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by satvikpendem
1010 days ago
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Consumers often talk about one-time payments but balk at the prices that are required to have them while also being able to have the devs pay for their expenses. For example, look at this recent r/apple thread [0], the dev made the perpetual license 2.5x the annual license, which makes sense from a ARPU perspective, but people don't want to pay 70 dollars, even though tools like YouNeedABudget are more expensive. The psychological impact of one-time purchases cannot be removed from the decision and that is also likely why SaaS is so enticing, the prices are much lower in the short term, but can be higher in the long term, just like getting a loan vs paying in full would be. [0] https://old.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/168shog/after_almost... |
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Look, we get it: subscriptions suck. We don't like them either. But we think that subscriptions are the best way to align our incentives with yours, and we want to be transparent about it. If we're not living up to your expectations, then you can cancel.
We also plan to introduce online services to simplify developer workflows, which would not be sustainable to run without subscriptions.
Lifetime licenses are unsustainable. OrbStack's components need continuous updates: compatibility with new macOS versions, Linux kernel, and other assorted pieces, as well as new features to stay competitive.
Major version upgrades incentive us to withhold features for months when they would otherwise be released much faster; we'd rather deliver gradual improvements so you get continuous value. Also, major upgrades have a high risk of introducing breaking changes, bugs, and other issues due to a lack of gradual testing.
1-year updates + fallback perpetual: More or less a yearly subscription in disguise? Just cancel if you don’t want to keep paying. JetBrains does a hybrid of this + subscription — not entirely opposed to it, but it shares a lot of these issues (e.g. incentivizes slower feature development). Realistically, would anyone revert to a year-old version and stay on it forever?
It's a hard problem.
[0] https://docs.orbstack.dev/faq#free