Admiral PatrickFTC study finds 'dark patterns' used by a majority of subscription apps and websites | TechCrunch
dmtalonThere are a few pieces of software I use (regularly) that would continue to get money from me if they followed the old model of paying for major versions. (pay for v1, get v 1.1-1.9) with v2 being the next “big” update that you’d have to pay an upgrade fee (smaller than a new purchase) to continue on the train.
But they switched to subscription model, and lost me as an “active” customer.
YNAB is the big one I use at least weekly, sometimes daily. I am on YNAB4 until it will no longer function because I’m not paying them a monthly fee to use that product. I would have GLADLY paid for major updates/changes even if it equaled the subscription in the end. But each of those purchases would be a decision I made on whether the change had enough value for me.
Subscriptions all them to not strive for large enough improvements to warrant a version update / upgrade fee. They just run along with little or not useful changes (IMHO).
I can highly recommend you to try Actual Budget to replace YNAB, it has come a long away and has bank sync and a very usable mobile (progressive web) app now
Actual is now open-source and 100% free. New signups are currently disabled until we figure out a plan for a potential hosted option. Go to the repo to learn more. You can self-host it and modify it however you want. See the blog post.
Looks sick. I’ve been using Tiller, and it’s honestly the last major thing holding me to Google Docs. If it’s FOSS and syncs w/ banks, I’ll self-host it and be happy. If it works, I’ll happily send the amount I paid for Tiller to the team.
Edit: Bank account linking seems to be “coming soon”. That’s a critical feature for me, since I have a bunch of accounts and a huge part of the value is pulling all of that in for me. I’ll play with it anyway, but I really need that feature (and I’m happy to pay a service like Plaid for access).
Edit2: Looks like it’s implemented, but it’s essentially EU-only. I’d really like them to support Plaid or something.