App subscriptions. Two words that in some circles unleash apoplectic fury. That’s because at some point, an evil presence rose from the pit (or a boardroom – same thing) and decreed software should no longer be something you owned outright. And then furiously mashed ‘software’ into ‘services’ with a fork. The resultant goop transformed into a product you merely rented. Need to perform some Photoshop magic today? Pay your monthly Adobe ‘tribute’ or they’ll cut you off! (Unless you can somehow coax that DVD of Photoshop Stone Age Edition to work on a modern computer.)
This is bad enough with apps you use fairly often. It’s even worse when companies treat you like a cash machine when you rarely use an app. You forget all about it and then – BAM! – surprise inevitable email that you’ve just been charged. Super Inbox Pro: 15 bucks! Learny Thing Ultimate: 100 bucks! Super Duper Everything You Thought You Wanted But Never Used Omniverse Nirvana Godlike Edition: almost-like-a-mortgage bucks!
It’s all awful. Except it isn’t. Because not all app subscriptions are entirely evil. At least in theory.
App to the future
At this point, I imagine a few readers are eyeing this column suspiciously – or making plans to call me a massive idiot-brained idiot-faced idiot on Bluesky. But wait. Because I have a bit of a caveat. It’s that not all app subscriptions are entirely evil. Emphasis on the ‘all’. And that’s because a pay-once model is in some cases today as archaic as Photoshop 1.0.
Much of that is because apps have to deal with the moving targets of hardware that evolves at a blistering pace and operating systems that won’t stand still for five minutes before shaking things up with a new feature set. Which for app creators regularly presents much the same level of stability as shaking up a bottle of soda into which you’ve unwisely fed an entire family pack of Mentos.
For giant corporations, I’d have to break out the electron microscope to find my pity violin when it comes to this issue. But for tiny indies, it does feel a bit off to expect a one-off payment of a few bucks to give you unlimited updates for an app until the heat death of the universe.
The human touch
So what is the solution? We all hate app subscriptions. But without app subscriptions, lots of apps suddenly cease to be viable. Search engine Kagi has a solution: ‘fair pricing’.The idea is absurdly simple. If you don’t use Kagi during your billing cycle, the service credits you for a month. Instantly, frustration is gone. No more busywork, regularly checking subscriptions. An end to unexpected bills for something you haven’t used. The eradication of that stupid (yet effective) technique of immediately cancelling a subscription the second it’s made, to ensure billing won’t recur.
Of course, maybe Kagi’s plan won’t work either. There’s a possibility that, months from now, it will subtly shift from ‘fair pricing’ to ‘fair warning: next month, we’re going to fleece you for our own survival’. I hope not. Kagi’s system feels well-suited to a service that believes that it offers value – and is confident you’ll return, even if you pause payment for a while. And in an age of increasingly draconian tech, I rather like that one company is doing something radically different: offering an app subscription that it’s impossible to hate.
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