I run a niche B2C SaaS with a monthly fee. This lets me maintain the product for a long time. If it was a one-off payment, I probably could've closed shop by now. Thing is, all niche products with tiny markets (say, a few hundred or a few thousand users) won't be able to survive in the long run without subscriptions.
Anything *aaS is a perfect candidate for subscription. Most other things aren't. Why should you pay recurring fee for what can easily run on your local machine? On the other hand, the $1 price on AppStore for most apps is ridiculously low.
The line is somewhat arbitrary between SaaS and self-hosted. How many software products must truly be SaaS from an infrastructure point of view? Few I'd say. But there are other advantages of SaaS, for both customer and developer: No installation required, no updates to install, easier to maintain from a developer perspective.
The hosting cost are virtually nonexistent. I pay 150 bucks a month for a server which handles thousands of users. I don't understand why you'd call this a mess. It's a win-win in my case, since I serve a tiny niche which currently wouldn't be provided with a good solution at all if it wasn't for my subscription based software.
At some point, done is done. If you can't get users to buy your upgrades anymore, then that might be a sign that it's time to move on?
It's pretty crazy that people expect to be able to pay themselves indefinitely from charging the same people repeatedly without any improvements to show for it.
Only if the rest of the ecosystem doesn't move. If the OS stays the same, APIs, platforms, and the hardware. Then yes, you're eventually done.
See, I guess a lot of this discussion stems from what specific examples people have in their mind. Yes, there is obviously software that is done at some point, that doesn't require updates, that can be run forever and is good enough for most people.
And there's software that is essentially useless after a few years if you don't upgrade to the newest version.
Offering paid upgrades or providing a SaaS are often the same thing, with slightly different billing schedules. Try to use Microsoft Word 2000 in 2016. The software you bought once and "owned" is of no use in 2016, where businesses email .docx files around. I think software ownership is a myth. Almost every product comes with a best-before date.
I think the market will reflect precisely this. Some apps will keep one-off-pricing, because it fits the nature of the app. Other apps will use subscriptions. If a subscription-based app doesn't provide enough value to its users, someone will come, make a better product with a lower price point and that's it.
> It's pretty crazy that people expect to be able to pay themselves indefinitely from charging the same people repeatedly without any improvements to show for it.
I agree, but my assumption is that the software gets continuously improved, because that's what's expected. If software is subscription-based and doesn't appear to be maintained, people will complain and stop using the service.
