Subscriptions are significantly better for a company. They result in a steady income and a predictable growth curve. It's so much easier to plan the upcoming years if you can predict the income.
While we all focus on the latest news, the leaders of those companies already planned their next 10 steps ahead, even taking into account our sentiment towards them. Remember that they aim to maximize profits at all times.
It happened or happens in B2B, car sales, music, film, in games, and drawing apps... Everywhere you see, really. And it's so convenient if there is already a scapegoat like Adobe, which transitioned to subscriptions for the same reason.
And yes, I hate it. Even though it's easier to swallow 10 bucks a month, eventually you will spend more. They know it and we know it. All we can do as customers is to not support those companies, but this only goes so far. And what are we to do, if most offerings are subscription based?
I feel like they could have a sustainable model if they had a more expensive one-time purchase and every few years released a new major version that required a one-time purchase again. If you bought the old version you can continue to use it, but it's no longer officially supported nor will it receive any future updates.
I wish there was an option for this with e.g. Photoshop. I want to have PS because it's occasionally handy or fun for photoshopping my friends as a joke, but I don't need it for anything that makes me money so I can't justify paying. But if I had a slightly outdated version I could purchase once, I'd be find not getting all the latest updates.
> I feel like they could have a sustainable model if they had a more expensive one-time purchase and every few years released a new major version that required a one-time purchase again.
And people complain about this also. If everyone is going to complain anyway, they might as well go to subscription which is best for the business.
Do they? It's not super common, but I can think of the JetBrains IDEs that I believe let you continue to use the last version of the IDE before you stopped paying. Alfred, the Spotlight alternative for Mac does something like that, and you get a discount code if you own the last version.
Inkscape is quite good actually. But GIMP is lightyears away from ever being in the same league. We need an open source Photoshop and Publisher program.
I have a few subscriptions and most are annually paid. I consider that as a one time payment with updates free for the year. But what I don’t like is when the price don’t match the value, my data taken hostage, and updates that break my workflow (and “AI” features activated without my knowing). I got rid of anything like this in my personal computing space.
I appreciate that, but it doesn’t deal with the reality that subscriptions are several times more expensive than buying up-front.
I can buy Affinity Designer for $50 and use it for 5 years. That’s less than a dollar a month. If they move to a subscription, I bet it’s going to be more than a dollar a month.
If it was really just about regular reoccurring revenue, we would see more $1 monthly subscriptions and fewer $5/month subscriptions.
