[virgilp]

The counter-argument to that is that pay-per-use discourages usage: "every time you use it, you pay" encourages you to be mindful about how much you use. You may not binge entire series on Netflix if you have to pay for each episode. You may justify a Photoshop subscription so that you have a powerful tool ready whenever you need it, but maybe you would think twice about making a meme if you had to pay for it (with money not just time).

I think it really depends on usecase. For something like e-signature, I can totally see how "pay per signature" makes sense - you wouldn't sign less documents to save a buck! On the contrary, you'd be comfortable keeping a contract knowing you only pay what you use, if you don't sign documents in a month, you pay nothing. So here probably a "subscription" model is a much harder sell.

[jacobr1]

Also there is a difference at a firm level and an individual user. If I have a company where this is used all the time (real-estate agency, law firm, etc) I might want the all-you-can-eat subscription model and not worry about usage. In fact, I might buy extras like white-label branding.

But for personal use or occasional use, yeah, being limited to subscription plans really sucks.

[krmmalik]

I agree. It is dependent on use-case but the majority of startups backed by VC choose the SaaS pricing model by default.

I do agree that in the case of something like Netflix a monthly subscription is a good idea, but there are many instances where pay as you go can work so much better.