Subscription fatigue and related musings

I’m still using the previous version. I really love its design and functionality, but no more subscriptions for me, sorry.

This is an App Store review of an app I, too, have been using on my iOS devices for years. I have translated the review because it only appears on the Spanish App Store. The ‘previous version’ the reviewer refers to is the last version of the app to use the ‘free with in-app purchases’ model. Since then, the developer has switched to a ‘free with strict limitations unless you subscribe’ model.

(In this piece I won’t mention any app or developer specifically because I don’t want to point fingers and single out people or apps. My criticism is focused on certain practices, and I simply want to look at things from a customer’s perspective.)

For the past few years, my purchases in the App Stores (iOS and Mac) have been rapidly slowing down to a trickle. The main reason is saturation. I’ve been using iPhones since 2008, and the first years since the App Store started operations were rather wild. I remember constantly hunting for cool apps to add to my device, especially photo apps. I remember getting to a point where I had more than 40 different photo apps, and sometimes I was missing a crucial snapshot because I couldn’t decide which photo app to shoot with.

But obviously, sooner or later, we all reach a stage where we feel we have all the apps we need. Occasionally there’s a new entry in a certain category which looks and feels better than one of our favourite apps, and so we try it out and stick with it if it’s worthwhile. Other times something happens in the tech world that creates an interest in a new area, like what’s happening now with [airquote] AI [airquote], which spawns a new category of apps to check out. Or a particular platform loses popularity (Twitter) and another gains interest (Mastodon) and we see dozens of new clients pop up everywhere. And so forth. You get the idea: I still browse the App Store every so often, but the platform is quite mature now in terms of app selection, so I’m not constantly looking for something new like I used to back in, say, 2010–2012.

But I do routinely check the App Store. And today, whenever I find something of interest, 8 times out of 10 the app requires a subscription to function at its best, or even to function at all.

If you’ve been visiting the App Store for as long as I have, you’ll certainly be familiar with the expression race to the bottom. If you look for the definition on the Web, you’ll likely encounter serious economic explanations like this one from Investopedia: The race to the bottom refers to a competitive situation where a company, state, or nation attempts to undercut the competition’s prices by sacrificing quality standards or worker safety (often defying regulation), or reducing labor costs. A race to the bottom can also [occur] between governments to attract industry or tax revenues.

What happened in the App Store that created a ‘crisis’ in the pre-in-app purchases and pre-subscriptions era wasn’t so stark; the race to the bottom there simply meant that, in an effort to be competitive and drive purchases, developers kept lowering the price of their apps to an unsustainable level (for the developers). Customers were happily buying apps priced at $1.99 or $0.99, but in the medium-to-long term it wasn’t really sustainable for the developers, except for those rare exceptions where an app sold literally millions of copies. Smaller developers with more modest success were finding themselves in a bit of a predicament. Sure, their app’s low price had attracted enough customers to make a good launch in the App Store, but as interest and visibility waned, and with Apple taking its 30% cut of the pie, they realised that what was gained barely covered the cost of development (at best). Plus, the app may need further adjustments and fixes, as bugs and issues could appear down the road. And for how the App Store works, customers sort of expected free updates.

The most deleterious effect of this race to the bottom within the App Store has been software depreciation. If you accustom people to obtain great-quality apps for a couple of dollars or less, many customers will keep expecting the price of most software and apps to be this low. It’s a vicious circle that’s hard to free yourself from.

Again, before in-app purchases and subscriptions, if a small developer wanted to try and return to a more sustainable situation, at that point their options were quite limited — also due to the App Store’s inherent rigidity:

Raise the price of the app for new customers.

Release a paid major update of the app.

In an ideal world, both sound like reasonable options, and I saw a few developers choose either of them. But it was hard. Hard because in a sea of $0.99 apps, your app that now costs e.g. $6.99 makes people raise an eyebrow and go, What’s so special about this one? I’m sure I can find an alternative for less money. Hard because, in the case of the paid major update, most people’s attention stops at paid instead of at major update. So, unless the paid major update was accompanied by verbose release notes or blog posts on the developer’s website explaining all the new features in detail, and explaining why it was worth the money and the new asking price, people were averse to the proposition. All too often, developers choosing this path were considered ‘greedy’. Not by tech enthusiasts or pundits, who better understood what was happening behind the scenes, but by the general public, which by then was accustomed to having great apps on their devices for pennies, and updated for free.

