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What software subscription do you have because you actually want it?

F

Farrgazer

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 25, 2017
225
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What piece of software do you subscribe to willingly, and why? As in, rather than “because my job depends on it,” do you have a software subscription you wholeheartedly enjoy (or at least aren’t bitter or annoyed) paying for?

By software, I’m asking more about Office, Ulysses, Evernote, etc rather than Dropbox or iCloud.
 
Plex premium and Infuse pro. I might not renew plex now that I will rely on Infuse to watch stuff on my Apple TV (I only got it for the Synology hardware acceleration)
 
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Prefer not to use SaaS if I can get a regular installer. You can still buy Office. Though you're locked into that version. Duh.
 
Zenithal said:
Prefer not to use SaaS if I can get a regular installer. You can still buy Office. Though you're locked into that version. Duh.
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yeah it has it's downsides. I bought a version of parallels that stopped working when I upgraded to Yosemite or something. They had one of those 'upgrade version for half the price if you already bought a previous version'-deals but I was pretty pissed that I had to buy the software again after half a year or downgrade my system.
 
Does World of Warcraft count? Although I'm not happy that they hiked the NZ prices a couple of months ago!

As for desktop apps, I'm not paying a subscription for anything. I prefer to buy once.
 
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No subscriptions here. Although I can understand why developers implement subscription models for their software, I prefer to pay for most things once and be done with it.

If an app I use decides to switch to a subscription, then I find another app that does the same thing and do some switching of my own.
 
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Photoshop and Lightroom. But I hate paying for them monthly. I used to upgrade every few years.
 
Adobe CC (Photographers pack), JetBrains all products Pack (I use at least half of their IDEs once a week, many of them daily).

JetBrains does it right - pay for a subscription and get a perpetual license for the most recent versions available when you sign up. The best of both worlds. I wish more devs followed that model.

As far as Adobe goes, I guess people forget that once upon a time Photoshop and Lightroom both cost ~500 for a full install (each) or ~150-200 for an upgrade (each). Since I like to stay up to date, I'll take $9.99/month for both Photoshop and Lightroom over that, any day.

Subscriptions fit what I want, perfectly. Additionally, from a business perspective it is a lot easier to swallow $10/month rather than $400 every year or two.
 
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jeremysteele said:
Adobe CC (Photographers pack), JetBrains all products Pack (I use at least half of their IDEs once a week, many of them daily).

JetBrains does it right - pay for a subscription and get a perpetual license for the most recent versions available when you sign up. The best of both worlds. I wish more devs followed that model.

As far as Adobe goes, I guess people forget that once upon a time Photoshop and Lightroom both cost ~500 for a full install (each) or ~150-200 for an upgrade (each). Since I like to stay up to date, I'll take $9.99/month for both Photoshop and Lightroom over that, any day.

Subscriptions fit what I want, perfectly. Additionally, from a business perspective it is a lot easier to swallow $10/month rather than $400 every year or two.
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It’s nice to hear a positive result of subscriptions for once. I admit that I’m not a fan of them, but I have been curious as to whether there have been customers who DID benefit from subscriptions or not.

And there’s a prototyping app called ProtoPie that does similar to what JetBrains does - you pay a price for the latest version, and once the year is up, you can pay extra for the latest updates past the one-year mark and priority tech support.
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Nermal said:
Does World of Warcraft count? Although I'm not happy that they hiked the NZ prices a couple of months ago!

As for desktop apps, I'm not paying a subscription for anything. I prefer to buy once.
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I think MMOs count. Unlike some productivity apps, MMOs are not a must-have-or-else-you-are-doomed kind of thing.
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Mefisto said:
No subscriptions here. Although I can understand why developers implement subscription models for their software, I prefer to pay for most things once and be done with it.

If an app I use decides to switch to a subscription, then I find another app that does the same thing and do some switching of my own.
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Have you ever used and found an alternative for Ulysses by any chance?
 
