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.

Zink,

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.

entropicdrift,
@entropicdrift@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

UltimateGuitar.com

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.

Nommer,

What the fuck. I used to go there for tabs all the time when I picked up guitar. Sadly I stopped playing but to hear that that website is all pay walled now is disgusting.

criitz,

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.

njordomir,

Its crazy to think of a subscription for something like community sourced tabs. They’re often literal text files. You could host thousands of them off a thumbdrive. :)

finthechat,
finthechat avatar

Fuck that site. Going there now is like looking at the desecrated corpse of an old friend.

Anders429,

Companies are using subscription models because it has proven to be far more profitable than a one-time purchase. Why sell the product to each person just once when you can sell it to them over and over again? You no longer have to constantly develop new products and versions, and you now only have to maintain your existing product.

And it works because people buy it.

discusseded,

Microsoft Solitaire on Android. The ads were driving me nuts so I went to pay for the app. If I recall they wanted almost 10 bucks a month for that shit. Deleted, forgotten, until now.

ilco,

id rather pay a webhost a monthly fee and host most things i need myself your better of donating/buying a opensorce project /app than pay for a licensen to a company whom enforces always online apps . if possible sadly its not always an option as not all things have an alternative or a lacking

Lucidlethargy,

Adobe. Anything Adobe. Fuck Adobe.

TheBiscuitLout,

Finding that Gimp, and Darktable are at least as useful as photoshop and lightroom is really satisfying

AusatKeyboardPremi,

Beside mentions of Jetbrains license model, I would like to mention the license model of a note taking app called Agenda[1].

It has a subscription wherein the customer retains the software and all of its functionality even after the subscription expires. One may resume the subscription down the line if they see a new feature worth having.

The creators of the app liken it to a magazine subscription wherein the customer retains the magazines even after the subscription lapses.

From my own experience of using it, I purchased the license for a year back in 2021 and let it lapse as I did not find the any of the new features to be worthwhile. I still keep an eye on their updates as it is my daily driver.

[1] agenda.community/t/get-all-features/21

MakerThe11,

Wow, I wouldn’t ever expect this, what a great license model

AusatKeyboardPremi,

I too was pleasantly surprised when I stumbled upon the app a few years back. The licence model was a major factor in choosing the app over the rest.

WarmApplePieShrek,

Bitwig Studio also works this way

sukhmel,

I second that this kind of licence seems very reasonable.

I find subscription licences to be frustrating but kind of reasonable, because those let the developers to focus on improving the product rather than making stuff broken on purpose to make the user pay for an upgrade. But that’s really controversial even in my own mind, don’t know if there’s a good solution but “magazine subscription” licence looks really good

AusatKeyboardPremi,

Indeed, it is very reasonable.

It strikes a balance between subscriptions and perpetual licences.

RatzChatsubo,

I’m a big fan of the way Plex does it. I paid like 100 dollars a decade ago and all my apps stay up to date forever

What’s great about it is that it’s optional and not forced on you. I’m a Plexamp power user so it makes sense to me with my expansive music collection

Sproux,

The most useless I’ve ever seen was wallpaper packs for roku for $10/month

RatzChatsubo,

Is that why every TV has that god awful purple background photo?

NuraShiny,

No app should be a subscription

Scrollone,

Keeping an app up to date takes time and work. Especially if it needs cloud services (e.g. multiplayer games).

Good luck trying to maintain an app forever if people just pay it once.

NuraShiny,

I don’t care

buskbrand,

Then you’re paying for your user account with the cloud services, not the client apps (which you may not even use, e.g. if there is a Web version or a third party client).

A subtle distinction, I know, but it matters.

jol,

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.

Sendbeer,

Yeah, so many really nice apps that were abandoned since the 99 cent app doesn’t pay the development bills.

Spaceballstheusername,

I don’t know much about app design so what work does it take to keep an app up to date and is it possible just to not update it?

liquidparasyte,

On the low end, yearly OS upgrade compliance.

On the high end, dealing with the Kafkaesque whims of the App and Play stores randomly deciding to nuke your app (and thus business) from orbit as an “oopsie”

jol, (edited )

Specially in mobile, if you don’t update your app yearly, it will probably be removed from the store soon. Google and Apple can randomly Review your app and decide that it failed review even if it passed in the past. And fixing it to pass review is often not trivial and can take weeks of work.

Also, with each new version of Android and iOS, your app can stop working or become outdated. The platform API changes frequently.

Finally, if you use any third party libraries in your app, vulnerabilities might be found in the that you’ll want to have patched ASAP.

Oh and of course, you need to pay 99$ a year for Appstore access.

Reddfugee42,

It’s not like the entire foundation of software and computing and essentially all of Silicon Valley was built upon a non-subscription model. It’s completely unsustainable.

unique_hemp,

It was built on yearly releases of software instead, also known as yearly subscriptions.

conciselyverbose,

Those are two blatantly different things. There's nothing wrong with selling new versions of software.

There's everything wrong with removing the ability to use software you paid for unless you continue to actively pay for it.

jol,

Yes, you are totally right. The specific thing we have lost is the right to buy a specific version of an app and forgo future updates.

