Comment by ttd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ttd | Hacker News Reader

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I have no affiliation with this product or company. I'm curious about the options here from a business perspective.

A business has continual costs, which at the minimum may just be the ability to support a single developer's adult life. This app is selling itself once per major version, which judging by some comments here is somewhat unappealing. Many people are justifiably sick of subscription payments. I am also assuming many people would not appreciate e.g. an ad-supported version of something like this app.

So, what does that leave in terms of realistic business options? Are there any examples out there of a software business that succeeds in supporting its own development while helping its customers feel like they are getting their money's worth?

You have to charge for upgrades. It's not reasonable to pay once and expect lifetime updates. Subscriptions are annoying, but if you want ongoing support of course you have to pay.

It can work if the updates are significant enough to warrant a new version.

I think selling by version is arguably the most ethical way to do it, maybe with a SaaS license option. I think the main thing is just be honest that that is what you are doing.

I think JetBrains model is best with thier IDE. You purchase, and get one year of updates, if you don't renew you get a perpetual license at whatever update level your update license ended at, and you can restart at anytime.

This avoids games about what is or is not a "new version" or shipping minor updates as versions or any of that nonsense, it's just updates generally.

This isn't true for JetBrains any more, and hasn't been for ~10 years. They run on what is essentially a pure subscription now, with the caveat that if you stop paying, you can continue to use a version of the software. However, it's not the version you're using at the end of your subscription period, it's the version from 1 year prior to that. So if you stop paying, you will probably have to downgrade. See: https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/207240845-What....

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