The problem with the subscription model is that it doesn’t incentivize making improvements. If I buy a piece of software, I’m not going to buy the new version unless they make significant improvements. With a subscription model I have to continue paying for it even if they make no improvements to the software.
The customers just keep asking for new things. Does a meal planning app need to be a subscription service? Probably not. But anything that keeps on adding new features costs a lot of money. Software engineers aren’t cheap.
This is a problem of poor sales and marketing. The sales people should simply charge the customer for the changes that are asked for. Of course neither the sales people nor the customer understand the cost (they think it’s just pushing one button). Sales people tend to have too much influence in a company (like they bring in the money, not the product, and developers are a cost) and they’ll say yes to anything the customer asks for even if the customer may not even care all that much. But hey if this company is offering free software development services, why not take advantage of it?
A service model might make sense in some cases, but oftentimes it does not. Most definitely not in the consumer market, but we see that everywhere now.
Back in the 80’s and 90’s, they were making actual improvements to things like spreadsheets and word processors. Remember when spell check was a separate program you ran after the fact?
I’d say MS Office hit the point of perfectly usable, needs no improvement somewhere around 2003. Even by then, the vast majority of users weren’t aware of or cared about the features they were adding and would soon start strongly wishing Microsoft would quit fucking around with the UI every few years.
Their business model relied on people buying new versions every so often, and then they made a version that was everything anyone would need…so now what? Demand that they just keep paying for it.
The problem with the subscription model is that it doesn’t incentivize making improvements. If I buy a piece of software, I’m not going to buy the new version unless they make significant improvements. With a subscription model I have to continue paying for it even if they make no improvements to the software.
This is a problem of poor sales and marketing. The sales people should simply charge the customer for the changes that are asked for. Of course neither the sales people nor the customer understand the cost (they think it’s just pushing one button). Sales people tend to have too much influence in a company (like they bring in the money, not the product, and developers are a cost) and they’ll say yes to anything the customer asks for even if the customer may not even care all that much. But hey if this company is offering free software development services, why not take advantage of it?
A service model might make sense in some cases, but oftentimes it does not. Most definitely not in the consumer market, but we see that everywhere now.
Especially with software, it’s a weird world.
Back in the 80’s and 90’s, they were making actual improvements to things like spreadsheets and word processors. Remember when spell check was a separate program you ran after the fact?
I’d say MS Office hit the point of perfectly usable, needs no improvement somewhere around 2003. Even by then, the vast majority of users weren’t aware of or cared about the features they were adding and would soon start strongly wishing Microsoft would quit fucking around with the UI every few years.
Their business model relied on people buying new versions every so often, and then they made a version that was everything anyone would need…so now what? Demand that they just keep paying for it.