[mightykan]

Why do I need to create an account with an email and password to purchase this if it’s not a subscription service? To add insult to injury, I have to agree to some Terms of Service that probably indemnifies this company from doing whatever they want with my data. Who comes up with these brilliant ideas?

The Mac App Store is absolutely horrible (lots of bugs, slow, inconsistent, almost unusable, absurd certificate expiration issues that are completely embarrassing for a company like Apple, etc.) and Apple has completely ignored all developers who use it... but this is exactly why I always prefer buying from it. I don’t want some nobody developer harvesting my information, and selling/renting it off to some who knows who either now or some years down the line when the company folds.

Please have respect for your potential paying customers and drop these kinds of practices. Other than recovering a potentially lost license key, there is absolutely nothing I need from you, including any and all “news or updates”, after I have purchased the app. Therefore you should only really need some unique value (like the hash of an email address) for that.

[brennebeck]

Honest question: what apps that you purchase don't ask for your name or email?

[mightykan]

Asking for email, and sometimes name, is fine. Forcing me to register is absurd. There are lots of “indy” software developers that don’t play these games.

[brennebeck]

Fair point. I wasn't aware you had to register a full account to start a trial. That definitely seems a bit much and I don't see the usefulness as getting the user's email would be just as effective for conversion.

[mittsh]

While we ask to create an account at purchase time, it's never needed for trials. Also, to work with Paw for Teams and share projects, an account is required as it obviously needs an authentication scheme for access control… -Micha from Paw

[Sanddancer]

Asking for an email is one thing. The problem is needing to create an account for downloading. I certainly didn't need an account when I bought a license for Eagle.