On the other hand, a one time fee for analytics I could deploy on my server a) makes financial sense for you and b) is an intriguing value proposition for me.
Have a look at https://once.com/
I do like this model, but there are some challenges:
* With one-time the initial payment is higher ($299 one-time vs $29/mo), many people don't think too much before paying $29, but think a lot more before paying $299.
* Only paying once still doesn't cover the support expenses or future development. In my case, I went with pay-once use forever, but with paid updates after the first year. Also, the way I do the updates payment is different (you can pay any time to get 3, 12 or 24 more months of support/updates). With this model, the customer only pays what they want, and me as a developer, I'm incentivized to keep releasing updates.
* Self-hosting is also more niche than a service, especially if your product is not aimed directly at technical people. With my product, a lot of marketers could use it, but many of them don't even know what self-hosting is. That being said, for a small business, the available market of people who know how to self-host is large enough.
I do hope more companies/products switch to this self-hosted model, it's better for privacy, ownership, avoiding data centralization, etc.
But I have thought about making it self-hosted too. But there already is so many great products for that out there.
I wish there was a perfect way to do this. I despise subscriptions, I dislike pay as you go becasue it's too complicated, and finally, a one-time fee dosent really work when sold as a service as you said. But I guess these are the options for people not willing to self-host.
If you got any interesting reads on this topic please send em my way.
...from the company behind Basecamp and Hey.com, both subscriptions.