What is the most useless app that you have seen being given as a subscription?
For me, I tried a ‘minimalist’ launcher app for Android that had a 7 day trial or something and they had a yearly subscription based model for it. I was aghast. I would literally expect the app to blow my mind and do everything one can assume to go that way. In a world, where Nova Launcher (Yes, I know it has been acquired by Branch folks but it still is a sturdy one) or Niagara exist plus many alternatives including minimalist ones on F Droid, the dev must be releasing revolutionary stuff to factor in a subscription service.
Second, is a controversial choice, since it’s free tier is quite good and people like it so much. But, Pocketcasts. I checked it’s yearly price the other day, and boy, in my country, I can subscribe to Google Play Pass, YouTube Premium and Spotify and still have money left before I hit the ceiling what Pocketcasts is asking for paid upgrade.
Also, what are your views on one time purchase vs subscriptions? Personally, I find it much easier to purchase, if it’s good enough even if it was piratable, something if it is a one time purchase rather than repetitive.
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The problem with one time purchases is that you might be investing time in an app that later will go out of business. Keeping an app up to date requires real constant work, before you even think of adding features and fixing bugs. People got used to paying 2 bucks for an app and keep it forever. That’s completely unsustainable.
But yeah, sure, some companies push it.
All of them
A watch face for a smart watch.
This one guy made a really popular Android Wear watch face that mimicked the Pixel lockscreen. It only cost a few bucks, and people loved it. Due to some personal things in his life, he had to sell the app to a new developer to make ends meet. The new developer then started charging something like $7/WEEK subscription for a watchface that he didn’t even develop in the first place, and runs entirely locally on the device so it’s not like he’s maintaining any servers or anything.
Absolutely absurd.
This has to be one of the lamest attempts at getting folks to subscribe. I couldn’t have imagined that watch faces could also be subscription based in the first place.
If the app needs a server component, a small subscription is justified. If it doesn’t, then a subscription isn’t justified.
If the subscription is optional, and it gets more frequent updates & support, that might be ok too as long as you can choose to just keep the product as is (and the product isn’t riddled with bugs)
I generally hate them in consumer-targeted apps. Theoretically, there’s nothing wrong with the model. Devs have to keep the lights on, especially if there is a cloud service behind the app. It’s all about what pricing model they set. However, pricing is hard. A lot of companies really screw this up right at the start. I also think a lot of businesses cannot resist the temptation to boil the frog and ask for more and more over time, until their pricing is way out of alignment with value delivery.
Adobe CC. They’ve added new features recently to justify a subscription, but it’s still not that good of a pitch. Some editors will have offline PCs so that their software doesn’t get fucked up by anything (SUPER common in music), so having a subscription model works against professional users of their software.
Yeah the Pocketcasts pricing is stupid as hell. I’ve been having some issues with Overcast and was looking to switch but there’s no way that price is worth it.
I purchased pocketcasts years ago when it was a one time fee and when they moved to a subscription model they gave everyone who purchased a lifetime pass on the subscription model but that rubbed me so wrong I moved away from it. Currently I run Audiobookshelf on my server and have all my podcasts in a library on there. Works really well and I have control over it.
Yeah I’ve recently gone the self hosted route for video and may go for audio soon too, but not quite there yet. I think for now I can deal with the few minor annoyances I have with Overcast.
What I’d really like to see someone crack is an machine learning prodcast player that can snip out ads. A few of the podcasts I like have gotten fucking insufferable for ads lately.
It used to be entirely free and the vast majority of its tablature was uploaded by community members for free.
The app used to be a one-time purchase. Thankfully I did purchase it back then and they grandfathered me in with a lifetime pro membership, but I can’t blame the people who would never want to use the site/app when they’ve effectively paywalled a ton of community content.
Fuck that site. Going there now is like looking at the desecrated corpse of an old friend.
Agreed. I bought the lifetime membership back then and I still have to deal with ads and upsells. Unfortunately they are still the most comprehensive tab source.
Microsoft Office.
The subscription service is actually alright for businesses, but for retail users there is no compelling reason for it to be a subscription.
the pricing of ‘365’ is essentially a subscription to cloud storage, whether you use it or not, and getting office ‘free’ with that sub.
In all fairness to Pocket Casts, the yearly cost in the US is $40, which is about the monthly cost of the three things you mentioned together. If your country gives you yearly Google Play Pass, YouTube Premium, and Spotify Premium for less than $40 US, that’s a fucking steal.
