Just Pay the Subscription
uncommonapps.nyc
uncommonapps.nyc
- Get the user hooked into their ecosystem
- Slowly make the service worse / more expensive / different over time
- The user is paying for a subscription which feels like an investment, so they put up with more crap than they would otherwise.
Trust me. If you have a subscription for something, and you like it, it will change under your feet. It will get worse, and in effect, it will be taken from you.
I'm not paying for the subscriptions. If everyone moves towards subscriptions, I'll move into a shack in the woods. I don't care. I don't want your subscriptions. If you think subscriptions are a good idea I don't want to hear from you, and I wish you had no say in how anything was built.
[edit]
If the counter-point is that mobile apps will suffer, then good. I don't like or any want any mobile apps whatsoever.
If it were a one-time purchase, wouldn't that encourage the service provider to make it worse over time because they've already taken your money?
> If it were a one-time purchase, wouldn't that encourage the service provider to make it worse over time because they've already taken your money?
Couldn't it encourage the provider to make it better because their revenue comes from new customers?
> if the service gets worse, simply cancel your subscription.
There's plenty of examples of subscriptions that are nearly impossible to cancel, or have a giant fee for cancelling early. Adobe, Comcast, siriusxm spring to mind. Anecdotally, streaming services are partly funded by people who subscribe for a particular film/tv show and just never cancel.
Another issue is they tend to get more unnoticed as time goes on and little additional fees start creating in.
Just avoid subscriptions when possible has served me well
It's not backwards. I've canceled many subscriptions because software has gotten worse. I occasionally check back in with those services to see if they've gotten better, or at least back to as good as they used to be and they are always, inevitably, worse.
I'd love to hear about a subscription that gets better over time but I haven't had that experience. I've also heard how product managers talk about subscribed users and I don't like being thought of that way by the businesses I give money to.
I might hike this coming weekend. Note to self: reinstate AllTrails subscription.
etc.
"But the subscription is so low!"
We're being nickeled and dimed into poverty.
> If you have a subscription for something, and you like it, it will change under your feet. It will get worse, and in effect, it will be taken from you.
Then I can move on and find something else. If I really think I can't, then it's probably providing me with something I find valuable enough to keep. That idea has its limits (again, I don't disagree that subscription services can be predatory) but it's certainly true sometimes.
>If the counter-point is that mobile apps will suffer, then good. I don't like or any want any mobile apps whatsoever.
Right. And if you don't like or want magazines, you shouldn't subscribe to magazines. But there's no reason to think that because you personally do not like magazines, no one else should like them and no one else can find value in them.
"Some" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Subscriptions are structurally designed to extract payment for non-use. the whole point of the model is to be predatory.
You pre-pay for some allotment of resources but get nothing back for unused resources. And the main profit comes from the gap between what you paid for and the actual usage. And that's just in the best case scenario there the company is not running at a loss just to squeeze you later even harder. The entire model only works if people throw their money into the void.
If a provider genuinely wanted to cover the costs my usage imposes on them, they would bill me for usage. That's the honest version: you used X, here's the bill for X. Instead, subscriptions deliberately decouple what I pay from what I consume, and they always decouple it in the vendor's favor, never mine. I never (well i think Kagi[0] actually is different, one outlier) get a refund for the month I didn't watch anything or the API calls I didn't make.
[0]: https://getlago.substack.com/p/why-kagi-launched-no-use-no-p...
I dunno. This just doesn't quite compute to me as some universal principle.
I paid $30 for a year of Strong (an iOS fitness app), for example. What do you see as the "allotment of resources" there? They're delivering maintenance upgrades and feature releases periodically that I'll use any time I log a workout; the app runs on a phone that I own; the data is presumably sitting on a server of theirs, so it needs to be ready for whenever I want to use it.
I've logged ~40 workouts so far, so let's hope I stay consistent and end up with 80 for the year. That's ~38 cents per workout.
I just don't feel ripped off here, especially since I moved off of a fitness app that I liked less and cost $50/year, the price has stayed the same over four years while improving steadily, and I'm not aware of anything that does what I want for a better price. I'm not sure I'd even want some kind of metering system; psychologically I don't like the idea that I'd have to spend a second thinking about if I want to pay more to log more workouts.
