Pay once. Use forever. Find the best purchase alternatives to subscription

The fundamental problem is that in our fully networked era software cannot _not_ be maintained. Security issues are inevitable, cloud/sync/store systems require servers, upstream APIs, libraries & operating systems are constantly shifting and breaking things.

So OSS aside (which has its own complicated economics) someone needs an ongoing revenue stream for that work to happen. Whether it's through regular release of paid upgrades (and EOL of old ones) or a subscription model is these days less of a fundamental separation and more of a question of cadence.

Take a look at the much-vaunted Campfire from once.com - there's been zero new features since initial release and I'll bet the cost of a copy come Feb next year when it's a year old there'll be a 2.0 for another $300. How long after that will 1.0 be EOL'd? So are you really 'buying once' for $300 or paying $300 a year just with the auto-renew turned off?

I already made one-time payments (aka "lifetime") for two softwares/services. Was great until the providers went out of business. Before that they treated me not so well in support. But, what should I do, end the contract? Now I have the strict rule for myself not to use any kind of one-time payment options in this area (software/software based services) anymore. I'm just putting this down here to shed light on the possible downsides.

Edit: now I realize this is not written clear enough. This rule applies to software/software based services I intend to use regularly to solve a specific problem, like office, storage, etc.

Opened a website. Already got `Welcome to our website!` modal that block the content. Through the modal's overlay can see the banner `Your product could be here`.

Well, that is annoying. Thank you so much, I would rather use anything that is less intrusive.

I find my tolerance for subscription software is proportional to how often I use it. A tool I use daily as my core work, no problem - I want to support them to ensure they stick around. But occasional tools I’d prefer to buy upgrades only if there are new feature I care about.

I’m not a creative, so I’m not paying Adobe subscription (they’re icky in so many ways). But if I were I’d have no issue.

But there is a 3rd category - something like an editor I couldn’t bear if it was tied to a company to ensure it’s survival so that’s got to be open source - even though ironically I’m willing to pay more in that scenario.

Can I propose a compromise? How about a yearly subscription with opt-in renewal. If you stop paying, you don’t get updates (or locked out in case it’s a service - not standalone software).

We all hate subscriptions but at the same time lifetime ownership puts you in a shitty place from a business development perspective. If the product has room to improve within its scope, I want the updates, the maintenance, select new features. If you one-time price that, the business incentives call for acquiring more users, not to make their existing ones happy.

Oh nice, I also started a similar project about nine months ago - https://payonceapps.com/ It came from my personal experience, where I sold my app for a fair one-time price and decided to give similar-minded people some spotlight.

You know, in the before times, they actually had a single word for "pay once, use forever". They called it "ownership".

In case the author sees this: The email popup needs to go. I'd love to see your conversion on just that popup, its most likely zero.

Sorry, this distribution model worked in the 80s, 90s where it also originated from. Software was once installed on your desktop computer. No updates, no client/server model, just a black box without internet dependencies. I get the complaints that people wish back to a time where they purchased once the software but it doesn't work for SaaS, mobile phone apps or where i need to run a web server for the service. People easily forget about the hidden costs and why the software distribution model from ancient times doesn't cover the costs nowadays anymore.

Feature request: show platform (Windows, Mac, Android, etc).

Especially since products can be one time payment on some platforms and subscription based on others (e.g. final cut pro is listed as one time payment but the ipad version is subscription based).

For UXWizz (also mentioned on this site), it makes a lot of sense to have a one-time payment, because it's self-hosted.

For many products and services that require active services/cost from the developer to run, it's harder to be sustainable with one-time payments, but for a self-hosted product it makes a lot of sense. Think of how software licenses used to work, or how games still work and do very well.

Post-purchase subscriptions aren't necessarily bad, but the real death-knell is when they're combined with the profit motive. It hurts to realise that, no, your post-purchase subscription isn't paying for ongoing security updates; that it is the business model. It's why the subscription is $9.99 instead of $0.60, or whatever. The purchase price is just them double-dipping.

I'd add: Upnote (getupnote.com). It's a notes app with just enough features to be powerful (markdown level formatting, tags, spaces) but not too much. And a very quick/responsive app with background sync. It's comfortably replaced google docs for anything that doesn't need much styling, and works well offline.

(Not affiliated, just a happy user)

Idea: treat a subscription as a perpetuity (forever) or annuity (set time), and offer customers the choice of paying a regular cashflow or the present value of the perpetuity or annuity. You as developer need to smartly invest those larger payments to ensure you stay paid.

I love sites like this. I'm always looking for more apps that let me keep using them even if I stop paying for updates. Adding a $10 monthly subscription will stop me from using most products but I'll gladly pay $100+ for some quality software that I can keep

I'm not even a graphic designer and Pixelmator Pro has paid for itself many times over. I can't believe Mac users (outside professional graphic-design) would willingly pay Adobe.

I would love for every tech to be this way but sometimes, there are recurring costs (for good reasons) for whoever provides the product. In those cases, I think subscription makes sense

Thing is, I don’t believe in owning software forever anymore. Things loose their value too quickly: what would an Office suite from 2005 yield me now, other than the need to run an ancient VM to produce files nobody else could work with? Am I ever going to play the copy of Dungeon Siege again that I bought in ca. 2002? No. It looks unbearable today.

So using forever is off the table; which brings me back to regularly purchasing the new version. And if I agree to do that, I begrudgingly agree to the premise that I’d rather always have the current version than having to research whether the new creative suite actually contains Photoshop features I need.

Final Cut Pro > this should not be on the list. Versions require paying to upgrade and if you update macOS you end up having to pay for FCP.

If you can't decide which model to choose, go for open-source and contribute whatever you want.

Search returns server error

Yeah until the company decides to adopt a subscription model

the only thing you can rely on in terms of ownership is FOSS.