Subscription based software articles get the same response on the Experts team every time we run one. We know that not everyone is going to be happy and that’s usually reflected in the comments.

It’s worth noting that software subscriptions have passed the experimentation stage and are here to stay. There’s various reasons developers choose to do it, there’s also plenty of reasons some developers choose not to do it. In some ways it’s less about facts and more about belief, both developers and purchases have deeply held beliefs about the nature of them and debating it is almost pointless. It’s certainly not worth spending endless hours debating in the hope of changing someone’s mind.

Some brands offer subscription only plans, while others offer perpetual alternatives - this seems to be better received as people feel less forced into the subscription model.

In some parts of our lives we’ve been used to making monthly payments for certain things for years; phones, streaming services, internet connections. That has extended into other parts of life too, in our house we also subscribe to a dishwasher tablet service, aimed at saving us money by delivering us eco-friendly tablets on a regular cycle to match consumption. It took me months to be convinced this was a good idea, I’m the sad guy who stands in the supermarket aisle calculating the cost per tablet, I have zero brand allegiance when it comes to them.

Business Or Consumer?

One line that needs to drawn when considering subscription services is the business/consumer one.

For a business, subscriptions are generally a cost that can be recovered. The cost of equipment or software used can be recovered by the business. The value of any subscription is easy to calculate in a time based billing business. Does this item make/save me more money than it costs me? If the answer is yes then it’s generally a no-brainer decision. I have endless subscriptions for things like Freshbooks for my invoicing and accounts, Sanebox helps me organise emails and keep the spam away… remember time is money.

I judge each subscription on merit. I used to have an Adobe Cloud plan, it wasn’t very much, about $10 month, or $120 a year. Then I discovered Affinity suite, which does for me everything that was needed from Adobe. During the pandemic they did a deal and I got the whole suite for $100. I decided to make the switch and kill the ongoing cost of the Adobe Cloud. For video editing I use Final Cut X, it means I’m not paying Adobe every month.

Even for business subscriptions can start to mount up. I use Frame.io for client approvals, however over time that was getting more costly, we also entered a period where we used it less, so we cancelled the then $65 a month cost… it’s nearly $800 a year.

I’m not wedded to the subscription concept as a dogma. I try and be pragmatic and judge each product and service on merit and affordability, even as a business.

One small myth I hate hearing is the ‘you can write it off against tax.’ It’s a half truth, write off is only possible if you are making a profit. If you’re spending money on things you don’t need then a profit is less likely. I have a mantra that is drummed into all my teams, profit is what you don’t spend.

Even Hobbies Can Cost A Lot!

Moving to those who make music as a hobby, the subscription model is a totally different proposition.

Generally a consumer subscription is cost, you might get it back in value, but unlike a business it’s still money you won’t be able to recover later on by passing it on to a client in billing. That means many of us have to choose if it’s Amazon Prime or Netflix, Disney or Apple+ TV, after all there’s only so much money we have and in recent years that pot seems to be getting smaller.

In the UK we are facing a cost of living crisis. I’m perhaps even more aware of it as my wife works trying to change government policy for a charity called the Trussel Trust. They are the driving force behind food banks, their long term aim is to end food poverty, in effect to do themselves out of a job.

Even if you don’t find yourself in such dire straits the circumstances of the pandemic and other global factors have caused a cost of living crisis. We are having to make tough decisions, pull in our belts and batten down the hatches.

This is where subscriptions force us to do something many of us should have done a long time ago. To make some choices about what we spend money on and what we ignore. What we sign up to and what we cancel.

If I may have a small rant about signing up to subscription services generally. I think there should be a law that makes it as easy to cancel an agreement once you’ve completed your obligation as it is to sign up. One decision I made was to cancel Sky TV, our satellite TV service, that was costing us £46 a month and we hardly used it. When I signed up it took about 4 clicks of a web form and boom I was now a Sky customer, fast forward 6 years later and it took me four days to speak to someone to cancel. The more cynical side of me would suggest these cancellation systems are designed to make it hard to leave, even when you are legally entitled to cancel. If I’m out of contract it should be the same 4 clicks it took me to sign up, not a painful phone call with some desperate sales person trying to strong arm me into staying. I wrote a message telling them I understood I would have to do it over the phone, but made it clear that I wouldn’t be discussing why I was leaving or their ‘amazing’ offer to have me stay. Rant over.

Taking Stock

Back to the point of this article.

I look at my hard drive with hundreds of plugins and I’d be hard pushed to name fifty of them, I certainly don’t use most of them. I look back at old invoices for must-have software that I don’t use any more. I have a cable box with multiples of the same cable because I couldn't find the right one when I needed it, so I mistakenly bought it again. I have numerous audio interfaces. Most of this was purchased through the business, but looking back down the road of purchases littered with unused stuff make me feel both dumb and ashamed in equal measure. The feelings are there because it makes me feel so wasteful, knowing there’s never been a more important time to stop wasting the world’s resources and also that I’m thoughtlessly blowing money on gear when other people are having to choose heating or eating.

This article may seem to have taken a depressingly dark turn for some, but I’m sure this is not just my story, I know people with ten times the amount of unused gear.

The small upside of well thought out subscriptions is you can use them when you need them and cancel when you don’t. That may not always be easy if you are wedded to a DAW or something that you depend on, in that case a subscription is a pair of golden handcuffs and not easy to drop.

How Much Are You Wasting?

At the end of last year I sat down and looked at the costs for one of my businesses. We try not to be wasteful and make wise choices about spending. We looked at all the regular costs we had to see if we could streamline them. By the end of the exercise we found savings of over £50,000 a year, that’s £1000 a week. It’s an exercise I try and do regularly both in business and my personal life, checking all the regular costs and deciding if they are still needed, or if I can afford them.

Many of us are facing challenging times in business and in our personal life, it means making some choices about what I keep spending money on. The subscription debate can help focus our minds on how much we are spending and possibly wasting - I’m not sure if the call to assess our spending is a bad thing.

Discuss