[mattjenner]

Dear innovative people: think of a better model.

1. Free = problematic with the lack of money

2. Freemium = looks good if the balance is right

3. Ads = Mostly works but the model is flawed and skewed

4. Subscription = Love/Hate currently trendy but too relied on

5. Pay-what-you-can = Fans provide the service for everyone

6. Premium only = Only what it's worth, when it's worth

7. Enterprise = S'ok because my company/org pays for it

8. Tokenised = S'ok because the next person pays for mine...

9. Charitable / foundation = Someone more wealthy pays

10. None of the above = For now somehow it works

There are probably 10 more models already, 10 more out there and 10 more coming soon. Get thinking, stop complaining.

[xg15]

How about good old "pay for it once, then own it"?

[isoprophlex]

Sorry, no, ridiculous idea. We've hired some MBA's and they say it'll be "milk your customers for that monthly recurring revenue", or bust.

/s

[neximo64]

If there's no support and no updates. Can't work with web apps unless there's a version restriction/time limit.

[ben174]

This. The software would get abandoned once they've cashed in on the bulk of people buying it. They can trickle in more sales over time, but that's not going to amount to nearly as much as the initial payload, and therefore the motivation to continue developing dwindles.

[marginalia_nu]

You can release new versions though. This is what a large chunk of the software industry has done up until recently. Photoshop has gone through a lot of version numbers through the years.

Although it does sort of put pressure on the developers to actually refine their product and continue to deliver tangible improvements. Nobody is going to pay for a UI that's been re-arranged a bit.

[tomnipotent]

Except a "new version" is arbitrary, and the decision to do so was made for financial reasons and not technical. Every new version of Photoshop had some percentage of people complaining "why can't this update just be a patch?".

[marginalia_nu]

Yeah sure, although upgrading was optional. My point is the incentive is on the developer to make it worth while to pay for an upgrade, they can't just phone it in.

[blep_]

Then stop making things web apps that don't need to be web apps. Wrap it in Electron, if you really must use that particular set of technologies.

[matwood]

This works as long as customers can't complain the app is broken when a new version of the OS comes out.

[chrisseaton]

How can you own an online service?

[withinboredom]

You own a license, instead of paying for a license in perpetuity.

[chrisseaton]

When the software requires continuous updates and a server component and storage and things, this doesn't make any sense.

[withinboredom]

There’s a ceiling, a point you can never pass, with a subscription model due to churn. There isn’t a ceiling with one-off purchases.

[tomnipotent]

Subscription's exchange a higher ceiling for a higher floor, which makes running a business much easier.

[paulryanrogers]

Isn't the one-off ceiling much the same: everyone who is interested has bought it, of at least tried it?

[rajamaka]

Seems to work for most video games

[paintman252]

Does it? The servers of average video game don't last very long

[chronotis]

Those same pay-once video games also sell season passes, MTX content, expansion packs, and in-game currency.

[dotancohen]

It's actually a fair question. The online service still has hosting and bandwidth to pay for at a minimum. Paying them once does not mean that they will be able to pay for hosting and bandwidth for the next twenty years that I expect to use the product.

For scale, I've been using VIM for almost thirty years. Twenty years is not an exaggerated number.

[drdec]

Graveyards manage to do this, i.e. sell once and provide maintenance for a long period afterwards.

It might make the software prohibitively expensive though.

[withinboredom]

4.5 people per second turn 18 years old. Surely you can convince at least one of those people to make a purchase every month?

[dotancohen]

One $10 - $50 sale per month won't pay for hosting and bandwidth. Not to mention developers' salaries, rent, insurance, electricity, equipment, and a few pence into my childrens' funds.

[shapefrog]

And how frequently would said license be renewed?

How about for maximum flexability we do a per user rolling monthly license.

[withinboredom]

Surprisingly, people figured this out a long time ago. When you create something substantially different from what the customer originally paid for, you sell it as something different.

[Brian_K_White]

Self hosting option.

[bagaswastu]

It goes into the premium category only

[chunkyguy]

And who pays for the maintenance and bug fixes?

Softwares can't sell like hardwares. When you buy a toaster for example, after the warranty expires you pay for every time you take it out for repairing. With softwares customers expect a life time of warranty, bug fixes and improvements.

[horsawlarway]

The customer pays when a feature they actually care about breaks, and they upgrade.

Sell it as is, or with a very short one year support window. Exactly like all sorts of companies used to profitably do until they realized they could extract more value for the same work with a subscription.

Rent-seeking in the most literal form...

[matwood]

Not sure why you're downvoted, but this is exactly what we saw early on with the app store. People paid 99c for an app, and then expected it to work with every new version of the OS and incorporate new OS features forevermore.

The stores also lack (and still do) an easy way to sell new versions, so here we are. Subscriptions.

[dzikimarian]

I will gladly pay for the new version, when they amount to something I care about. Most of them isn't worth it - I would rather accept some minor bugs.

Jetbrains has very good model in that regard. Hope they will not ruin it (new pricing for self hosted Spaces is bit concerning).

[XCSme]

The problem with software is that even though the program itself doesn't change, the OS and hardware that it runs on often changes and customers expect to be able to use the same app on new hardware too. This requires a continuous maintenance work from the developer side. So, it's often not only "minor bugs" but major bugs introduced by hardware or API changes.

[dzikimarian]

I am aware and I have zero issues with that. Honestly until app is connected to some evolving API, probably it will work for many years before OS upgrade makes it non-functional. Lots of software I used 20 years ago still runs ok.

