Yes, of course, it is the “lifetime” of the software. I have joked with him about that term - which is widely used by developers. He is not going to use that term - that was me - and I know what it means. Perhaps a better term is “permanent” license. People seem to think that when they paid $25 10 years ago, the developer has to keep updating their software. And the situation is really bad in the iOS store - people bitch about $5. (For another app I paid for the “Permanent” license because the developer told me he was moving to the subscription model with the next major version - that was more than six months ago - and I haven’t seen the update yet.)
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Paying for upgrades puts the incentive on the developer to produce new features or capabilities for which consumers will be willing to purchase.
Subscriptions reverse that model and put the incentive on the consumer to pay to continue using the software, with no guarantee of any updates or changes. Indeed, why should a developer invest anything in improvements, with an already insured revenue stream?
I have paid a number of times for updates to my stand-alone version of 1P, and was happy to do so. Paying for a “rental” subscription with no guarantee of getting any updates at all does not appeal to me.
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163 posts about this in 4 months, with so many repetitive arguments back and forth. I know that we’re not supposed to moderate, but is there any chance that we can all agree to disagree about these issues and not post more until there is actually some news about this (e.g., if AgileBits changes their plans, etc.?)
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Precisely. The more mature a product becomes the less likely there’ll be upgrades worth paying for as they reach ‘feature saturation’. From the developers’ point of view, they want revenue so switch to a subscription model as they know they can’t entice people to buy upgrades without compelling new features.
With subscriptions the user simply keeps paying but gets no new features. It’s definitely a ‘win’ for the developer and a ‘lose’ for the consumer - subscriptions remove any real incentive for them to add features or improve the product. They essentially get future pay for work they completed years earlier.
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As a developer, I’ll play devil’s advocate here. There are sometimes features that require a huge amount of work to implement, but are almost invisible to the user (or at least don’t look like they’d be as much work as they are). In the old revenue model it’s very difficult to get the buyer to pay for an upgrade that doesn’t seem to offer much. That’s why so many upgrades are “flashy” with useless features that sound neat or make a nice demo, but have little practical value. Under the subscription model, the developer can work on these features (sometimes over years) and still get paid. The result can be a more stable, useful, reliable product instead of one that looks pretty and doesn’t work that well, or has long-standing bugs that never get fixed because the developer is always concentrating on new features.
That said, the real problem with subscriptions is that so many developers jump on them unnecessarily giving subscriptions a bad reputation.
For instance, a drawing app doesn’t need to be subscription-based. (I supposed if it offered cloud storage or new free clip every month or something it could make sense, but generally no.) But an app that provides cloud features that are a recurring expense for the developer makes sense to sell as a subscription.
I remember years ago hearing about some cheap $2 weather app on the App Store that eventually shut down and vanished. I liked it and was bummed. The developer posted on his blog how he had to pay for the weather data, so every user essentially cost him money every month. I was shocked. I had no idea that’s how it worked. It definitely seemed like a dumb business plan – but that was in retrospect. Back in the early days of the App Store the guy was bringing in new users by the thousands per day so even for a few dollars per sale he was making good money. But eventually when everyone had weather apps (or there was lots of competition), sales dropped and he’s selling just a few apps a day and it wasn’t enough. He had a million users and had to pay thousands a month to provide them with current weather data, but none of those users were paying him anything beyond their initial payment. A subscription model would have made sense for his business, even if it was just a few bucks a year (but this was before the App Store offered subscriptions).
There are definitely both sides to this problem. Going back to 1PW, I have zero problems paying a reasonable subscription fee as they are hosting my data in the cloud. And I want that cloud service, since that’s what makes 1PW work universally on all my devices. (I don’t at all understand people who don’t want it be a cloud service. How in the world do you sync your passwords without the cloud???)
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I am tired of all the “drama” with iPassword.
I am purchasing Enpass, the One time purchase $59.99 with 25% off and moving on.
Every year it has been “something” with 1 PW.
I have better things to do with my time…
Rich the Weather Guy
1PW syncs very nicely with iCloud, which all users have and Apple devices can access. There is no need for 1PW to create a whole new cloud service for most individual users.
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iCloud is not cross-platform. The main reason I bit the bullet and got the 1PW subscription a few years ago is so I could use it on my Chromebook. Typing in gibberish passwords by hand from my iPhone display got old real fast!
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It DID, then it didn’t sync. I grew tired of Apple vs. 1PW. I don’t know if it works with iCloud at ALL anymore. Apple did what they could to make iCloud unusable with 1PW.
BD
Not seeing problems with Big Sur and iCloud for me. Same with iOS and my collection of several older macOS machines. Don’t know what to say.
No, it’s not, but if I have been following this 1PW discussions correctly over the years, if you store your password database on any network server volume (e.g. Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.), 1PW used to work just fine, using it to sync your devices.
It’s been years, so I don’t remember the details, but that did not work for Chromebook. The only way to get 1PW working there was to upgrade to the subscription version, which works fine.