In-app purchases and now subscriptions have seemingly managed to make the situation for developers better than it used to be back in the era of the ‘race to the bottom’, and part of me is okay with that, because I know and understand that developing a good-quality app for any platform today is no small feat.

But as of late I keep seeing a significant abuse of the in-app purchase and subscription systems, to the point of becoming a customer-hostile and extortionate practice.

For certain apps, the situation is almost completely opposite to what it was back in the ‘race to the bottom’ era: we have mediocre or good-enough apps asking $5 to $10 monthly subscription fees. We have apps that, while good, still ask steep monthly or yearly fees without offering a paid-upfront option. Then we have apps that do provide reasonable subscription fees, but punish customers who would prefer a one-time payment option by offering one-time prices that are so artificially high that you’ll want to opt for a subscription. Again, I understand the costs of development, but eighty euros as a one-time purchase option for a photo app with basic editing features and a bunch of filters? Come on. Maybe some people will cave and give you the 5.99 euros/month you’re asking. Me, I’ll look elsewhere. Not because I’m a cheapskate, because I really am not — I’ve been paying for software since it came in boxes and physical media — but because I truly despise these tactics. It’s like we’ve gone from a race to the bottom to a race to the top.

I am actually surprised that the subscription method has worked so well for many developers. Maybe this is really working for that selection of ‘good guys’ providing truly essential apps for reasonable subscription fees. And I’m happy for them, of course. But I genuinely don’t know for how long subscriptions in general will remain successful:

For one, subscription fatigue is real. A lot of people already pay monthly fees for several services that may be considered ‘essential’ today, like cloud services, music streaming services, entertainment channels. Now that an increasing number of apps — sometimes even one-purpose little utilities — offer no other choice than a subscription, a lot of people are realising that they simply can’t afford to subscribe to everything. Sure, there are a lot of apps asking very reasonable monthly fees, and that’s fine when taken individually, but cumulatively this becomes unsustainable for the regular customer rather quickly.

Secondly, but not less important, all those developers (and let’s don’t mince words, all those scammers) who are abusing the in-app purchase and subscription systems with extortionate prices in exchange for basic, mediocre features, are ultimately giving subscriptions a bad reputation. And I hope this doesn’t end up hurting all the good and honest developers out there. There are still people falling for App Store scams, but there’s also an increasing number of people who are getting suspicious of subscriptions on principle (I’ve been getting a lot of emails in recent times from people asking me things like, I’d like to get this app but it’s subscription-only. Do you know this dev? Should I trust them? or I want to try this app, but I don’t want to be scammed. They offer a free trial period. Is it easy to cancel everything if I don’t want to commit?)

Thirdly, there’s another thing I’ve noticed. And it got my attention only because of some feedback received via email, so I don’t think it’s a widespread issue, but I feel it’s still worth a mention. In a few emails I received from readers of my blog or followers on social media, I was told that they were considering cancelling their subscriptions to certain apps because — after a year or more — they didn’t feel that the developer had made good on their initial promise of keeping the app bug-free or adding ‘new exciting features’ down the road. In one particular case, my interlocutor was rather upset that, and I quote, for the past 14 months the only new thing I’ve seen from this app was a .0.1 update with minor cosmetic fixes and pretty much nothing else. I kinda feel robbed even if it’s not one of those fraudulent apps I sometimes read in the tech news.

Late last year I exchanged a few emails with a developer I collaborated with by helping out with their app’s localisation. On the subject of subscriptions (they have subscription plans, rather fair for what they offer), they told me something along the lines of, Well, at least now consumers have a clearer idea when it comes to software value… And my reaction was, Do they, really? I think they are bombarded with so many different value/price propositions they end up having no real clue. They start considering that, for instance, Spotify Premium costs them 10 euros/month in exchange for unlimited access to a vast library of music; that a Dropbox Plus plan gives an individual 2 TB of cloud space, unlimited device linking, plus other handy features for 12 euros/month; that a Netflix Basic plan gives them unlimited access to ad-free movies and TV series in HD for 8 euros/month… Then we have this photo app that (I’m not kidding) gives you unlimited save & export only if you pay 10 euros/month (but it was 12 euros/month a few weeks ago). What kind of ‘clearer idea’ about software value do we expect a regular consumer to have at the end of the day?

