It’s important to support independent developers, to ensure that the Mac and iOS ecosystems have excellent apps. I have gladly upgraded TextExpander every time there was a new version, even if the changes weren’t important to me. I don’t contest the fact that developers need income. Consumers, however, see this recurring payment as often stifling innovation once a company has guaranteed income, and users are locked into an app, they are unlikely to switch, and the developer has little incentive to improve their products.
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Developers may say that they don’t have to hold back features for a major upgrade, and can add new features at any time, since the subscription includes every upgrade to the apps. This has raised the question of when software should be sold as a subscription.
Is there anything in this upgrade to TextExpander that is compelling to individual users? My guess is that Smile has a lot of large business customers who will welcome the shared snippets and team management of their higher-priced offer, but how many individuals actually want to share snippets, or need their snippets to be stored on the web? Dropbox syncing is fine it allows me to share the same snippets on my iMac and my MacBook. While there are interesting features for teams – shared text snippets, which can make it easier for employees in a company to stay on message – even this version of the software costs about $100 per year, per employee. The company defends this pricing by explaining that they’ve moved the management of the software’s data to a web server, but for most individuals, this service is unnecessary. From a one-off purchase of $35 – plus upgrades every couple of years, usually at about half that price – Smile Software has moved to a monthly subscription service that would cost $47.52 per year.
The excellent Mac utility app TextExpander is moving to a subscription pricing model, and this is creating a dialogue about the justification for such a model.
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