Yeah, but between a that and everybody wanting a subscription fee (or continue putting up with ads) it feels like death by 1000 small cuts. You keep trying to minimize the impact, and no, I don't want everything for free, but it all just seems too much for me. Everybody and their uncle Pete either billing you or (worse) hooked in to you bank account and debiting it when they get ready.While I largely agree with many of the SaaS concerns posted here, I'd like to offer an alternative perspective that may apply to some situations.
I'm actually onboard with Office365 these days. Note, I use it as installed on my PC and not solely through the webapp. While I've long preferred the full license, lasts forever approach, the SaaS implementation works well for my family. I've got 4 people that need to use the software across at last count 7 machines. Individual licenses for each of those PCs would be expensive and frankly I'd have to maintain all that and deal with the need to move from one PC to the next every now and then. As I've got it now, my single $99/year subscription covers I think up to 5 people on as many PCs as they need to use. And we all have it installed, so we aren't dependent on connectivity and we are immune to the web outages like were reported earlier in this thread. None of us really use the paired OneDrive; we just save files locally. Works well, is easy to maintain, and is cost effective.
Similarly I have some paid Android apps that I use a fair amount that are subscription services. I've had plenty of apps where the designer makes it a one time fee, then a year realizes their business model doesn't work and the app goes away. A reasonably priced subscription-based app that does something I want, and lasts since it has a functional business model, is better than a pay-once app that then dies when the developer stops working on it.
So, my point being, SaaS isn't ALL bad.
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