Ulysses announced today it was switching to an all-subscription model

https://ulyssesapp.com/blog/2017/08/ulysses-switches-to-subscription/

For new customers the fee is $60/year -- for existing (any licenses bought prior to today) it is $30/year. A lower rate is available for "students".

The blogs uses the common coffee-justification: "that’s pretty much a coffee to go" [each month]. Just to say it: I'm getting tired of everyone explaining their pricing in cups-of-coffee equivalents.

Ulysses is a great product. Really really great. But it's not so great that $60 or $30/year is worth the admission, because they simply cannot introduce new features equal to the base product year after year. So, here we go with yet another rent-seeking developer.

There may be a loophole. The blog says "You can subscribe for as long as you need, and you will always have the latest version, with the newest features and bugfixes." -- so I guess one could pay $4.99 for one month, grab a new version, then go away? That's a loophole they will soon fill, no doubt.

Sad!!

In fact the yearly fee is $40 - meaning $20 for customers.

I saw their announcement on Twitter and tried to link to the blog article, but it appears jammed up. Probably everyone trying to access it -- and complain -- at once.

Even at $20 a year, I won't subscribe. I like Ulysses, but there are plenty of other options. This may be irrational on my part, but I don't mind subscribing to a cloud-based service because, well what is there to buy? But paying a subscription for an app that lives on my computer and iPad, no. Don't like it. Especially when I've already paid for it with the understanding it is mine forever. I don't mind paying for upgrades. But I'm not renting an app and parking it on my devices. Well, not if I can help it, anyway.

Steve Z.

I think what you have on your Mac/iPad/iPhone is yours forever, subject to their compatibility with operating system upgrades.

I'm far from an expert, but I sense that we're at the cusp of a broad move to subscription models generally, especially by smaller developers. I get the impression that the Apple App Store model doesn't make it easy for developers to earn much from upgrades and new versions. My hunch is that we'll eventually think of products like this as analogous to web-based apps but with enhanced offline capabilities.

Bye Bye Ulysses. Too many decent alternatives.

Christian Tietze presciently discusses this possibility on his blog a year ago:

http://christiantietze.de/posts/2016/07/app-pricing-subscription/

Steve Z.

Subscriptions can only work for some developers early on. Imagine if they all do it.

If all the important apps I use go to subscription models, it will cost me hundreds of dollars a year for those subscriptions. That is one of the reasons I will avoid subscriptions as best I can. (Sometimes they can not easily be avoided, as with Microsoft Office.)

Steve Z.

Interesting. They changed the price since the post first went up around midnight.

Franz Grieser wrote:

In fact the yearly fee is $40 - meaning $20 for customers.

Interesting. They changed the price since the post first went up around midnight.

Franz Grieser wrote:

In fact the yearly fee is $40 - meaning $20 for customers.

I agree.

Subscriptions are the model in areas where there is a large, expanding, and changing content. Think streaming services. Things that are "consumed". Subscribing to software makes little sense.

FWIW -- I pay a hefty fee annually for Tinderbox because Mark Bernstein is always fiddling and inventing new features that I find useful in my work. And after years of using his products and receiving personal attention whenever there's a problem, I feel my loyalty and funds pay off. Borgs like the Ulysses or the Day One crews don't do anything to engender loyalty.

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

Subscriptions can only work for some developers early on. Imagine if
they all do it.

If all the important apps I use go to subscription models, it will cost
me hundreds of dollars a year for those subscriptions. That is one of
the reasons I will avoid subscriptions as best I can. (Sometimes they
can not easily be avoided, as with Microsoft Office.)

Steve Z.

The blogs uses the common coffee-justification: "that’s pretty
much a coffee to go" [each month]. Just to say it: I'm getting tired
of everyone explaining their pricing in cups-of-coffee equivalents.

Agreed. I'm still wondering where one purchases this five-dollar coffee they speak of. I've never spent that much for a cup of coffee in my life, and I've even frequented "hip" organic Fair Trade coffee shops...

And with more developers coming down with this infection, I think it might be time seriously consider more open source software or something.

I too found the Ulysses app post with its comparison to the price of coffee quite offensive. However, I found this Medium post by one of the developers to be much more thoughtful:

https://medium.com/building-ulysses/why-were-switching-ulysses-to-subscription-47f80b07a9cd

However, even though I bought it and qualify for the reduced price, I won't be paying for it for the simple reason that I prefer Bear. For one thing, the Bear developers have been making regular and significant improvements to their product, so I feel my $15 a year is well spent, while I have not seen any features I care about in Ulysses get any significant improvement in years. (Tagging, for instance, is still very poorly managed.) But when it comes down to it, I just like using Bear better.

