“The excellent Mac utility app TextExpander is moving to a subscription pricing model, and this is creating a dialogue about the justification for such a model,” Kirk McElhearn writes for Kirkville.
“From a one-off purchase of $35 – plus upgrades every couple of years, usually at about half that price – Smile Software has moved to a monthly subscription service that would cost $47.52 per year.,” McElhearn writes. “The company defends this pricing by explaining that they’ve moved the management of the software’s data to a web server, but for most individuals, this service is unnecessary.”
“This has raised the question of when software should be sold as a subscription,” McElhearn writes. “Developers may say that they don’t have to hold back features for a major upgrade, and can add new features at any time, since the subscription includes every upgrade to the apps. Consumers, however, see this recurring payment as often stifling innovation; once a company has guaranteed income, and users are locked into an app, they are unlikely to switch, and the developer has little incentive to improve their products.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We hate software subscriptions so much that we’ll actively look for alternatives that let you purchase an application outright. See our long-ago move from Photoshop to Pixelmator, for just one example.
