+1 for NotePlan.
I use it extensively every day for 2 years and I can't go back.
I'm just frustrated to lack advanced features or simple tables available on notions. However, as it's markdown based, it's kind of logically limited by it.
I guess it's hard to have both no lock in AND having crazy dynamic advanced tables.
In Luhmann’s work (creator of the Zettelkasten), Zettelkasten was used in an academic environment. In this post I describe how I translate the academic Zettelkasten to a ‘Product Development’ Zettelkasten.
A one-time payment is a nice financial boost, but it's not sustainable over time. My plan is not to build an app, make quick money and then forget about it. I'm working on this full-time, every day. It's long term and I need long-term users to grow.
I tried one-time payments with NotePlan 2, it's not a business model that enables you to grow nor plan anything in advance. That's neither good for the developer, nor the user. Except you don't want any updates, no bug fixes, no improvements, no new features.
IF you can't grow with one-time payments, then you will definitly will fail with subscriptions. Subscription are a high risk for users, so they most will avoid it, which is already shown here. This will mean that while the income may be more stable, the overall sum is lower, because there are less users, less advertisment, less community.
> Except you don't want any updates, no bug fixes, no improvements, no new features.
As A user I care for stability first, everything else comes after. But with subscriptions I don't know anything about what will be next year, or the year after. Updates are a promise, but no guarante. More likely with a stable income the developer has no stress to push out updates and get's lazy at the point. At which point the user is trapped in with a software which he needs to pay for, without getting any aditional benefit for it.
It would be different if the app offers a service which justifies subscriptions, like a cloud-service which creates cost. But it seems this app is classical desktop app. No benefit after first install, no change either. Updates might be worthful, or more likely they will be not.
Usage alone justifies no fee. Updates are a separate part which should call for separate fees. Everything else is just harmful. Jetbrains, the IDE-developer got this right with their subscription-system (after vocal compains). You pay for the software once and can pay regular again to receive updates. Without the fee, you will stay on the version that you got with the last payment. Additionally payments shrink over time, so good customers get some additional benefit for staying with the company.
This is a fair solution, because the user has the safe solution that their software will not become unusable some day, while they still get a real benefit for paying the fee.
Users are not trapped in with NotePlan. If your are not satisfied with the service, you can cancel, so my incentive is to retain you on the grounds of providing good software. And NotePlan is designed in a future-proof way. Your notes are saved as plain text files, you can open them even with TextEdit.
Besides the full-time development of the app, you also get quick, direct support. Try that with most one-time payment software. I sit down and reply to emails every day for 2-3 hours.
Further, your suggested model is not possible with the AppStore. Updates go through without license checks.
> Your notes are saved as plain text files, you can open them even with TextEdit.
Plaintext is worthless if you lack the business-logic used to utilize it. Your vendor lockin is the software itself, it's abilities and the users habits and workflows building on it.
True, it's not a strong lockin, but for 99% of all new users it's the major reason to avoid your software. Which is ok, you should know your numbers best, but you should be also aware that this price-model does kill off your growth completly in the area of casual & random users. So I hope for your your community has enough harddie-fans who will still go with this.
> you also get quick, direct support.
How many percent of the users make even use of this? More than 1%?
> Further, your suggested model is not possible with the AppStore. Updates go through without license checks.
That's not really true, though yes, not possible as directly as described. But there are many ways to reach similar effects even with the app store.
Well, I see I can't convince you. I tried one-time payments already and don't like them as developer, nor user - it's just my opinion. Thanks for sharing your arguments, I guess we can agree that we disagree :)
I thought about it, but one-time payments always have this problem that you need to come up with upgrades to keep the bills paid. And upgrades are in many aspects bad for users and for creators. For upgrades you need to 'save up' features and you need to come up with flashy ones, because bug fixes and improvements are not an incentive to upgrade for many...
Panic has a really nice approach with their Nova app. They keep updating it all the time; you pay once and get free updates for a year. You can choose at checkout time to stay updated for 50% of new-purchase price each year, or you can choose to pay for a new year of updates later on, when/if you need/want it.
https://library.panic.com/nova/purchase-faq/
I think Agenda App and Working Copy do sell through the App Store with the 1 year of features. They don’t do the discount of course like Panic with Nova is doing which indeed isn’t possible in the App Store.
I would be willing to pay the $60, for the app, no subscription. If the app works well, it is mostly bug free, and it runs on the current OS, there is no need to come up with any flashy features. As long as it is kept up to date to continue to run.
If a new version comes each year, I shall buy it as well. I have done that with VMWare Workstation, and Arqbackup, to mention a couple.
Others have face the same problem and solved it by "feature unlocks", i.e. Working Copy (https://workingcopyapp.com/), which sells 1 year "pro" unlocks, and all features released during that year remains active even if you don't renew your pro unlock.
It's not a subscription, as the software will continue to work just fine when the pro unlock expires, but you don't get new features.
This of course puts pressure on the developer to keep coming up with new features, but then again that's the developers job.
