Apps that shouldn't be Subscriptions

kirk782@discuss.tchncs.de to Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ@lemmy.dbzer0.com – 296 points –

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.

186

You are viewing a single comment
View all comments

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  • Duolingo, mainly because the contents of some lessons are outdated (missing audio, etc).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.

https://www.pixelmator.com/blog/2022/08/18/why-pixelmator-photo-is-switching-to-subscription-pricing-and-a-sneak-peek-at-pixelmator-photo-for-mac/