Anders BorumJun 20, 2024

Reading Mastodon and listening to podcasts it has become accepted truth that only subscription pricing makes software development sustainable. That having users pay once is irresponsible.

But the underlying fallacy is that every user should make you profit.

To be sustainable your users collectively need to pay you enough and with millions of future users it is very possible to just have income from new users.

You still want to cater to existing users. Their goodwill will bring in new users.

Show threadAndrea Grandi 🦕Jun 20, 2024
@palmin I thought your very specific model of "pay once, use forever, pay again to unlock new features" was working well for you. Isn't this the case anymore?
Show threadAnders Borum

@andreagrandi The model in Working Copy is working well and my other apps allow the user to either pick a subscription for short term usage or a lifetime purchase if they prefer this.

But the pendulum has swung so far towards subscriptions that users question if there will be long-term support for apps without subscriptions.

Jun 20, 2024 at 12:59pmIceCubesApp
Show threadKevin CJun 20, 2024
@palmin @andreagrandi On the other hand, I still keep seeing plenty of apps requiring subscriptions that have no long term support at all, and also lots with only very, very minimal updates. Working Copy still has the best model. I’ve paid for the new pro features almost every year since I started using it in 2015. Because your respect for users, I’ve gladly bought several of your other apps.