I had been using Dropbox to sync my 1PW passwords, but I found using 1PW’s syncing to be much better. With the Dropbox method, I had to memorize my Dropbox password and install it first (before 1PW) on any new device. Using 1PW’s cloud I don’t have to do that, which is one less hassle, and I can then use 1PW to install Dropbox.
Because there are alternatives people will switch to if a developer stops improving the software.
I objected to the subscription model when it first appeared. A few years ago, however, I reflected on why I felt the way I did, and I realized it really just boiled down to “This isn’t how I used to pay for software!” which was, I had to admit, a pretty dumb reason. If a subscription makes sense to me economically, I’ll sign up for one.
I suspect that much of the resistance to 1Password subscriptions comes from the way AgileBits handled the transition. It’s been pretty obvious the way the company was headed from how non-obvious it was to purchase a standalone license, but they kept denying that they were trying to keep people from buying one. And if someone asked for how to get a standalone license, he or she was subjected to a hard sell for a subscription. It was like pulling teeth to get them to tell you how to buy a standalone license. Many customers justifiably felt AgileBits was being disingenuous. No one likes feeling they’re being lied to, and the company’s tactics created a lot of ill will.
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Yeah…the backup that v7 does is only my standalone vault that’s located on DropBox…my subscription is mostly for another cloud backup of the data in addition to my own backups and I don’t use the online vaults for most purposes. Secondary is to have a shared 911 vault for our son so that he can get enough passwords and such to get into our computers and devices should we get run over by the bus.
However…my point remains…since there is a local unencrypted copy of the data on my laptop in a SQLLite or whatever database and since the code to export a backup copy of the entire database to a location of my choice…it doesn’t really seem that hard for them to do whatever they do with the Master Password and Secret Key for encryption…just do that and store the resulting encrypted blob where I tell it to be stored. I could then reimport that back into my laptop in the worst case scenario and it would sync back up with the worst case scenario blank blob they restored completely or partially after whatever disaster happened in their datacenter. It isn’t likely that I would need to do this…since I presume they’ve taken appropriate mirroring, backup, and offsite recovery precautions…but having the capability for a user to backup and restore on their own without needing 1PW the company to do anything but have the subscription plan server restored and available seems prudent…especially since the user has no idea what most of the passwords actually are. At worst…the user could restore the backed up data solely on his/her computer and then work in an offline mode until the company recovered from whatever happened and had things back online.
Suppose the company server is offline for 2 or 3 weeks…again not likely but not out tf the question either. What’s a use4r supposed to do in the meantime…seeing that whatever happened might have zero’ed out the local computer copy of the password file. Without personal backup/restore capability…the user is SOL until they get their act together again. I could think of many scenarios…granted most are unlikely…where they would be offline for days to weeks.
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I don’t think anybody is suggesting that 1PW offer “lifetime licenses”…just standalone ones that work for version whatever and whatever minor updates or bug fixes a company chooses to follow…then an upgrade or new purchase license for new major versions. That way a user can decide whether the new features are something they’re willing to pay for and if not then skip the upgrade until next year.
As I said in earlier replies…I understand the reasons that a company chooses subscription…more revenue overall is probably the biggest one but a more uniform revenue stream to keep paying software engineers and support folk and VC investors also has advantages for the company. What most would like to see is a choice between standalone licenses with whatever requirements are on them and subscription licenses which are cheaper per month but more expensive over the long term…and for those choices to be readily available rather than promoting only the subscription model on the main pages because it has financial advantages for the company and burying the standalone licenses somewhere deep in the bowels of the website. Some would choose each choice…and that would potentially reduce the total revenue…and in today’s world most younger users who charge everything on their credit card would rather pay 10 bucks a month than 100 once a year or whatever the numbers are.
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True…but DropBox is and it works…perfectly…for syncing databases across whatever platforms you might want to use. The only reason to switch to the cloud only service is to force subscriptions and to some extent increase revenue while lowering the incentive to improve the software or add features to entice users to upgrade.
iCloud works…kinda sorta…most of the time for what it does but still has a lot of what I think are dumb design decisions, particularly on iOS where you can’t easily open say a Numbers document in Excel without jumping through a bunch of hoops and needing to import and possibly export it to get it back to the original app or platform later on.
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Nah…that probably won’t happen…what else are mailing lists or forums for except to debate minutia:-)
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One need not read the posts if not happy. I scroll through quickly when reading something already said. I’m learning a lot here and appreciate the discussions. Keep posting folks! I’m almost beginning to accept the idea of some subscriptions 
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This!
I have a few subscriptions for apps/services that make sense to me because they offer more features than the free version. On the other hand, I decided that Microsoft Office and Adobe Lightroom/Photoshop are subscriptions that I do not need.
But I am trying to reduce subscriptions so I must choose wisely.
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I see one of my posts, referring to the problems with lifetime subscriptions, was removed. i wasn’t aware of anything offensive or insulting to anyone in my post but if it was taken that way I want to publicly apologize. The gist of it was simply that there is no practical way to ensure how long an app will be supported after one pays a larger sum for what is sold as a lifetime subscription.