A fitness tracker is exactly the sort of software I would expect to pay once for. It doesn't need some compute-heavy backend. It shouldn't need any backend at all. The entire application is window dressing for a SQLite database.
A pen and notebook do not provide a database of exercises with video instructions; they don't organize/aggregate my data to show records, chart progress over time, and do the 1RM math for me. They don't track my heart rate (via my watch, which live syncs to my phone when desired) and report health data to a service where I like to see it all aggregated. They don't run timers and they don't operate on a platform that can play music, which means they must be an extra thing I carry around and keep track of.
If you think a pen and notebook are the best solution for how you want to track workouts...great! And if you think you could match those features for a lesser cost, post it up and hopefully I'll find it! What I have is certainly not an essential good; one can definitely lift without it. But it provides services that I find worth the cost.
This is a highly suboptimal solution to a problem that doesn't have to exist. If the application as it exists meets my needs, but an update makes it worse, I should be able to keep using the good one.
If I just buy the application rather than license it, it won't change unless I choose for it to by buying the next version. That is ideal.
There are a number of reasons why I avoid software subscriptions, but this is one of the biggest ones.
I have a couple of apps that I bought in the early days of the App Store that I can no longer use because I didn't think it worthwhile to keep an old iPod Touch running iOS 6 or whatever. I think my Adobe CS license stopped being viable...can't remember actually, if it was the switch to 64-bit or the switch off of Intel that killed it for good.
All of these things can be true, all without a subscription.
Not having revenue certainly makes it impossible to sustain a business to work on a service, without some other kind of monetization path, like ads, or data harvesting and sale.
> I believe subscriptions for mobile apps are the best thing that has ever happened for both indie developers and iPhone users.
The article isn't extolling the virtue of paying for a utility!
At least when I pay monthly rent my stuff (and usually me) are actually in the unit the whole time.
Software is, unfortunately, a living thing and when not actively maintain bit-rots and becomes unusable.
"I don't need a receipt for the donut, I'll just give you some money, you give me the donut. End of transaction. We don't need to bring ink and paper into this."
1. bug fixes and updates
2. Services to work in the "cloud"
I can manage my own documents cloud.
Affinity got my money for years for not having a subscription strategy. (And for their apps being pretty badass.)
Subscriptions have gotten ridiculous, but with the way we've come to expect frequent updates the pay-once model isn't sustainable for many products.
Additionally, shipped software used to not need too many updates most of the time, because the expectation was that the thing you bought was the thing, and any updates would be to address major defects in the product. Now, most software is delivered in "MVP" form where it doesn't even have all the features most users would want, and they get slowly dripped in over time, or they don't, and you never get the thing you originally wanted from the software at all.
Overall I think this has been mainly a loss for consumers. Security is better, and that's a real win, but frequently updated software is usually lower quality software, because it can be.
It's not. Software subscriptions are a relatively new thing. For a long time before this madness came around, software companies made money hand-over-fist by just selling software in the normal way.
> Why is software development any different?
I think it's a combination of price-sensitivity and desire for internet-connected features. For example, MS Office 2010 Home was $150 in 2010 (which is ~$230 today due to inflation) and it looks like you can buy subscription-less MS Office 2024 Home for $180. But despite the price coming down in real terms, many people opt for the Microsoft 365 subscription for ~$10/month.
"Wouldn't it be nice if the water heater comes with hundreds of sensors monitoring each part and emit metrics? You can diagnose with historical data and see what was working and at what time which part showed anomaly". As a person doing SRE in my day job, this was what I had in my mind at the time.
I am not saying that I want spyware in all the appliances in my house. But if I am an appliance manufacturer, I would always want the capability to manage appliances just like how software engineers managing software lifecycles.
It's the primary way most SW can work. Pre-subscription, you needed to make SW that was so much in demand that it could survive piracy. Once the worry about piracy went away, a lot more SW became commercially viable.
Even Sid Meier said in his memoir that while he hates subscription, the one time they released something on a subscription based the profits were significantly more than selling his games (but he went back to one time pricing on principle).
But I really don't see a reason to pay for a subscription for the app I probably don't use that often. If it's impossible to use the app without signing up for a trial, I'll normally set a reminder to cancel it a day before its expiration.
