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Comment by PufferBuffer | Hacker News Reader

Paid upgrades are allright, but if they had a subscription model, that'd be even better. Imagine if you could just pay $5/month for Sparrow? If you live inside your email, that's $60/year well spent and for the developers it's a significant boost in $ generated.

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"Imagine if you could just pay $5/month for Sparrow?"

The word 'just' has no place here. If Sparrow cost $5/month I imagine that 99% of their customers would never have used it to begin with.

I wouldn't pay a subscription fee for desktop software I relied on. As a customer, I want to buy something and own it. If Sparrow had been under a subscription model and they killed off the product, we'd all actually totally lose access to the product we had been paying for rather than just having it go undeveloped in the future. Paid upgrades at semi-regular intervals give the developer money for work they've completed when they finish a new set of features.

The point is that under a subscription model these developers would be able to provide you with ongoing updates and quality service, w/out having to surrender to Google.

How many ongoing updates do you want from an email client? I don't know about you, but I want a pretty consistent experience when dealing with email; email is a chore more than a pleasure after all. And I don't exactly want to dish out $5/month for bug fixes. What is the value-add for the end user here?

> How many ongoing updates do you want from an email client?

Because of Spam? Perhaps indefinite. Because of new file types? New authentication schemes? New mobile platforms? New user interface technology? Perhaps indefinite.

Could offer a $5 license or $120 lifetime subscription.

Go figure. In certain B2B segments people pay for software billed PER DAY.

There is a chance that willingness might have something to do with using the software to trade millions of dollars in derivatives instead of using it to email friends and family.

Or in that case, monitor their subsea oil & gas project.

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