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Comment by turnsout | Hacker News Reader

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.

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That pricing sounds fair. Unfortunately, I feel that's the exception. Adobe Dreamweaver CS6 was $400 [1]. Now Dreamweawer Creative Cloud is $250 per year [2]. So after 1.75 years, you've already taken a loss.

[1] https://prodesigntools.com/products/adobe-cs6-pricing-list.h...

[2] https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/plans.html

I think Adobe's pricing is ridiculous, but this is uncharitable:

1. CS6 came out in 2012. According to the BLS calculator, $400 in 2012 is $532 today: https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=400.00&year1=2...

2. You're cherry picking the worst one, do the math for CS6 After Effects at $999 (~$1.3k today) vs $21/month and you only break even after >5 years.

Still possible to use CS6 today, it still works on Windows. So you would have definitely saved money by now if you still used it.

What would be more interesting is to compare over 10 years for someone who buys upgrades (CS2->CS3->CS4 etc.) as they come out.

Additionally the individual Dreamweaver price is very high compared to "All Apps" plan at $660 per year.

> What would be more interesting is to compare over 10 years for someone who buys upgrades (CS2->CS3->CS4 etc.) as they come out.

but nobody does that, really.

most people i know skip entire versions of windows (eg: 7->10), let a lone individual software releases.

Heck, even pirates sometimes skip versions.

I remember installing and using pirated versions of Photoshop 6, and then Photoshop 7, and then Creative Suite 2.

I bought an academic license for Creative Suite 4 Master Collection.

Later I subscribed to Creative Cloud for a while. But I swore to not buy from Adobe again after that because that was actually a bad experience.

You just reminded me that Windows 8 was a thing, I had to check https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Windows#Version_hist... to remember it.

Which is why subscription software is better for everyone. Everyone is on the latest version.

Why does everyone have to be on the latest version?

They don't, It's just a better result for the users who get newer and better software, and a better result for the sellers who only have to support one version and get a consistent cash flow.

But what if it is newer and not better? Lightroom regularly breaks plugin compatibility, increases resource consumption and processing time, or simply stops working. If your workflow depends on software, that no longer works after a forced update, what are your options?

There are people running ancient MacOS versions, because that allows them to keep using professional firewire audio interfaces they have.

How would subscription model that breaks expensive hardware compatibility, breaks all your existing photo/video projects (aperture/final cut), or breaks compatibility with really expensive plugins needed for work be better for users?

Agreed, frequently "newer and better software" simply isn't and for something that you rely upon, such as audio processing software or image/film editing tools, cannot be left to the whims of tech companies who have proved themselves over and over again to be unworthy custodians of these important tools. It's better to get a hardware+software combination that works and then just use that forever without modifying it. It will always perform as well as it did on day one, it's only pesky updates that make computers slower.

You say that, but then stuff like OnePass and Dropbox decide to reneg their subscription services down-the-line or simply make their clients worse. A lot of the time, a subscription to a program gives the developer no incentive to iterate on what already exists.

And then you just drop them for a competitor. Since you have no sunk costs, you lose nothing by hopping to whatever the best option is other than a small amount of pain migrating, But for something like dropbox, there isn't that much lock in.

What competitor?

In most cases this is entirely unrealistic.

I've never heard of OnePass so I have no idea, but Dropbox is very easy to replace. I'm also not even sure how you'd expect a "pay once" model to work for cloud storage.

For cloud storage a subscription model makes perfect sense, since the entire point is that you're renting server space on an ongoing basis. What I don't want to do is have to rent simple machine code that should be executable by my processor perfectly fine without any third party involved. Why should I have to rent Photoshop if it runs perfectly fine without internet access? I'm not renting server space from Adobe. It costs them nothing for me to run the software. They just want to charge me on an ongoing basis for no good reason.

For a password manager KeePassXC is better than all proprietary offerings and it's free and plenty of implementations are available on all major platforms.

It’s been along time since Adobe was that cheap. (=

I don’t want to defend Adobe, but inflation is real.

And they used to have upgrades that cost less money.

I think this price is more or less what it used to be, the real advantages of that everyone’s just up-to-date all the time.

I can’t imagine trying to support software on like 20 different versions, that would’ve been insanity for the support team.

Keeping everyone on one version is probably the real cost savings money maker for Adobe here. =P

And for that $400 you got to run on one computer.

Office used to be $600 for one copy that could run on one operating system.

I can now get an Office 365 subscription for $99 a year for five users and I can use it on my Mac, a Windows PC, iPad, iPhone and all five users get 1TB of storage each

Plus the latest version of the software. I would still be using Office 2013 if I had to pay what I paid for it to upgrade every release (multiplied by the half a dozen or so O365 licenses I'm currently using.)

Office is also just cheaper, it's 1/4 the price for the lifetime license than it used to be. The family offering is still the best deal I've seen to get it though. Not all subscriptions allow multiple users or even you to use it at the same time on multiple devices though, Office is just pushing that sale.