In all fuck you to Pocket Casts, Basic App functionality like folders shouldn’t be behind a subscription. I can understand a one-time unlock fee for app functionality or ongoing subscription costs to cover cloud storage and sync capabilities. I cannot fucking understand why folders would cost me $40 US a year.
Apparently it used to be one time payment for Pocketcasts back in the day. They then switched to subscription model. The old users were grandfathered in into the new version, so from today’s point of view, they got a steal deal.
I was one of those old purchasers. There was a huge uproar on the subreddit back in the day cause they said everyone who purchased the app before the subscription model would only get like 1 or 2 years of subscription access instead of lifetime. People got so pissed they changed it to lifetime.
And yet it still has a bunch of ads for PC+ littered throughout it. Despite being grandfathered in, I abandoned it earlier this year for Podcast Republic, which hasn’t spammed me or locked me out of any features I’ve tried to play with despite not having paid them anything.
I myself switched to Audiobookshelf. I initially set it up for my wife to have her audio books while traveling but I found it does podcasts and normal epub books really well also.
Mobile games for kids are the worst. Those and any self-help mental health apps.
It’s $10 a month to access the features of a basic game that runs on the local device, or the subscription renews weekly, or you can get a 7-day free trial after which it charges you for the entire year. And in the latter case, you usually have to sign up for the free trial before you are allowed to see ANY content.
A cheap subscription makes sense for some things, especially those using cloud based resources. But so much of that business model seems to rely on making money by screwing people that forgot they were paying you.
Products aren’t services.
So much bullshit has come from pretending otherwise.
But loans are temporal. That’s all that is happening – you’re renting out software (akin to digital library borrowing), in some sense, not buying a product.
The problem is how to do it otherwise and maintain enough income to ensure continued active development for future updates.
I don’t have a solution to it, and subscriptions aren’t ideal, but that’s the problem at least.
This seems to be the model I’ve witnessed with many apps over the years. Free at first to get traction and users, then ads, then pay one time fee to get rid of ads, then subscription to keep using the app.
Then there are those that wouldn’t even pay a single fee and get upset at the thought as everything should be free.
The part that is upsetting is the contributions the early community made is monetized when they were
theythere for the benefit of the community.I do see there are costs to maintaining and updating these apps so I can understand a need to keep revenue flowing for these future costs. The one time payment is a hell of a deal for years with updates to accommodate the revisions needed for each system update let alone functionality improvements.
In the old days we would buy software for our PC and that was it. There wasn’t really any updates or further support for newer versions of Windows. The software would become very insecure or just stop functioning altogether with enough changes to windows.
It’s hard to find the right balance. I know I only want to pay once, or heck never, but I want these upgrades and updates too.
It’s hard to find the right balance. I know I only want to pay once, or heck never, but I want these upgrades and updates too.
Personally, I’d love a “buy this version” option, where you can just pay once, and get a version that doesn’t recieve updates, and I could then choose to subscribe to the “live” version from there.
Of course, this would just blow back in company’s faces when it comes to the “average” user, who would be a total fucking idiot and harass support about not getting updates they didn’t pay for
Eshittification :(
Subscription only makes sense if there’s an ongoing service, e.g. processing in the cloud, cloud data storage, etc.
Apps that don’t need to be subscription:
- Camera apps like Halide or Filmic Pro, wtf
- Any todo / habit apps, the ‘cloud’ part is usually iCloud / Google Drive
- Notetaking apps, e.g. GoodNotes, wtf
- Duolingo, mainly because the contents of some lessons are outdated (missing audio, etc).
I would say if you accept subscription services as justifiable, Duolingo is justified. What you’re raising is poor performance, not a reason for it to be purchase only.
Of course, I would be in favor of “the app is free, pay a set price for a language pack” rather than a subscription for premium.
I agree that a lot of subscriptions are really overpriced, but updates to an app are also a sort-of service. Pixelmator explained it quite well when their app switched to a subscription model, mentioning some fair (I think) pros and cons of the succession model, both from the perspective of users and developers.
One-time purchase. If I’m buying something, I want to own it. No compromises. Luckily basically every software that I use is free and open-source so I don’t have to worry about that. If I can’t find a particular software for a niche usage, I make it.