[InvOfSmallC]

It would be nice, Intellij does something similar where you pay for one year of updates. If you stop paying it still works. But in general if it's an evolving product, I don't think you can avoid a rolling payment.

[AH4oFVbPT4f8]

How does that work when there is a vulnerability or updates that are required? How long does the company have to support the software?

[koolba]

If there’s backing services associated with it such as data storage then the duration of the asset and liability don’t jive.

[GekkePrutser]

No but then it's really a service.

The problem is that a lot of things that aren't a service are being rebranded "as a service" just to extract free revenue.

[shapefrog]

Would you like feature updates with that purchase?

[sethammons]

Usually, no. If the updates are worth it, I'd purchase the next version. I used Adobe Photoshop 5 for _years_. I wouldn't have paid for the CS version.

[xtracto]

>. Ads = Mostly works but the model is flawed and skewed

I would argue that it has been proved that this model doesn't work, because it unalgins incentivess between the developer and the user: the developer will look tho maximize revenue, catering to better paying ads and more clicks/interaction with them, while the User will try to get more usage from the main app.

I want applications that give me an EXE that I can use forever , even if the company disappears. And then the option to pay yearly or monthly for updates to said Exe (even as replacement EXEs) that give me more functionality, bugfuxes and secfixes .

[signaru]

Another idea: pausable subscription (like cancelling then re-subscribing, but without the hassle or stigma). I think I've seen a music plugin do this before. It's the idea of losing money to "idle time" that makes me allergic to subscriptions. You'd have to be a business that constantly uses the product for that to make sense.

The opposite effect is you are pressured to keep using the product and I feel my friends are losing valuable time because of their Netflix subscriptions.

Pay-per-use might also be a similar option, and I'm happy with many web services working this way.

[charcircuit]

Pausable subscriptions sounds hard to market. If netflix said that you need to pay $0.10 / hr people would be less comfortable with spending time on the platform. Every time they watch something they need to make a mental decision of if this episode is going to be worth paying $0.10 or if I should just browse TikTok for free.

[signaru]

It need not be per hour. You're right in pointing out the challenges of making it per hour. But that also should best be considered a metered model instead. And that could easily be annoying considering its too close to a show/movie run length.

I was thinking monthly as that is the usual billing interval. Minimum 1 month subscriptions, then pause the next month if you want to be busy for example. Maybe even weekly or 24 hours would do.

[mxander]

I am surprised that the model of one off payment plus subscription after is not more common. I am happy to pay for ongoing support and updates to latest OS plus whatever MODEST margin, but I don’t really want to pay for product development cycle of features I might not even want or need. Some apps are just good as they are, I don’t want to pay for constant reinvention of UI or gimmicky features that developers feel like they have to add to justify subscription.

I’d love to say pay for a feature set that I really like and pay a “lower” subscription for it for ever. Even if at some stage I am forced to upgrade because developers have too many versions that they need to maintain.

[webmobdev]

Let me add some more fuel to the debate - How can software-as-a-service be regulated in a way that it balances consumer rights and the rights of a business? Perhaps:

1. Every SaaS business should be compelled to offer both a subscription price and perpetual license at a fixed price.

2. The fixed price of a perpetual license should not be more than 10x or 20x (?) of the monthly subscription price.

3. If a user has opted for subscription payment, they should get a perpetual licence after they have paid a certain subscription amount over a period that is not more than 2x or 3x of the fixed price of the perpetual license.

4. SaaS businesses should not be allowed to hold users data hostage if the user decides to end the subscription. (This can be tricky if the data is in some proprietary format).

5. As much as possible, the SaaS should be able to run offline on a user's computer without needing to offload computing to servers.

Ofcourse, most of the above are practical only for software that you can actually run on your computer and don't require massive computing powers from data centers that some services may need. But then again, that's exactly the kind of software that don't need to be SaaS at all in the first place, as the article too points out.

[manigandham]

Regulation is the worst solution to any of this. Let the free market figure it out and you'll find enough competition if there really is enough demand.

[mschuster91]

The "free market" will always, always end up with large fish eating up the small fish and extracting rents once the competition is eliminated and the startup costs too high for startups to enter the market.

[hi_im_miles]

> The "free market" will always, always end up with large fish eating up the small fish

I still think this has much more to do with market interventions enabling 'artificially' large economies of scale. Infrastructure, police, subsidies/grants, IP protections--all played and continue to play a massive role in shaping markets today.

[manigandham]

The number of successful new companies contradicts that statement.

Regulation, on the other hand, does tend to lead to rent seeking behavior as incumbents use those laws to their advantage and forcibly block new companies.

It’s much easier to overcome high costs than bad laws.

[webmobdev]

> The number of successful new companies contradicts that statement.

And that's only because of current regulations and anti-competition laws. Turns out "free market" is only "free" when the giants are asked to behave and punished for bad behaviours.

[webmobdev]

The so-called "free" market doesn't care about consumer rights, though.

[manigandham]

What part of this is about consumer rights?

[webmobdev]

With web applications, the right to privacy, not to deal with unwanted and / or forced updates or ToS changes, to retain the rights on our data and access it etc.

[hendersoon]

The answer is simple. Release a new version every year and sell it for a reasonable amount of money.

[tmikaeld]

Pay-for-use is a fair and transparent variant, don't use the service? don't pay.

[StevenWaterman]

Metered usage, pay for what you use

[spaceman_2020]

Could you theoretically tokenize individual features? Only pay for the features you need, as and when you need them.

[StevenWaterman]

Definitely - that's basically what cloud platforms do. AWS doesn't charge you for S3 unless you're using it, and every feature has its own pricing