That's not a fair comparison. Final Cut Pro's price on macOS has been $299.99 since 2011, and Apple sells a "Pro Apps Bundle for Education" available to everyone that includes Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, and other macOS apps for $199.99 (https://www.apple.com/us-edu/shop/product/BMGE2Z/A/pro-apps-...).

I'm sure a lot of users would appreciate a one-time payment option for Final Cut Pro or Logic Pro on the iPad, including teenagers who have some money saved up.

Especially consider the need to update your software for NLE is highly selective. H.264 and H.265 were used over the years for LongGOP, while ProRes and DNxHD/DNxHR were all supported a long time ago. There are no reasons to update unless you need latest blackmagic RAW or ProRes RAW, which are well beyond normal consumer realm. AV1 may be a new thing, but that's it.

There are no continuous vital features updates like being able to read newer camera RAW files for ACR. I find a one-time payment much more suitable for FCP.

With LPX and anything remotely in music production area the subscription just seems dumb. Omnisphere, Komplete, FL Studio, Cubase, Pro Tools, Ableton Live were all in the realm for decades, and while subscription did became a thing (especially for very expensive samples like Hollywood, Spitfire, etc.) features in a DAW are sufficient for a long life cycle in production, and mandating a subscription for "keeping latest" just seems odd.

Exactly.

If you used to need to use software for a weeklong project, you'd have to pirate it because there was no way to justify the cost.

Now you just sign up for a month and then cancel.

It's a huge improvement in flexibility and paying for what you use. Not to mention the software is always updated, so you don't need to worry about whether your image editor you purchased 7 years ago supports the RAW format of the camera that came out 2 years ago.

> Now you just sign up for a month and then cancel.

Or you sign up and then Adobe does everything in its power to stop you from cancelling, including lying to your face: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10930079 (https://web.archive.org/web/20170324161306/http://www.geek.c...). Just because subscriptions can work out well doesn't mean they don't get abused by companies.

I mean, that's one customer service rep who was being difficult (not necessarily representative of Adobe policy at all), and the user was trying to cancel a yearly subscription on the 365th day when it was already being charged for autorenewal that day.

That's not even remotely representative of someone who signs up for a monthly subscription and then cancels it before the month is up. But yes, obviously you have to put it in your calendar to remember to cancel it. It's not that hard.

There are complaints all over the internet about this, it's not particularly isolated.

There are complaints about everything all over the internet.

In my experience, I've never once had a problem cancelling SaaS. There will always be bad actors out there, and maybe Adobe has been one, and maybe they still are, but on the whole I haven't found SaaS to be any worse than anything else.

And it's not really where the economic incentives lie -- someone who is cancelling is someone who is likely to sign up again in the future, so it's generally not in a business's best interests to piss them off.

> It's a huge improvement in flexibility and paying for what you use. Not to mention the software is always updated, so you don't need to worry about whether your image editor you purchased 7 years ago supports the RAW format of the camera that came out 2 years ago.

I see this the other way. I don't want to be forced to upgrade. If you add valuable features, I'll pay for them. Otherwise, I'm happy to stick with what I have. Oftentimes the upgrades come with a new UX to learn, are slower, and remove functionality I relied on all to add new stuff I have no need for.

I think JetBrains hits an interesting middle ground. I can run whatever version of the IDE I want (as far as I can tell) but pay to have access to the full suite.

I'm not a huge fan of subscriptions but like the way JetBrains handled a few things:

- if you're subscribed for 12 months, you get a perpetual license for the version at the start of that period (unfortunately not the end, but better than most subscriptions)

- fairly significant discounts for second and third+ years.

- they had a price increase either 2022 that was in line or below inflation, which they announced it clearly three months in advance -- no "beware of the leopard" -- and gave users an opportunity to prepurchase three years at the old rates in advance.

I was apprehensive about the JetBrains one at first, but they sold me on having the perpetual license. It may have even just been a mental block. I was paying almost annually to upgrade IntelliJ IDEA (and sometimes RubyMine) as it was. The package that includes all of the IDEs was more than what I was paying just for IDEA, but cheaper than paying for upgrades on two products. I've dutifully subscribed since and enjoy access to all of the IDEs.

I may never use the perpetual license, but it made me feel better about the whole thing. I don't have to worry about what happens if my fortunes change and I can't afford one year. Or, I don't have to worry about vendor lock-in and a huge price increase. I don't want to invest time into a tool when the future of it is uncertain or where I could be cut off on a whim. This is a rare situation where I think everyone wins.

If it's an option – good. If it's the only option – not so much.

per seat (5 seat bundle) (annual pricing)

(contact sales for pricing)

The problem is when it adds up: you pay for FCP, for Adobe, for Office, for Figma, for X... at the end, you are paying 200 dollars per month in software (without counting Netflix, Spotify, hosting, etc).

This is true of buy-once software too. You used to pay a significantly higher cost for FCP, Adobe, Office, etc......

And you would still be forced to upgrade every 2-3 years once people started to send you incompatible files!

15 years ago most teenagers i knew had the full office suite, photoshop and most other softwares for free. I'm not gonna tell you how, but it's easy to imagine.

Guess what, those people wouldn't have paid for a license anyway, so no real license money is lost.