Farrgazer said:
It’s nice to hear a positive result of subscriptions for once. I admit that I’m not a fan of them, but I have been curious as to whether there have been customers who DID benefit from subscriptions or not.
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Like with anything, the negative is likely more "out there" than the positive. I work with a lot of developers who have no major issue with subscription packs. Every software company (including some Fortune 500s) I've interviewed with in the past few years love them as well (particularly the fact it makes license management a breeze).

IMO I think they also make software much more reachable, without needing to resort to piracy. I know I wouldn't have pirated Photoshop when I was younger if they had the current $10 option :) (I did not admit to piracy here, move along)

All that said, I can definitely see an advantage to allowing full purchases for people who just want to pay once and be done, in addition to subs. That's why I love the jetbrains approach (or the one you described), since it essentially gives you that option.

Farrgazer said:
I think MMOs count. Unlike some productivity apps, MMOs are not a must-have-or-else-you-are-doomed kind of thing.
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In that case, WoW as well for me, just a month here or there usually. A guilty pleasure.
 
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Farrgazer said:
Have you ever used and found an alternative for Ulysses by any chance?
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For what exactly? Writing? Scrivener 3 came out a while back. The only benefit to Ulysses now is it'll have coding ability by the end of the year. Do you want a Swiss Army Knife or a dedicated program?
 
Zenithal said:
For what exactly? Writing? Scrivener 3 came out a while back. The only benefit to Ulysses now is it'll have coding ability by the end of the year. Do you want a Swiss Army Knife or a dedicated program?
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For writing. I admit I didn't use Ulysses's features to the max, but I liked being able to sort different documents by folder and tags, and enjoyed how Markdown means you don't have to individually highlight sections to get a certain font and size.
 
Farrgazer said:
For writing. I admit I didn't use Ulysses's features to the max, but I liked being able to sort different documents by folder and tags, and enjoyed how Markdown means you don't have to individually highlight sections to get a certain font and size.
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You'll have to check in with them. But you can tag and categorize into folders. I bought Scrivener 2 and 3 because Word for Mac sucks, or it did suck a number of years ago (likely still does!) and I refuse to pay money for it. It's also like a giant digital journal and saves everything you compose.

The yearly cost for Ulysses is pretty damn low. Use the trial, see how it is, and subscribe yearly. Subscriptions aren't great but they solve a lot of issues over time and reduce headaches for support staff. I'm willing to state that $600/yr for Adobe's entire suite prepaid in full is a STEAL compared to the Master Collection costs of years past, which was near $3,000. That's 5 years of subscription, and you'll always be using the latest version of software.

The a la cartes are one price fits all, too. There's also a combo deal for PS and LR, with cloud storage thrown in. I interpret this as Adobe wanting everyone on their "drug."
 
Zenithal said:
You'll have to check in with them. But you can tag and categorize into folders. I bought Scrivener 2 and 3 because Word for Mac sucks, or it did suck a number of years ago (likely still does!) and I refuse to pay money for it. It's also like a giant digital journal and saves everything you compose.

The yearly cost for Ulysses is pretty damn low. Use the trial, see how it is, and subscribe yearly. Subscriptions aren't great but they solve a lot of issues over time and reduce headaches for support staff. I'm willing to state that $600/yr for Adobe's entire suite prepaid in full is a STEAL compared to the Master Collection costs of years past, which was near $3,000. That's 5 years of subscription, and you'll always be using the latest version of software.

The a la cartes are one price fits all, too. There's also a combo deal for PS and LR, with cloud storage thrown in. I interpret this as Adobe wanting everyone on their "drug."
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The cloud storage option isn't of any interest to many though. Especially if you have a large catalogue.
 
Apple fanboy said:
The cloud storage option isn't of any interest to many though. Especially if you have a large catalogue.
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The optional 1 TB option isn't enough for RAW files? Unless I'm doing the math wrong, 40 MB RAWs out of a 1D X MKII will still get you 20-25,000 photos. Adobe uses EC2 and S3 for connectivity and storage, so it isn't exactly bad. You do pay a $60 premium over what you'd pay Amazon to get a 1 TB storage plan, but you're very much on your own there.
 
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