Apps that shouldn't be Subscriptions
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.
The best subscription model I have seen so far is for the JetBrains products. They call it the perpetual fallback license.
Quote: "A perpetual fallback license is a license that allows you to use a specific version of software without an active subscription for it. The license also includes all bugfix updates, more specifically in X.Y.Z version all Z releases are included."
This is standard perpetual licensing seen across many software.
One off payment = you get a perpetual license for the major version of the software including all patches for it.
Subscription = you pay a smaller fee than the one off payment per annum. You get all updates and patches. But when you stop paying, you don't get anymore updates or patches and you can lose access to the software.
Yeah i guess you are right. Did not even think about it.
Is that only for certain editors? Because at work, the second I go offline I'm forced to close Idea.
Maybe you use the corporative version? My products don't ask me to close when I'm offline, and even when I'm not logged in with JB account they start asking to log in after some weeks
I dont know really, havent used paid versions of JetBrains products. I was always just eyeing with them.