I don't mind paying a subscription for an app but it needs to be reasonably priced, demonstrate continued development, and/or be something truly unique. Bear at least gets 2/3, while Ulysses falls flat on all three.

One result of apps going towards subscription models is that whereas before I would have kept them on my desktop and used them occasionally, now I just delete them, because they are generally useless (i.e. won't sync) if you don't pay. That means I won't learn of significant upgrades or consider using them in the future.

I despair about this...

I have a policy of no subscriptions for apps. I have a policy of trying to reduce any unnecessary recurring expense and it has served me well all my life. Ulysses is just..a text editor..take a step back and it is ridiculous to ask for a subscription. I dont mind paying for ugrades if I use the app but not to subscriptions. Regular payments for my account are for mortgages, bills, etc...not for software.

I have had to say goodbye to Textexpander..Dayone..1password..and now Uselesyss. Now please please please Devonthink don't go down this route.. I dont know what I would do.

what alternative do you use for textExpander?

apb123 wrote:

I despair about this...

I have a policy of no subscriptions for apps. I have a policy of trying
to reduce any unnecessary recurring expense and it has served me well
all my life. Ulysses is just..a text editor..take a step back and it is
ridiculous to ask for a subscription. I dont mind paying for ugrades if
I use the app but not to subscriptions. Regular payments for my account
are for mortgages, bills, etc...not for software.

I have had to say goodbye to Textexpander..Dayone..1password..and now
Uselesyss. Now please please please Devonthink don't go down this
route.. I dont know what I would do.

Yes, this is disappointing. But put it down to Apple's ongoing refusal to allow upgrade pricing - I think that's at the root of this issue. It makes the whole relationship much more binary. And of course at a certain point you simply stop subscribing. I'm currently subscribed to Bear, Outlinely and now Ulysses (yes, for the time being, because I use it quite a lot). But as somebody else just said, the early subscription offers are more likely to be taken up; after a certain point you just stop subscribing (especially when you're already subscribing to iCloud, Dropbox, OneDrive and other Cloud services).

Come on, Apple, just allow developers to charge for upgrades, for goodness' sake! The current system isn't making anybody happy.

I wonder if not having upgrade pricing in the App Store is a red herring. Subscriptions are not a substitute for upgrades -- subscriptions are developers opting for a steady income stream in lieu of fewer customers. I would like to see an game-theoretic analysis of the various pricing options -- base fee + occasional upgrade fees, vs. occasional new releases at full prices, vs. monthly subscription streams, etc.

My guess is that the analysis would show that the bet is: introducing a subscription might cause my customer base to drop 20-30% temporarily, the cash flow from monthly fee would offset the loss, and then the base would grow and I would be better off than I was before I introduced the fee.

We haven't see anyone reverse course and abandon subscriptions, have we? Fewer customers means fewer support headaches. Steady, predictable cash flow means lower risk and greater access to capital. A few weeks of bad press and torqued customers can be endured because everyone forgets.

Paul Korm wrote:

Steady, predictable
cash flow means lower risk and greater access to capital.

I imagine that this is a key - a business model that's much more familiar and easier for lenders, potential investors and - yes - even partners and spouses to understand.

I too pay the fee for Tinderbox, but that is really a hybrid sort of arrangement. It's not a subscription. It's more of an extended upgrade fee. Also -- as you imply, Paul -- there's a kind of (wink, wink) you're really just being a patron of Tinderbox. At least that's how if feels to me.


Paul Korm wrote:

FWIW -- I pay a hefty fee annually for Tinderbox because Mark Bernstein
is always fiddling and inventing new features that I find useful in my
work. And after years of using his products and receiving personal
attention whenever there's a problem, I feel my loyalty and funds pay
off. Borgs like the Ulysses or the Day One crews don't do anything to
engender loyalty.

The author David Hewson, one of Ulysses's biggest fans, offers a perspective opposite of mine:

https://davidhewson.com/2017/08/11/the-new-ulysses-subscription-plan-is-a-wonderful-idea/

Steve Z.

Hewson et al are not entirely wrong, in fact, he is right about the fact that someone must pay. If it is not you, then it must be somebody else (in many cases I suspect it may be a hopeful but underpaid developer) or else the product will vanish within short time.
Where he and the other folk writing articles about how wonderful Ulysses move towards a subsription are utterly wrong, however, is that he openly assumes that he is in any way representative of the average use case. Which he is not. He has published best-selling books and can afford to pay however much Ulysses is charging him for providing him with one of the major tools that earns his income. And that's the same thing with many other people welcoming this move that we read about.

