Hey Brad, thanks for your response. It's very much appreciated.
First, a small little disclaimer: while we certainly don't agree on some things, my intention is not to pick apart your post or attacking you in any way or form. Furthermore, I'm fully aware that a forum post won't change any of your business decisions, and that's fine. My intention isn't for you guys to change your mind, it was only about giving feedback about my decision for not being a customer any longer. Nothing more, nothing less. The quotes in my response maybe will be a bit out of order - just to keep the context.
We are increasing the velocity at which we output software, Start11 v2 was our first mid-cycle update for that product and the release cadence of Fences is increasing as well (F3 was 2016, F4 was 2021, and F5 is 2023, and we are targeting an F6 in 2024) - moving to this cadence is not a simple process.
None of these decisions were made in a vacuum and we looked at a lot of data to make the decisions that you see today and talked to quite a few customers along the way. For a customer who has typically purchased a new version of Fences the first month it is available, the new model is more cost-effective - we are priced at $10 a year, not a month but a year.
When we knew we would be releasing Fences at a faster rate, we switched to a subscription model back in June while reducing the initial price; Fences was selling for $19.99 for about a year before we moved to the new model. For anyone who purchased after June, they are already ahead as they got F4 and F5 for $9.99 and even if we miss our target of F6 in 2024, they are still even under the last price of $19.99 for the first two years.
But I realize that may not be as obvious today because we are in the very early stages of shipping more frequently but once we continue our cadence, those who want the latest and greatest version of Fences, we believe, will be better off paying $10 a year rather than $20 a release as they had previously done.
And this is basically the issue - you changed your payment/licensing-model before you changed your development/release-model with Fences. It probably would have made more sense to first increasing the output of new versions and then changing to subscription, because then users would know exactly for what they are paying and what is changed in regard to your past development cycle. For now, we don't. We know how it worked in the past and that's all.
If you really trust your process of changing the velocity of the software output and a more agile, flexible and faster development, and really wanted some reliable revenue stream, there would be other more consumer-friendly options, too. For example, like someone else here already said: you could have offered a subscription, even to a slightly higher price, maybe even 20 bucks for an upgrade, which lasts for a year, but let the user keep the last version of their subscription period if they are not renewing. This is the only case I personally would consider a subscription for Fences. If you are sure about you can bring enough meaningful features that they will renew or "not cancel", this shouldn't be an issue.
And if not, well... than the changes probably didn't cut it, but then, even with the current model, subscribers will probably unsubscribe at some point (yeah, may take a while, people are lazy and probably don't care enough about 10 bucks)
But back to the permanent license upgrade or the lack there of... if all of this was a decision with also consumers in mind, it should also be their decision to "pay more". If someone would like to pay, let's say 15 EUR for a "version upgrade" and it only lasts for 10 months, because then Fences 6 is released, it should be still their choice as long as they know what they are getting and know that a subscription can be a "cheaper" alternative. Actually, that would - contrary to what you did for now - actually be a valid and real pro-argument for the subscription, because what we have now is basically "subscribe" or "get the worst non-upgrade upgrade-option possible".
That being said, as a sidenote: I already had upgraded to Fences 4 before subscriptions were a thing and it costs me 8 EUR back then. So I got a permanent license for less than the upgrade subscription cost for one year now. But that isn't really the point... the point of all of this is still: why isn't there a fair offer for the permanent license upgrade? I don't ask for 8 bucks or even 10 bucks... but for a reasonable price for an upgrade. Nobody wants the subscription be gone and if the consumers you talked to were fine with the subscription model, they will probably subscribe - and there would be no harm in offering a real upgrade option as an addition to that for users who don't. I mean, from that perspective, we want to pay more voluntarily, and if this "but the subscription also has a better value for the consumer"-thing is true, there is no drawback for you in letting us doing so.