I would much prefer if all services offered an option to buy only one period rather than always requiring manual deactivation - but I also understand they make a lot of money from people paying for things they aren't using.
But in all other cases, or even many of the ones where it is 'necessary', the presence of a subscription is a red flag for predatory pricing. Minor ongoing work or maintenance really doesn't cost as much as the author thinks it does. Keeping the lights on and updating API calls can be covered by new sales of permanent licenses as long as the app continues to sell. But if they had to go with a subscription, the real per-user cost would probably be measured in cents per month. Maybe add a bit more for their profit margin and charge a nice $1/mo. Do you see that anywhere except the rare app by a small developer that doesn't want to price gouge? No, all software businesses want at LEAST $5/10 a month because they've run the numbers and figured out all the tricks to human psychology, and they know they can trick someone into spending 'just $5' without them internalizing that the company is charging them a ridiculous $50-100 per user per year for even the most trivial service, leaving with almost pure profit. This is why investors love anything with a subscription service.
The author just inflates the prices and adds zeros to numbers to make permanent purchasing seem dead in the water, ignoring that we had multiple decades of software development before the advent of subscription services, where those prices were reserved for big professional suites and not your everyday app or a minor service. It's not that expensive, companies charging insane prices has just shifted your perception of what's going on behind the curtain. We even had one-time purchase mobile apps briefly, and they weren't doing it for charity either. Video games that don't require external services are still overwhelmingly priced for a single purchase, and somehow they're making bank despite also having to release updates and bugfixes.
Except he's forgetting that before subscriptions, most consumer SW cost $10-50 with a certain timeframe for support. Not every app is Photoshop, you know.
And stuff like music players? Free!
I think the real problem is the ecosystem keeps changing. The need to ensure there is an update after upgrading Android broke the app.
Of course, if there is a cloud component, that's a different story because there are recurring costs to hosting a server. Or maybe a user uses the service enough to justify the subscription (e.g. Apple Music subscription vs paying per song on iTunes or how Claude Code and Codex are actual subscriptions that are extremely worth it for the user).
On Android the solution is side loading if you have the APK. But on iPhone, unless you have the source code or IPA, you're stuck
Why shouldn't it?
Why does my calculator app need a subscription? Why does it need constant updates?
There's no reason the ownership model shouldn't exist for apps. There's also no reason why all apps should need constant development.
OK, if you're running something with a cloud component, I might not get all the functionality. But if you decide that you don't want be in the app business any more, I still want to use what I paid for.
I learned Photoshop well enough back in the day to do cool stuff and make a few bucks on the side doing graphic design. I'm not a professional graphic designer at all so it never made sense for me to get on the version treadmill. Even today it does everything I need and more.
Adobe got paid for the work they did. I've gotten incredible value out of my purchase since I've used it so long and the cost has amortized over decades.
Subscriptions imply change. I don't necessarily want change. If I buy something that suits my needs...it already suits my needs. Adding more shit isn't necessarily a boon. Changing the behavior or look with a new update is infuriating. This is especially true of complex software that takes time to learn.
For a developer selling a subscription the strategy of locking up data is entirely rational. They'll keep getting money no matter what they do because they're holding my data hostage. It's a model I have no interest in.
Even better is when they decide to shut down or get bought out. If the subscription shuts down there's no amount of money I can pay to get it back.
The way to get around that is either continually releasing feature upgrades with one-time payments, or paying for access to the software only while you need that access.
Both models have strengths, one is not inherently evil and the other inherently good.
It's easy to say app updates should be bundled into the one-time cost but even that needs to have a time bound on it. When software lasted 3 years that potentially made sense, but now the release velocity is so much higher that there would be an explosion in complexity to try to keep up with all "one-time" releases going back for years.
Even completely Free software packages struggle with the balance with how far back to claim prior releases are under maintenance (e.g. LTS is popular, but so are 'rolling releases'). That's because of the underlying economic complexity with the costs to maintain what has gone before vs. the cost to develop what will come next.
Yeah, that's a big problem I have with modern technology. It's true that there are classes of applications which need constant updates and backend infrastructure. However, there is a huge category of applications which don't need those constant updates and are perfectly functional without constant updates.