My impression is that people have no other choice than put up with what the App Store throws at them. I’m sure that some have understood that those prices they used to pay some years ago were simply too low to be sustainable in the long run, and they’re happy to support their favourite apps or developers by starting a subscription. But I really wish more people would come to a better understanding of how much a piece of software costs to make, and its overall value, through a more nuanced education than, Either subscribe to this app for $7/month or $75/year, or pay a one-time price of $99, or look elsewhere. I wish we could have avoided going from one extreme — great apps at ludicrously low prices — to the other — great and not so great apps with subscription plans that more often than not don’t feel particularly fair.

I’m not putting the entire weight of my criticism on developers’ shoulders, don’t get me wrong. With Apple still wanting (for the most part) their 30% cut, with the utter joke that is Apple’s review system, and with the clunkiness that still bafflingly plagues the whole process, developers do what they can to stay in business in an environment that should celebrate them instead of thwarting them. But as a customer, the current situation of ridiculous in-app purchases and subscription plans, and tactics that discourage one-time purchases to push me toward subscribing, do not make me a happy shopper.

I’m subscribed to a few services that I feel provide me with a fair amount of benefits for the asking price. But I still view the majority of apps as products, not services. So while I understand that services require periodic payments to sustain the costs of the constant maintenance and provision of such services, products are things one should purchase and own. They’re not services in need of constant maintenance to operate.

Whenever I say I very much prefer paying a fixed amount upfront, and being quite open to purchasing a paid update down the road, typically many are quick to point out that, by subscribing to the app, I’d be doing essentially the same thing: If you’re willing to pay $10–15 upfront for App X and then pay another $10–15 for App X 2.0 a few months later, then why aren’t you willing to subscribe to App X for $1.99/month? Isn’t it the same thing, in the end? It may be the same thing from a financial standpoint, sure. But it’s not the same when it comes to the options and choices I am given.

When I have the choice of making a one-time purchase for $10, I express my commitment to what I have before my eyes. When a new, improved version of the app comes out, I may choose to delete the older version and buy the new one for another $10 or I may decide to skip the new version and keep using the old one (in my case, this is hardly due to me not wanting to spend another $10, but more like me disliking the redesigned UI that often reshuffles interface elements unnecessarily and messes with my muscle memory). But at least I’m getting to keep the old version, as unsupported as it may get. This is not the same as starting a monthly subscription then cancelling it when the app changes in ways I don’t like, or for whatever other reason. And that’s because in most cases, when you cancel a subscription, either you stop having access to the ‘premium’ features you were paying for, or the app stops working altogether.

But suppose, for the sake of argument, that one is okay with whatever kind of subscription is thrown at them. Suppose one is okay with subscribing to every app that offers them a minimum of utility. How many subscriptions are you willing to start? How many subscriptions before things start getting a bit too much? At what point, after looking at your bank statement at the end of the month, do you draw the line? In the days of the race to the bottom in the App Store, things quickly became unsustainable for many developers. Now the scenario has changed in such a way that things can become unsustainable for many consumers probably just as quickly. And again, there are a lot of happy customers who have no problems subscribing to apps they love or that they find essential for their workflows. But I also wonder how many of those customers are not giving money to other apps they might enjoy because they had to make a decision and choose to invest only in some apps and not in others as well. (See the App Store review I quoted at the beginning).

I have no real solutions to propose because I’ve probably missed a few things in my analysis (not that it is a simple situation to analyse, mind you). The changes I’d love to see sound perhaps too idealistic, but I think it could be great if we could go back to an App Store that is more focused on purchases rather than subscriptions. One-time purchases at more realistic prices, with an easy way of offering paid updates for subsequent major app releases, and more meaningful, less nickel-and-diming in-app purchases. A fairer system focused on app purchases would also be less exploitable than a subscription system, less prone to abuses and fraud. I also wish Apple did better at detecting scam apps and subscription schemes, and made the lives of legitimate developers easier after years of jumping through stupid hoops and being subjected to a volatile and seemingly random app review process.

Subscription fatigue and related musings was first published by Riccardo Mori on Morrick.me on 26 February 2023.