[alehul]

To play devil's advocate, part of the reason that this business model survives is because of how much better it is for the creator of the service.

Receiving a steady flow of income from those who use your product every month is a great proposition. Additionally, if you build a product useful to more people, your monthly income increases (it's recurring, as opposed to being cash-flow based).

On the user's side, the argument is twofold:

(1) there's increased competition. Economically, the switching cost is lower if you're paying each month— to make an analogy, it's easier to convince someone to lease a new car at the end of a lease than it is to convince someone to buy a new car when they have already bought a car. This allows a lot of new and impressive SaaS companies to grow like wildfire.

(2) there's more freedom of choice, because you're entering a relationship with a company only for a period in which it benefits you enough that you want to continue using it (and as mentioned above, there's ideally plenty of alternatives). This motivates companies to improve their offerings.

While it isn't perfect, I doubt amazing apps like Notion would exist if not for a subscription model. It just isn't worth it to make a perfect note-taking app otherwise.