For example, a large number of games from the 90s and 00s are still fun to play, you can still play them with friends over the internet by directly connecting. The developers don't need to invest into those games, they are done. They might have bugs, but that doesn't really matter. In fact, constant updates is something that I don't even really desire.
The problem with the subscription model is that it's quite expensive and the entire reason it exists is to try and get users who forget about that subscription (and it encourages businesses to make canceling the subscriptions as hard as possible). It's the gym membership model.
The other problem with the subscription model is that it needlessly kills off software when either the developer loses interest or goes bankrupt.
Despite their recent news, I do prefer the way Mullvad has done it re this: "Here's an id. If you make a payment, it funds that id.". Then you can use the id to login. They can still enforce limits like # of users, etc, but it still enables you to have an account where you can be sure the company isn't going to ignore your unsubscribe settings, send you upsells, and then leak your phone # in some db breach.
Something Apple could do is allow iOS to handle some of this stuff automatically. Establish a sort of “small app subscription” account. Keep track of which apps had been opened every month, only pay the subscriptions for the ones I’ve opened, and allow me to set monthly limits. It could also offer feedback to the app developers, “X% of your users didn’t use the app this month,” etc.
That turns app icons into land-mines though.
Idk what the happy medium is, but there's gotta be something between "buy this kids game once" and "pay $13 a month until he gets sick of it," and I don't think we've quite found one that's equitable for all parties yet.
A difficulty is that making the billing time more granular could reduce the landmine factor, but also would incentivize developers to keep users in the app for longer than necessary. We’ve already seen in social media that that incentive is… quite bad.
I guess it remains to be figured out. I dunno, maybe my framing is wrong, maybe development bounties are a better ongoing revenue stream or something.
But I do pine for the days when I could buy all the software I needed in a box like any other product and use it for decades with no updates or UI changes whatsoever. It's not the fault of independent app developers that I don't live in that world anymore.
Except in practice, that’s rarely the case. The systemic incentives in society have perverted the subscription into little more than rent extraction rather than genuine support. Products see arbitrary “updates” all the time just to justify someone’s promotion or some executive’s whims rather than actual customer feedback or needs. Hiding software behind layers of infrastructure to justify largesse instead of transparency around how it actually works and providing options for those who would rather retain some degree of ownership even at the expense of building the infra themselves.
The entire present-day model for 99% of corps out there isn’t subscriptions-as-support, it’s subscriptions-at-gunpoint. Companies like Panic or Capture One are the exception to the norm, making it clear what the fees actually do and don’t just funnel them up and out to external shareholders.
I am all for supporting developers, content creators, and everyone else involved in technology. I’m just beyond done with forced migrations to new UI/UX or arbitrary monetary extraction schemes for technology that frustrates me rather than helps return time back to me.
Second all the arguments against subscription software also apply against essentially every AI service everywhere.
We see the same pattern over and over again: (1) subscription service starts and operates at a loss, (2) people recognise this and sign-up, (3) the service gradually enshittifies to the point where there is no real value propisition, (4) company banks on having enough customers from 1 and 2 that enough people will put up with 3 that they can remain profitable.
How does this align with my interests?
I subscribe to a couple of apps (OnX, Strong) and some news sites (Tangle, local sports site); as far as I know none of them started on 1, and 3 hasn't happened yet for any of them. They all provide services that I think are valuable, at a fair price - a price that, as far as I can recall, hasn't changed for any of them in the 4-6 years I've been a subscriber.
OnX appears to be heatmaps as a service for outdoor recreation. They have to cover their opex costs.
These are not the subscriptions people have in mind when they say they hate the subscription model. People dislike obvious rent-seeking behavior; they really dislike it when there is no technical reason something can't be sold to them in a one-time transaction; and they hate it when a product that was offered as a permanent one-time purchase is then only available as a subscription service.
About the only argument for it having a subscription of any sort is the devs have to cover the BS from apple/google (mostly google) who don't believe in backwards compatibility.
It's far down the list as to why I decided to subscribe, but I do like the idea that if I lose my phone, my data won't be lost forever.
>This is exactly the sort of app that should have a single $10 purchase.
If you cloned the app and offered it as a one-time $10 charge, I'd be interested in that for sure!
