I get attached to the apps I use. I do all my photo editing in Photoshop and Lightroom, I use Airmail for email, I listen to music with Spotify, I read feeds with Inoreader and Reeder, I Tweet using Tweetbot, and most importantly, for writing I use Ulysses.
Ulysses has just announced they’re switching from a once-off payment model to an ongoing monthly subscription.
Rather than pay $44.99 for the Mac app and $24.99 for the iOS app, users have to pay $4.99 a month going forward (although there are discounts for existing customers, students, and year-long subscribers). While the Ulysses developers explain their rationale in a long, well reasoned Medium post, the reaction was predictable. How dare a company try to make money with subscriptions!
The thing is, while subscriptions are obviously good for developers—who doesn’t like ongoing, predictable income?—they’re also good for consumers like you and me. Let’s look at some of the reasons why.
Good Businesses Stay in Business
The businesses that stand the test of time are the ones that actually work as a business. Each year they sell enough of whatever they’re selling to turn a profit and stay in the game. Children don’t go hungry, mortgages get paid, the owner even takes an occasional holiday. It doesn’t matter how great the product is if they can’t pay their bills.
With apps, this means that every year enough new customers have to buy the app so that the developers can feed their kids, stay off the streets, and go to Disneyland. It doesn’t matter if they sold a million copies last year, if no one buys their app this year, they’re going to go bankrupt or have to sell their company.
I don’t like it when apps I use go bust or sell up. That means they stop developing their app, and in time, I’ll have to stop using it. And I hate changing apps. There’s a learning curve and I’ve chosen the apps I use for a reason: they fit my workflow.
With a subscription pricing model, developers don’t have to worry about where the money to keep the lights on is coming from. As long as they don’t drive away all their existing customers, they can…
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