More importantly, it needs to be said that if you got an older computer you could just use an older version of the software, no problem. Now you can't do that anymore. You not only have to pay the 7$/month, you also need to buy a new ipad every once in a while.

I'm still anti subscription. I do pay for software (paid 150 euros out of my personal pocket last year for a SecureCRT license and i love it).

But the whole subscription thing is just BS.

Its always been an open question to me in the case of Adobe if rampant piracy in the 2000s helped rather than hinder them. If these teenagers went on to work in industry, they already knew the adobe suite inside out and likely ended up advocating the software and buying licenses in the workplace... As you probably rightly state, almost none of the folks pirating the software would have converted to real sales anyway.

> Its always been an open question to me in the case of Adobe if rampant piracy in the 2000s helped rather than hinder them.

it's not an open question, there are studies about how piracy helps industries (it was about media, it was financed by the EU, but when they got the results they didn't like it so they didn't advertised it much).

if not for product advocacy, consider product training: training is expensive and takes time, and most teenagers would do that themselves for free on your product. so if you're a company and pick a product that's heavily pirated, chances are some random applicant already knows the product.

how do you think microsoft office got so widespread ?

> paid 150 euros out of my personal pocket last year for a SecureCRT license and i love it

I'm curious what makes SecureCRT better than PuTTY or even Windows Terminal enough to be worth paying for - am I missing out on some amazing experience, or does it have certain amazing features others lack, or...?

i like the fact that i can have a list of session at mouse reach. i like that i can do stuff like have sessions with different color schemes, or sessions that run a command on startup.

i like the fact that it's scriptable. at my previous job i had a python script (that i could recall from a button within securecrt) that would enumerate stuff off consul and create/update sessions on the fly, with all the necessary hoops in place (eg: setting a jump host).

i have to say, i also have some nostalgia of my first job where we used securecrt heavily (or maybe i'm just nostalgic about being 24 years old? i don't know...).

I, for one, am very grateful for Adobe's shitty subscription model, as it has allowed companies like Serif to launch fantastic products with perpetual licenses.

Who to my dismay (though not surprise) have now also gone SaaS :(

EDIT: I think I've misunderstood the V2 Universal License. Looks like it means I get access to all version 2 apps from Affinity.

Sure, as long as Adobe doesn't arbitrarily decide to permanently ban your account and no longer accept your money. Also, speaking of ships that have sailed, you could just as easily check out Final Cut Pro or Adobe subscriptions from some libraries for no additional fee.

Meanwhile, my mother uses photoshop and illustrator, she can't afford the ever increasing price of subscription services. She's in her 70's.

It a distraught for her to think of losing access to her creatively outlet if she was to unable to afford the current subscription model.

Subscriptions should be followed up with a perpetual license. She's just glad she forked out on CS2 when it was DVD based.

What I like are the models that are subscription for update.

Have you ever looked at Affinity (https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/)? I bought their universal license a year or so ago and would definitely recommend it over Adobe for anybody who doesn't necessarily need to use Adobe, it's a lifetime license and the product is pretty comparable to Photoshop/Illustrator for whatever a hobbyist could need. I would strongly recommend giving them a look if you haven't already.

Thanks for the recommendation, I've not.

Although as lovely as it would be. Sadly me knowing my mother she'd tell me its wonderful, use it once and go back to her old ways and keep telling me otherwise.

She has her system of plugging in her digital camera, scanner for her prints and then work for hours.

When windows 11 decided to update itself on her machine, it really threw her in to a spin. Luckily she was within the Ten Day "don't like" uninstall limit. That was my latest fiasco.

Just be aware: the workflow is entirely different for someone with a lot of Photoshop or Illustrator muscle memory. I couldn't figure out how to do a lot of stuff without googling (and then frequently still).

It’s a no brainer, the vendor gets paid for the continued work they do and the user pays over time as long as they get value out of the product.

However, For some apps it makes sense to have it as a one time payment - things like offline games or utilities the solve a problem and don’t need continuous updates.

Other than that, subscriptions are the way to go because software is a service more than a final product.

But that's not how the subscription pricing goes. Final Cut Pro X was $299, not $999 so it's not even a good example.

One the other end of the spectrum are all the mobile apps that start as a $2.99 one time purchase, add a bunch of features, and say "Actually it'll be $11.99/year forever thanks."

When every app starts to do that it adds up fast.

It was $999 for many years, but has been $299 for over a decade now. But $299 might as well be $2999 for many people.

That particular case feels better because the original price you mention was incredibly high, not because the model is better for the customer. Especially when more than 1 application does that.

I have an iOS app that I love and rely upon, but it’s effectively abandonware because the developer didn’t charge enough. I too am pro-subscription: take my money, please.

Yes! I developed a paid (upfront) iOS app and had to abandon it because there was no way to fund further development.

Until you look at Intuit, you used to be able to buy their accounting software and have the critical records for your business. Now their accounting software requires an internet connection and a subscription and puts your critical records behind a paywall and gives them access to your data for whatever purpose they want. And they keep ratcheting up the price and putting more and more features behind higher tier subscriptions.

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