lifetime payment vs. subscription
Something I’ve mentioned in my yes/nope page is that I won’t subscribe. This is a bit crass of course; that page is for things I generally don’t want to do and isn’t meant for explanation, exceptions and nuance. Of course there are services I subscribe to - I currently pay for Proton, Spotify and Apple Fitness.
One reason is, of course, that these services don’t offer lifetime payment. But in their cases, I understand how that’s not feasible - their services are heavily dependent on serving content via cloud and development of new content and improved features. The bandwidth needs to be paid for, artists, devs and fitness trainers need to be paid constantly.
But I try to limit what I subscribe to. Everyone has a maximum amount of subscriptions they’re willing to have at the same time and people need to prioritize. And the following might be a hot take, but hustle culture, inflation and the greed of bigger companies in my opinion made it a trend even for little projects to immediately go for SaaS when the product may not even need that. There seems to be pressure to always monetize, always build a stream of income, and hope to live off of even the smallest project and pad out your resume with it and how much it generates - and while I get it, I am not a fan. The way some projects go about it icks me. You can almost sense the jealousy that others have successful SaaS, and now they need it too, at all costs.
I think a lot more software products could be served as is, local copy, without frequent updates, thus limiting the time, resources and costs it needs. Limiting it to security updates or compatibility with new OS, for example. Not everything needs continued active development shuffling one button from one side to the other, and many projects could have lower costs if they optimized what services they use. I always see discussions about the horrible choices that are made in this regard, like paying for AWS when you would be fine with something cheaper.
There were subscription apps I had in the past where I felt like they had nothing left to really add or change about the app since it already served it’s purpose well, but they had to justify keeping up the subscription, so they came up with bullshit like changing the UI every month or shoehorning AI or cloud features into it. I don’t see why I should pay a subscription fee for an app or software that is bloated on purpose with expensive features and unneeded development it could easily do without just so the subscription price seems justified. Not everything needs to have online dependencies or ping to some web server or get reworked every other week. Maybe not every project is designed to be that project that enables you to live off of it and quit your job. Maybe I don’t wanna pay recurring fee just because of some investor that’s on your ass about profit.
Of course I want people to be paid for their work, but sometimes I get the impression that there is little understanding of who the users for your product are, what their budgets likely are, and what else they’re subscribing to. You’re likely not going to be the only subscription, and if you know your target group (for example artists), you can gauge what else they’re subscribing to (possibly expensive ass Adobe) on top of what the average user nowadays has (music, streaming etc.) and you should really think about if your product can compete with that.
Lifetime payment allows me to support someone without adding on top of my already existing subscriptions. I think many SaaS providers are scared of offering it, but they shouldn’t be. It’s not like everyone will just go lifetime and then it’s gonna dry up.
Lifetime payment is scary and off-putting for users for three main reasons: it’s a huge upfront cost for a service you might not yet know well or know yet how much you’ll use it, and you’ll have to have a lot of trust that the product won’t shut down within months to a year; plus, paying upfront makes it impossible to withdraw your business if you aren’t comfortable supporting the project anymore. And then in case of both lifetime payments I did in the past years, I wouldn’t even own the product!
This keeps many people from choosing that and opting for subscription instead - low cost, cancel any minute, less regret if you don’t end up using it as much or don’t like it, less money lost if it shuts down, no ownership disappointment. Many opt for it because they want to support the project with a steady stream of income, or because they have no interest in ownership or think “well, if I won’t own a copy with a lifetime payment, why even bother”. I genuinely don’t think offering lifetime will threaten the SaaS model. At least it gives a burst of income every now and then which is nicer for upcoming feature development instead of just relying on subscriptions that are priced low enough to mostly be for covering recurring costs. It may even help recoup the initial development cost before it went live quicker than without.
Probably the best of both worlds (but not possible for an online service) is paying an upfront price, getting updates for a set amount of time, then get “stuck” on that version until I upgrade again. It’s sadly not possible for mobile apps as far as I know, but at least with desktop software and some other solutions.
There is a type of product that I would consider switching my lifetime payment to subscription for if it helped protect and keep up the service because I love it so much. Bear Blog, for example.
Published 27 Sep, 2024, edited 6Â months, 2Â weeks ago