And for everyone who is on Fences 4 and says they will never upgrade, that's perfectly fine! We know that not every single release will attract a 100% upgrade rate and we still have active customers using Fences 2. But we hope that we can continue to build new functionality and maybe in the future, we will have enough packed into the product that you feel it's worthwhile to grab another permanent license or if we have proven that annual releases are a good value, you try that out too.
But you sadly made exactly this a "bad idea". Even if I wanted to buy a new permanent license, even if I would pay the - in my opinion unreasonable - 35 EUR it would cost me right now, that just isn't a price I would pay again and again for every new version. Not with the "old release cycle", especially not with the intended new one. That's an amount of money I pay once for such a tool - and even then only if I know I'll get the upgrades on a fair discount. I never would have paid the full price for Fences if there weren't discounted upgrades considering we often need these upgrades for compatibility with new OS versions. This tool has, I said that already, a clear feature set... there is no realistic way you can "add" something reasonable and meaningful (but still within the scope of the tool) to any version of it which will make me feel okay to spend 35 EUR again and again every 10 months, 8 months, 16 months or whatever your increased output will end in. You made these permanent licenses - at least for private consumers (it's a whole different thing with licensing on business consumers, I know) - just an, sorry for being blunt here, incredible dumb thing to buy. Intentionally so, I might add. And I mean: dumb thing to buy for everyone, not just existing customers, because at some point after some Windows update everyone will need an updated version for this software to continue to work, no matter if they are interested in new features or not. And they will only get it for full price - or by an active subscription.
I resisted writing any of this for a while as this does nothing but open us up to additional attacks as the arguments get picked apart but maybe this will help provide some insight. We aren't a giant evil corporation, we want to keep building more, better, and faster, and we are transitioning into a team that can do just that.
Again, thank you for writing it anyway. I hope my response to it was at least fair.
On a more personal note: I - and I don't talk here for anyone but myself - use only the "core"-part of Fences feature set. I need folder portals, I need basic fences, I need the roll-up-feature and I need sorting rules. That's it. I never used the "desktop-pages"-function of Fences, I never used a single hotkey in Fences, I never used Quick-Hide, I never used Peek and I barely use even the customization (I change the transparency for the Fences globally and sometimes change a title color, but that's it). So, with that said... I usually upgrade to the newest version of Fences solely for compatibility.
With the two major new features of Fences 5, this wouldn't be any different. You enhanced Peek, which I, even knowing it's there and how it works, already never use in Fences 4 and you implemented something called Chameleon. Even after reading everything about it on the website, I don't even understand fully what the latter does. I could already change the transparency of icons in Fences (including the option to disable transparency on mouse-over) and - besides the reason I use fences to not have icons outside of fences - I could easily change the general transparency of desktop icons for MANY years now with many other tiny tools. So, yeah, probably nothing for me - I'm fine.
That for sure doesn't mean that you guys couldn't implement something I really want to use in the future (I mean, for example, dockable roll-up/slide-out fences for the left and the right side of the desktop with a then vertical aligned title bar are the next logical step for years by now, because they would just complete a feature we already have for years) - but for quite some time, this just wasn't the case.
I basically paid for Fences 4 for just being able to use it under newer versions of my operating system without any compatibility issues and this probably would be the same with Fences 5 or whatever version is current when the next major Windows update breaks things again.
I'm fully aware that there is need for the features I personally don't use by other customers - but maybe this makes it a bit more clear and adds to my previous statement why I don't see much worth in a subscription in my use case and I won't pay 35 EUR to "upgrade". Ever.
Or... since I own two Fences 4 licenses (because of the stunt you guys already pulled with the release of Fences 4 regarding multi-device activations) - 70 EUR! Heck, if you continue to be totally "not evil" the way you are doing it right now, we probably have to pay per fence when Fences 7 is around. Just kidding... or am I? I'm totally fine with paying good money for good software... but this has started to get totally out of control and for me, the better option is to adjust to work without Fences at all than to wait for whatever stuff you try to pull here next. While your software is still great and reliable, the way you do business just isn't anymore.
