll never have to pay a subscription!". Other people get memed into paying $5/mo because "it's the price of a coffee!". So I guess the opportunity cost argument is not even relevant so long as there's a market of grifting uninformed consumers with inflated prices and astronomic profit margins.

SaaS is an entirely appropriate, and often preferable model, but in the right context.

The context being that you want a service to be provided to you, with no infrastructure/support overhead, with regular updates, and you want the company providing it to be commercially viable so that the relationship can be ongoing and symbiotic.

And if you're a company buying software, rather than an individual, then all of the above becomes even more important.

I think people's growing aversion to monthly pricing is because it is becoming the default model regardless of the context or whether it's appropriate. And this is especially a problem for individual consumers.

Not everything should be a monthly subscription, but that's where we're heading, and that's where the pushback is.

So this announcement looks simultanesouly interesting, but also slightly odd to me, because I think the monthly subscription model is perfectly appropriate for something like, for example, Basecamp.

Prior to SaaS, we had software packages that weren't updated, and often became abandonware because companies could not afford to maintain the software without growing sales demand. It left us in a very insecure world with bugs that wouldn't go away.

Say what you will about recurring SaaS payments, but software is more secure and supported than ever before. SaaS companies don't go away like old box software companies did. When new platforms take over the old ones, they provide migration paths.

Yes, ONCE will give you the source, but what company is prepared to support another company's abandonware? This isn't a bad deal for software libraries, I've used libraries that became abandonware because the companies went under. I really though it would be good for companies to put their source in escrow and you get access to it in the event the company stops supporting you.

A model I would like to see is a variation of "buy once, and you own that software". Any and all fixes would be included. Extensions and features added on subsequent releases are also a "buy once" deal, and the price is calculated based on "distance" to what you own.

This incentivizes development of features a user might want, but also avoids the "lock in" and other predatory practices so many companies deliberately abuse.

Still possible to include other options such as SaaS models. Anyways, one can dream. Oh, wait, if I'm dreaming, societies by and large acknowledge the value of FOSS and fund this on a large scale. The cost of a small road bridge in a small country is enough to fund high level development of software used by the whole world for its whole lifetime.

I don't buy into this. I'd rather pay monthly, and have them charge monthly to all the users so they sustain in the long-term and not keep going out of business. I hated AppSumo LTD for this same reason.

I used to think the 37signals people were pretty smart. Then in one year they decide to abandon the cloud and recurring SaaS revenue. Am I just unable to see it or are they too high on their own supply?

> Installation and administration used to be hopelessly complicated, but self–hosting tech is simpler now and vastly improved. Plus, IT departments are hungry to run their own IT again, tired of being subservient to Big Tech’s reign clouds.

I must he living on another planet, because in my experience none of this is true. In fact the only “simple” sort of self hosting would be with a PaaS provider, which is of course back to paying a subscription.

To be honest I really dislike the live service model, but at least I’m not selling alternative facts.

Software and hardware move too fast now. Even if you buy it, there is no guarantee it runs properly in 4-6 years for whatever reason.

If Apple had LTS versions of their hardware and software that guaranteed backwards compatibility for 15 years that be great. But now they will drop or replace an API or function within 6 years that breaks your application—almost guaranteed.

I have spent thousands on apps and games that require VMs or other hacks, or simply no longer work at all. At least with a sub you can cancel when it gets shitty or no longer works.

I think the subscription model is fine. What's not fine is the cost of subscription software. With so much competition in the market the price should go down but unfortunately so far that has not been the case. We at neeto from get go are going for a low price. https://blog.neeto.com/p/neetocal-a-calendly-alternative-is

It seems they are launching their own products with once-off pricing. On seeing the title I had an image of a company that allowed you to purchase any service for a once-off payment. I am thinking something like, you pay an amount up front, that amount is used to purchase an annuity, the income from the annuity funds the ongoing subscription amount. Kind of like how pensions work. Once-off-pricing-as-a-service.

I am sorta surprised that the support of SaaS is so high. It seems that saas in consumer products is the cause of so many consumer issues. Few pieces of software really need that many updates, and being able to view the code is key for future support.

Yes this announcement seems to be focused on businesses, but the option to buy software is important for the price of renting software to be cheaper than just supporting it yourself.

My main problem with 37signals is that none of their products appeal to me. In theory, I've been in the target audience for all of them but their strange design choices often miss the mark entirely. But it's good people can make a living making niche things.

Also, I agree I don't understand the purpose of announcing a pricing model, but maybe they just needed something to put on their nice domain.

The Ruby on Rails stack may shine with this. Every cloud provider has hosting instructions. With the gem ecosystem, you can eliminate 3rd party SaaS dependencies that most startups rely on. That's why tools like Gitlab, Github Enterprise, etc. are so easy to self-host.

I'm most excited to buy Once software so that I can study the source code as an educational resource.

This reminds me of TailwindUI, but for SaaS.

The amount of money I have spent on subscriptions I have forgotten to cancel, or subscriptions I have misunderstood the agreement to(Adobe ahem) has to be in the few thousands or more...

This is of course my fault and I have learned to be very wary about what I sign up for, but it doesn't keep me from having an icky feeling of dark patterns that take advantage of psychological behavior.