> So why is there a subscription?
Recently they pushed out some updates that made the Watch experience a lot better. If you were the developer, would you have delivered that to $10 one-time purchasers for free, or would you have charged for a major version bump that had the feature?
You can pay for backup services with both google and apple. There's really no reason that data should be lost forever assuming the app stores data using that service. $7 a month gives you the ability to backup 1000s of apps worth of data.
> Recently they pushed out some updates that made the Watch experience a lot better. If you were the developer, would you have delivered that to $10 one-time purchasers for free, or would you have charged for a major version bump that had the feature?
This is a tricky thing. Sort of depends on where sales are currently at. I somewhat view this as the software not being complete before it was sold.
It'd be up to the dev if they wanted to run a new rev of pull out some good will to hopefully sell more apps. I'd assume you wouldn't make a new major version just for better watch integration. But then, there is the case of EA sports whose entire business model is releasing the same game with only roster and game player updates.
I could, but I don't because (for more broad reasons beyond of this particular app) I don't want my data storage to dictate what software and hardware I use.
And yeah, thoughtful reply to the other point. There are a few options, each with their pros and cons. I was a happy customer before the Watch integration was good, and it's nice to see genuinely new stuff land on an update. That's the perk of the subscription model, especially when I'm getting more for the same price. Which...well, we all rightly get mad when we get the same or less for a higher price!
I mean, I guess in the sense that any software that stores data is in competition with a spreadsheet? It's in competition with pencil and paper too. And if those things work for you, great!
The app runs on my watch, which tracks my heart rate through the workout and ultimately passes data to Apple's Health stuff. It syncs the workout to my phone so I can more easily input data. It keeps a database of exercises with video instructions (WAY better than trying to run down stuff via search or YouTube), keeps track of my history and records per-exercise, as well as doing one-rep max calculations. It has built in timers and a bunch of little conveniences that make it easy to log weighted exercises.
If you don't see value in that, that's fine, but it's hardly a grift, especially when the cost is just $2.50 a month.
>These are not the subscriptions people have in mind when they say they hate the subscription model.
Right. This why I replied saying that I think you're overgeneralizing, and why I provided examples of subscriptions that are eminently reasonable and in the spirit of the post we're commenting on ("talented individuals work hard on making great software like craftsmen, and they just get paid for it." - though I'll admit I don't know the size of the team that make Strong, they're certainly not Adobe-sized).
- Users cannot open their old projects unless they pay the subscription.
- Lower uptake in general, which affects viral adoption ("my friends use this software, so will I"). This is important if you rely on word-of-mouth instead of ad spend.
- Need to keep shipping features to justify the subscription cost. There is less focus on stability/maintenance.
In my mind this is missing the point. I am very pro-upgrade pricing because upgrade pricing actually forces the developer to think about what their users actually will pay for, or what improvements will make my workflow better, instead of just adding whatever fancy side-quest thing that you've decided I need today.
If users are asking for shiny new features and are willing to pay for them then fine. If we want refinements and are willing to pay for them then fine. If you want to optionally provide backend storage or backups or whatever then fine.
However, if my continued use of a specific version of your software has no continued cost to you, then be absolutely assured that I do not feel a moral obligation to keep on paying for it endlessly, nor should you assume that I do.
That's just it, it does carry a cost, at the least for security updates and allowing the application to continue to be installed on later OSe or key libraries.
That's why even open-source libraries that in actively being used will get forked if unmaintained too long, because there's always something to do to keep bitrot at bay.
It's far too common for me to download something ive never used before and for it to ask me to cough up 10 dollars a month. Thats what I pay for netflix or youtube or whatever, things I use for hours each week!
I suppose theyre trying to target some mythical user that checks the sun position every morning and evening obsessively or some nonsense, as though their strategy should be to capture the entirety of the value a top 1% poweruser gets from their software. No! it's expected that a top 1% poweruser will get a lot of value, if you design your monetization for them, they'll be humming and hawing and comparison shopping, and nobody else will ever even entertain the idea of paying. And then you'll get half of 1% of your addressable market.
But of course, the entire reason it really exists is to profit off people who forget about the subscription. This is clear to see when looking into the financials of it, or the number of people paying for things they havent used in a year. This also affects incentives!