Chobbes,

On the flip side, this is one of the reasons open source projects can be really great. When a community of people can contribute to something to make it better over time and when people can fix their own problems with an app you can get something really great that can get updates sustainably without a subscription model… Everybody just kind of contributes what they can to get what they want. Of course, maintaining an open source project is work and has its own problems and volunteer contributions aren’t necessarily sustainable either and aren’t great for large chunks of work… But there is something nice about the model of “everybody contributes to this thing a little to make something better than we’d be able to make on our own,” even if that’s a bit idealistic in practice, haha.

jol,

Yup. I used FOSS apps whenever possible and have contributed to several in the past, both with code and tips. I don’t mind having way less “features” as long as the core functionality is there.

speeding_slug,

Might be a slightly unpopular opinion, but Volumio (software for a raspberry pi to run it as a headless audio system). It’s good, it’s relatively well maintained and works. But paying 7,50 a month for this software to get multiroom audio, Tidal integration and some other stuff is ridiculously expensive. That’s nearly 90 euro a year and the only thing that is actually an addition server side is syncing settings across devices and the Tidal integration (requires license fees iirc).

And sure, I can’t buy multiroom speakers for that kind of money, but damn, is it expensive.

lemmyingly,

I thought about using it a few years ago but their pricing was just too expensive.

ghen,

That’s more than Duolingo costs and Duolingo is constantly adding new languages

vortexsurfer,

I tried Volumio recently, and was prepared to maybe get the paid version if it was as great as it seemed. But the user interface was so god-awful! Absolutely unusable for me. Would never pay for it.

Instead I googled a bit and found Moode - a million times better, and free. Don’t remember if it does multiroom audio, but personally I don’t need that currently.

speeding_slug,

That looks good! I think I’ll try it out soon, thanks for the tip 🙂

ilinamorato, (edited )

Software as a Service is only a value when the service offers you something that the software on its own cannot do; otherwise it’s just rent seeking.

Paying for cloud storage, for continuous content updates (especially news), or a server to process or generate content that can’t be done on my device, all fine. Paying for a messaging service to pass my messages to others, or for a game to maintain servers for multiplayer play? No problem.

But a subscription to remove ads? Your app doesn’t need an external server to do that. That’s rent-seeking. Same with a subscription to unlock widgets or some third-party connection.

A subscription for regular software updates are right on the line for me. In a sane world, the software package you purchase would be provided with some amount of security updates, but you wouldn’t have to pay any extra until you decided to purchase the next version for new features. You know, like it was until Adobe decided to upend the industry. (Incidentally, it’s weird that Adobe has gone from being the poster child for rent seeking in software to one of the more reasonable companies that’s doing software as a service. I still hate that there’s no way to get their software without a subscription, but at least they are providing some form of continuous value in the form of continuous updates, as well as fonts and stock images and such.)

On the other end of the spectrum you have something like Minecraft, where my ($20? I don’t remember) purchase from over a decade ago is still receiving regular content updates for free, multiple times a year, with no subscription needed. I can pay a subscription fee to get an online realm for myself and my family, but I don’t have to because I can also just set up and operate a server myself. More than reasonable.

buskbrand,

But a subscription to remove ads? Your app doesn’t need an external server to do that.

This is kind of a bad example because the value proposition is different but still very clear - the default version of the app provides a regular income stream to the developers. If you don’t like that, you can choose to provide an alternative income stream instead.

It is still unfair because the subscription cost is usually many times more than what the ads will earn for a single user - but it’s a matter of quantity at that point, not quality.

The Adobe case is still a much better example, IMO. Yes, they may offer regular content updates worth subscribing for, but their products could still work perfectly well as one-time purchases without access to the content stream. The only reason they didn’t is that they don’t have enough competition to be worried about customers moving away.

ilinamorato,

This is kind of a bad example because the value proposition is different but still very clear - the default version of the app provides a regular income stream to the developers.

No, I was quite intentional about that example. My assertion remains: if they’re not providing regular value, then I don’t feel obliged to provide them with regular income.

I don’t hope that they go hungry or anything. I just don’t think it’s my responsibility to subsidize them forever just because they made an app for me once. I’ve got bills to pay too.

buskbrand,

Ok, yeah, upon reflection I think I agree with you.

ilinamorato,

Pocket Casts has a server component that makes sense you have to pay for, and for the most part the only things you don’t get with the free version are the server stuff and a little bit of cosmetic stuff. $40/year for 20GB is a little steep, but the fact that they charge for it doesn’t bother me.

With the exception of the folders; that doesn’t make sense to me being a Plus-only thing.

All that being said, I bought the app before it went free, so I am grandfathered in to a lifetime Plus plan; but if that hadn’t been the case I would not be paying for a subscription today.

archomrade,

I bought the app before it went free, so I am grandfathered in to a lifetime Plus plan; but if that hadn’t been the case I would not be paying for a subscription today.

Same, I don’t think I’d be paying for it otherwise

spyd4r,

Geocaching. Like come on.

slightperil,

I do miss it, that changed very much killed my koy for the past time. The alternatives were never as good.

somegadgetguy,

Wow yeah. I LOVED hiking around looking for caches.

thomasloven,

Awww I had forgotten about that. Now I’m sad.

fender_symphonic584,

$30/yr? $2.50 a month? A hobby that gets you outdoors, exploring nature, exploring cities, learning the history and culture of an area, getting you to spend time with your kids in those same spaces if that’s applicable to you isn’t worth that?

spyd4r,

$10 a month or $50 a year in Canada. Aren’t all the caches community created? Where does the $50 a year go?

fender_symphonic584,

Well, Canadian costs change the equation, even for me. $10/month is significant compared to $2.50. Caches are community created. But no one would known they were there unless someone published the information. So the money goes to a team of developers working to maintain the app and website, and the API they share with other 3rd parties. They have an office in Seattle as well. They have office staff and a foyer that is maintained for geocachers to visit and earn the find of Geocaching HQ.

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