Nobody should expect this announcement to be met with enthusiasm on HN. Many kids have been put through college on the back of SaaS dollars.

In the words of Dave Chapelle (who was quoting someone else) "Young man, don't ever come between a man and his meal."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D25pDcsg1MY

The headline makes it sound like a Gumroad clone (though Gumroad now has a memberships product). Should definitely be edited.

I mean sure I am happy buying stuff once and only pay one time. Like a car, house, pants.

With that kind of stuff I don’t expect updates and bug fixes, improved usability and the kind every week.

But when I’m am renting a house… I expect my landlord to care of it. These are the different deals I guess.

The reality is that most software isn't designed like a car is. Especially with most organizations using some iterative+incremental development approach.

As a result, the development of software nowadays doesn't really lend itself to one-time purchases.

If we’re just talking about standalone software, say OG native desktop photoshop for instance, then sure. However, any web based service is, by design, going to need to charge a subscription given the downstream hosting and infra costs.

Probably timed this announcement with a new book coming out on the topic

> "IT departments are hungry to run their own IT again." Tell me you don't understand IT departments without telling me you don't understand IT departments.

37Signals can't sell their standard subscription stuff to people that want to self host. Introducing: lots of hype for a docker business model.

Unless it's open source you're "Buying" a car with the hood welded shut.

Sounds like this will just be open source software repackaged and sold to enterprise

You really should only have to buy software once. It is quite dumb that we have to be subscribed to everything. This is what makes me use open source everything. Subscriptions are services and if I need a service to write documents FML.

They are going to show source code and charge for it?

Is this a tacit admission that MRSK has failed?

Only with our enemies can we make peace, I guess.

Worst motivational post I've ever seen. they'll probably find hundreds of thousands of idiots who'll pay for their crappy product.

So they didn’t introduce anything yet.

Ah, so that's why DHH is making noise about Typescript.

Uff, how much was that domain?!

Why a sudden change of heart?

While I love the idea for simple software services, it doesn't work to support the actual lifetime of the software, though it can work to an extent. Adobe would be a good example of offering a one-time payment. You get a lifetime for that version of the software. However, you'd have to upgrade/pay another fee to upgrade to the next version, perhaps for a reduced price, and this is likely to be many versions. The issue with this type of offering, is that Adobe would have to support those older versions -- for how long?

I had done some research on this topic... writing saas and thinking, "Wow, wouldn't it be a great cash grab to get that $1,000 for a lifetime for my product upfront? It saves money in my users' pockets and it gives me a large immediate sum." I mean, getting 100 people to sign up for a lifetime is $100,000 minus taxes upfront and sounds amazing. In fact, it would probably support the server hosting costs for quite some time. Until it runs out.

I even thought about offering a limited amount. It's especially a bonus for those who you consider investors of your platform. In other words, you are giving me so much money upfront to support this service. In exchange, I am giving you the rights to own whatever I do in the future, free of charge. However, most people "seeing" actual money hit their account every month is more motivation than that one-time payment.

So I had seen how StackCommerce handles this for their creators: you pay once for a limited supply of something. For example, an SEO platform that does scans of your website and suggests recommendations, you might pay $30 once and get 10 of those per month for a lifetime. Then what these companies would do is offer an upgrade or a trial period to try a subscription plan.

And this model can work. Again, the purpose of the one-time is really designed to at least get a user in and trying the service, feeling that they can "own" it. It makes the user feel good because they have something for a lifetime. It makes the creator feel good that someone actually paid for a "lifetime". However, this may be short-lived for several reasons.

You are taking a huge gamble.. for example, I might only need less than those 10 queries per month on my website, so they made their $30 and that's it. I use it but despite their "upgrade me" attempt, I don't care to upgrade. The other major issue is that if you get an interested buyer for your software, like someone who actually wants to own it, and sell it to others, then you now have to disclose that you have one-time paying lifetime users, which is now cutting into their costs and may depreciate your software for the buyer because they still have to support those customers. Of course, they can always say, "new ownership, we'll grandfather you in at this price... pay another... " or whatever, but that may not always work, and piss your customers off, so it has its complications.

The issue with the "pay once" model is that over time, it prevents the creator from having any real means to continue supporting the software and may even kill the motivation. We all have to work. Software is a part of life. Pay me to continue supporting my product, so I can keep providing it to you. So rather than offering a lifetime of the product, I offer a lifetime of reduced early bird subscriptions. I came to the conclusion that I'd rather give $200 off my service yearly than give it away for a lifetime. If I ever sold my software, there is still an attractive recurring. Once that person unsubscribes from the service and resubscribes, they lose their early bird, so the enticement to keep it at that price is to remain subscribed.

It's basically like letting someone live in your house because they paid you a bit more for rent upfront. It might seem great the first few months, but after a few months, maybe a year, maybe more, you'll likely come to regret this mistake.

They're realling upping their expensive domain name game with hey.com and once.com.

We helped pioneer keeping you on the hook perpetually for a solution! Now we've extracted maximum value out of that we're going to offer an ever wilder idea! One big fat payment for the same thing you've spent years paying and subscribing to.

Just one last attempt to extract every cent of good will out of a consumer before they truly cotton on.

At least, that's my sour angle of it. As much as I want this 'model' again.