Hacker News Reader

Comment by artdigital | Hacker News Reader

I’m with the parent on this. I don’t mind subscriptions if a service is provided that justifies the recurring cost. If it’s a local offline app then I don’t see it justified. Price it accordingly or at least give an option for one-time.

But yes, sub vs non-sub model is a very divisive topic. Personally would never subscribe to something like a offline local todo list

View on HN

One way of looking at is that subscription software helps align developer interests with dedicated users. It's easier to retain users than it is to get new users, so developers are incentivized to build features/make improvements for existing users to keep them as happy users. In a pay once upfront model developers are essentially only incentivized to build features that attract new users.

“Still not selling the imprint of my anus? Here’s another five bucks!”

i.e.

It’s sad I can’t use Google’s task manager (both because it sucks, and I can’t trust it),

but that’s life.

The issue I see is that for certain apps, such as one I am currently working on and hope to publish soon on iOS, is that they do require a lot of maintenance once published even if there were no server costs. Given the amount of work I already put in it and how much more will be necessary even just to keep the app correctly running in the future, I don't really see what other monetization approach would make sense for me. Actually, I would even argue that selling an app without a subscription might (sometimes) be setting wrong or blurry expectations: if a user accepts to pay today a single time, how long are they expecting updates for? Will it only be basic bug fixes or also major new features? With a subscription, I feel like at least if they are unhappy with my app, they won't really have lost anything and can just unsubscribe, since they had basically accepted, IMO, that the money they put in my app each period of time is only for the service and potential updates in that small period of time and not future changes.

This used to be handled by selling full-version upgrades and providing patches between versions for free.

A one time cost is fine if you don’t mind the app breaking next time Apple updates iOS. There is an ongoing cost to ensuring the app continues to work.

Why would it break next time Apple updates iOS? Will the developer not want new sales on that updated iOS ?

The maintenance effort required on iOS is substantial. About a quarter of your full-time year needs to be dedicated to it.

On desktop, you can just publish your software and slowly see it age as you work on your next big release. On iOS, it ages every year at brutal pace, and your new sales will plummet while you work on your next big release, meaning your revenue crashes much faster.

Even worse, the iOS App Store has no notion of paid upgrades, and publishing a new app is basically like starting from scratch as far as discoverability goes. So when you finally have your next big release ready, it's like launching a completely new company.

Apple really wants developers to make subscription apps that ship frequent iterative changes, and other business models just simply don't work well on their mobile platform (on Android it's even worse btw).

I have a fully offline app and I offer the users two options (in addition of using a "basic" version for free)

- monthly subscription

- or pay one time fee of ~ 6-month subscription and own it forever

To be honest, in this case the subscription is cheaper for the average user, because most cancel in under six months.

So it's ok to pay for machines but for the humans working on something then no?

I’m not paying for the human that made the app. I’m paying for the app, aka for an advertised thing with an advertised feature set for a specific price. If I deem the value I get for the price worth it, I will purchase the thing from you.

I will however not pay you monthly just because “the dev needs to eat too” if there is no service provided that justifies the monthly ongoing cost.

there are a lot of apps that do this though… eg. git tower. Sketch. Etc. Not saying that I like it or anything. Maybe its the combination of local first + an app that seems to be trivial (I am sure it was not but if you hear "daily planner" I think its reasonable to assume that its less complex than a git client and/or an app like Sketch).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com