First, a caveat: it would be foolish for me to state categorically that we’ll never move to a subscription model, because I cannot (duh) see the future. It’s possible that one day Apple will switch the App Store to a subscription model. Or it might be that the companies we rely on to provide our store and serial numbers all move to such a model. Perhaps one day it will be the only way we can survive - who knows?
I can say, however, that at this moment in time we have no plans to move to a subscription model. It’s not even something we’ve ever contemplated. None of us are fans of that model - I’m still using an old version of Photoshop, an app I use a lot, just because I haven’t got around to signing up for a subscription. I can - I think - see the attractions of a subscription model: mainly that, as a developer, you have a constant stream of revenue from existing users. However, we are very fortunate in that we have always been profitable. Even at our worst point, where we were throwing money at iOS developers only to have to abandon things and for me to spend six months writing the app myself, we remained more than sustainable. So there has never been any impetus for us to move to a subscription model. Even now, when it’s been seven years since we released our last major macOS update (version 2.0), our sales are - fingers crossed I don’t jinx it! - strong. They increased with our iOS version, and with branching out to sell on the Mac App Store too, and have stayed mostly at steady levels, with predictable peaks and troughs during each year. I’m not going to be buying a mansion on the Riviera any time soon, but all our costs are covered and we make enough profit to invest into the future and to cover us if there are any rough times ahead. I can’t see how we could improve things by moving to a subscription model - I think, for us, the way things are now, we would lose money if we moved to a subscription model.
As a developer, one thing I like about our current model is that I get to say, “This is Scrivener, this is what I’ve developed and this is what you are paying for.” I promise to do my best to update Scrivener and keep it running on each new platform, and anyone who’s been using it for a while knows that we add features and refine it as we go along (admittedly there haven’t been as many big updates in the last year or two as I’ve been focussing on 3.0). I think that with a subscription model, I’d feel obliged to keep adding new stuff to justify the subscription costs. Would users paying a subscription fee be happy with a year in which there are just bug fixes and minor updates as I worked on stability?
Obviously with our pay-per-major-update model we have to rely on constantly bringing in new users, but with a few hundred thousand users I don’t think we are anywhere near market saturation. And fortunately word of mouth, Twitter coverage, courses on Scrivener and so on, keep bringing us enough new users each month. For ten years I’ve been looking at sales expecting them suddenly to dive, a bit like Wesley in the Princess Bride, with the Dread Pirate Roberts saying, “Good night, Westley, sleep well; I’ll probably kill you in the morning.” So far, so good. Maybe if that changes one day we’ll have to consider a different model, but right now it’s working for us.
So no, we have no plans to move to a subscription model. I do wish the Ulysses guys all the best with their decision, though, as they are nice guys and, obviously, every business is different and they have to make the best decision for theirs.
All the best,
Keith