Finally, the neccasary structure around the apps means for the most part, if a company goes bankrupt, decides its not worth mantaining, or plain gets bored, you lose access to the thing.
Just because a business model can be made around something, does not mean a business model needs to exist to sustain that thing
I am so burnt out of making accounts. verifying my email. entering 2fa. re-logging in. entering cc info. getting spammed with marketing email.
Not at all.
Users hate subscriptions, will therefore not subscribe to your product. I sure as shit won't (and I frankly don't know anyone else that will).
Users particularly hate subscriptions they don't use. How many of us have paid for an Adobe subscription, or an AllTrails subscription only to find months (years?) go by and you barely if ever used said app?
It creates a kind of anxiety: I am paying for apps with a subscription but not using them.
Folks pay for all sorts of subscriptions, nobody cares about ownership, but when my mom finds out she's been paying $0.99/mo for a "countdown timer" app she used a few times over a year ago she swears off paying for apps for good.
IMO, this whole 'article' has such a corporate bootlicky flavor to it. I pay for subscription (claude, gpt, netflix etc) since there are no real (pragmatic, convenience and financial) alternatives and it's not easy to rig a solution. otherwise the very fact that the only option is app subscription, i stay out of it on principle. even IDApro has perpetual license.
I guess there's less frustration about sunk cost with a subscriptions, but we're also used to so many dark UX patterns that any subscription seems sinister. And I really hate all the apps mandating a trial you have to cancel to avoid getting charged, just to try a damn app.
And lately, we've also seen AI companies demonstrating how fluid a subscription "plan" really is, with features coming and going, and the way credits are counted and spent being unreliable.
If the UX got streamlined, I'd probably feel better about it. Maybe the problem isn't a lack of money, but that all our trust has been spent at this point.
I thought the idea was, software is created with an open source and open license to it - so people know what the software is, and are able to make copies of it freely, and so that becomes hard to monetize.
If you are trying to sell software and make it proprietary with closed source, it's not software you can trust (could contain literally any insecure code) so you avoid it and it would lack people using it (not saying this happens in practice, but I thought was the open source argument).
Hence you're saying, just create / pay for insecure proprietary closed source software that can't be shared and isn't intended to be shared.
The subscription model lends itself towards abuses: namely, you can use something temporarily, then lose access. The open source vision was about creating software that can be freely re-used indefinitely without a required subscription and shared without as much of restrictions.
So I think basically people object to this increased limitation of "indefinite reuses" which you can get with open source software that you "own", and maybe the proprietary closed source tendencies of these locked down subscriptions.
Now granted, some of the newer "spaces" we operate in may look a little differently, with lots of things needing or desiring constant updates and we recognize we only have so much time so a question comes up if we even want or need "indefinite reuse" or to even have open source software or to understand how the software works.
But, there might not even be disagreement here... if you just "donate" to an open source nonprofit project, that could still be framed as a "subscription". I think it's maybe not conventionally how we're referring to subscriptions, but I think I could see your case for reframing the subscription towards being something "good" or "ok".
There are open source monetization strategies, but if code tends towards being less able to be monetized, how can software projects be funded? I think in this "post-intellectual property" open source scenario I'm suggesting at, the funding might shift in other directions (maybe like from selling hardware or tangible physical goods).
But anyway, I guess we would just probably distinguish between "unwanted" and "desired" subscription practices: limited locked down subs versus unlimited maybe subscription-less or limited open source subs.
At least these were some thoughts this essay was generating in me.
REALLY?
Yes ... yes it is.
I mean is there any doubt at all what companies will use this software for? (and of course, zero attention given to the fact that robocalling is illegal in most places. For good reason. Using this software is a crime. Which means scummy salespeople and scammers are the only ones going to use it)
First: this is obviously a robocalling application. It's probably illegal in half the world. And being against ads, but helping companies with robocalling ... that's not a very consistent attitude.
But I don't work on it I was just giving examples. And I'm not against ads, I just don't think they should be the only way to make money on the internet.
Unless you mean people are forgetting to use the maximum amount every month, or forgetting to cancel?
Someone should tell the vibe coders because the vast majority posted here seem to include poorly considered subscription plans.