The majority of us simply don't earn their money by putting words on paper. We need to write one way or another. My institution provides me with a license for Word and simply because I am a rebel and don't like Word I have a multitude of licenses for other programs I can write better in. Just as spreadsheets. Databases. Todo lists. Productivity tools. Tinderbox. Devonthink.

If I wanted to provide every nice developer with a steady income (which I do) I'd quickly be spending my entire income (which I don't) because frankly, many of the tools I sometimes use aren't as central to my professional life as Ulysses is to Hewson or some of the tech bloggers. They are just a very vocal crowd.
What I take home from this is that a developer is no more obliged to give away the fruit of his/her labour cheaply than I am to pay whatever they would like me to. Time to pare down my software arsenal and weed out some old but seldomly used old friends, I guess.

Chris



Stephen Zeoli wrote:

The author David Hewson, one of Ulysses's biggest fans, offers a
perspective opposite of mine:

https://davidhewson.com/2017/08/11/the-new-ulysses-subscription-plan-is-a-wonderful-idea/

Steve Z.

Ah, perhaps Prion is right and we've all been grotesquely spoiled by the plethora of good-quality, relatively low-cost applications that have proliferated on the market for the last few years. I am regularly appalled by the nasty comments about having to pay for apps that appear not just in the Google Android store, but in the Apple App Store - people really do seem to feel they should get all apps for free.

So perhaps, albeit with a tear in the eye, it is indeed time to rip out those lesser-used apps and hone one's life down to a Thoreau-esque simplicity...

Ah, the trials of the passionate CRIMPer!

Right you are, Prion. Much like a graphic designer pays an annual subscription for Adobe Design Cloud, Hewson pays for the tools of his craft. And I certainly understand and respect that attitude.

You and Bill both bring up an interesting possible side benefit for CRIMPers. Right now it is easy to pay a one-off fee to purchase a piece of software. If you end up not using it much, you don't really have to think about it again. But when it is a subscription, you definitely need to be more careful about spending those initial dollars (or substitute the currency of choice). For example, with DayOne and Ulysses. They both do similar things. You could write a book in DayOne if you wanted to and you can certainly keep a diary in Ulysses. I possibly can see myself abandoning DayOne altogether and paying the subscription for Ulysses (I'd never go the other way, but others might). How many other apps will fall by the wayside as they go to subscription?

Hmmm. Food for thought.

Steve Z.

My guess is that the analysis would show that the bet is: introducing a
subscription might cause my customer base to drop 20-30% temporarily,
the cash flow from monthly fee would offset the loss, and then the base

I think for an already well developed product like Ulysses you can lose 80% and still doing better.

First you have to realize that this is a huge price increase compared to previous prices where you could decide to only get it on iOS or macOS. Having a full previous price repaid in just one year is what i consider a 200% increase because my average is (just a feeling, i don't have checked it) about 3 years before i upgrade. Often this means i have to pay the full price again because i missed one or two (not really so) major releases.

As a shareware author in the 2000s years i know that most sales are only done impulsive once and not used for a long time. With the required minimum subscription time they are not lost. So it's pretty hard to lose money with subscriptions if you have an already really popular software.

But the main trend is even worse. It's the software as a service model. Thats what i really hate. I refuse to go into the cloud for almost everything. Especially when you realize how inefficient and disappointing most web software still is.

And i also find the $5 coffee comparison offensive. Why not compare it with the typical Hippster Advocado Toast with Wallnut Salad for $19?
"Hey you can buy my software for less then the cost of a toast. A single toast in your whole lifetime." I should remember this for my next marketing campaign.

There's a "bundled" subscription program that started earlier this year (I think) -- I hardly ever see this mentioned anywhere, which makes me wonder if anyone uses it.

https://setapp.com

For $9.99 monthly one gets access to a number of products including (allegedly) all upgrades produced while the subscription is active. You need to dig around in the site to see which ones -- but it didn't include Ulysses at one point. At least, the logo was still on their page this morning.

It's a steep price to pay for using one or two apps, but if subscriptions become even more pervasive and someone uses four or five of these apps, it might be useful.

Downside is that once Ulysses and others go for their own subscription programs they will abandon SetApp because it might cannibalize the revenue stream.