Ask HN: What consumer web apps do people pay for?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2356589

by revorad • 15 years ago

23 26 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

This is something I've been thinking about for some time. Prompted by the discussion on this thread - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2356292 - I thought I should ask the question to you all.

So, what consumer web apps do you or other people you know pay for, for personal use? Not for anything related to work. So, for example, paying for a time tracking app for your freelance work doesn't count.

I feel that consumers don't want to pay recurring fees for software. One-time payments, as in mobile apps, are OK, but asking even $9 per month for a really useful app seems to be hard.

I can only think of a handful of examples. Can you tell me more?

Travis• 15 years ago

I know of non-technical friends and family who use: dropbox, pandora, rdio, one or two w/ 37 signals products. I think many of them would pay for mint. Can't think of too many others.

I agree that people prefer the "buy once" option. Which sucks, because then it doesn't align the developers' interests of new revenue with getting updates pushed out to old users. Retraining users is difficult.

Your best bet may be to calculate your estimated product life cycle, charge that much up front, then giving them access for that amount of time.

bigtech• 15 years ago

This is probably not much help to you, but I pay yearly for Yahoo Mail Plus -- mainly because it allows me to use POP3.

cmontgomeryb• 15 years ago

I didn't know Yahoo charged for this. Any reason you went down this path rather than Gmail, which offers POP3 and IMAP both for free?

wmboy• 15 years ago

I pay for Skype. Almost paid for Grooveshark but in the end decided to stick with the free version.

Good question btw. There are too many ideas for B2C web apps out there where the only hope of making money is from being bought out.

eggbrain• 15 years ago

For me, my thinking on one time fees vs monthly fees comes down to this: Once I buy something, every time I use it decreases the amount of money I spent on it per time I used it. But with monthly payments, every time I don't use it makes it more expensive for every time I use it. The latter forces me to use it more, which is a burden if it is not something I need to have.

I think you'll find that most of the webapps people pay monthly for are those things that they can't get with a one time purchse: generally new content, updated on a regular basis (Newspapers, Music, Movies, Television Shows,etc)

drivingmenuts• 15 years ago

I will agree with this. I would rather pay more up front to use something on demand, than pay what amounts to a rental fee.

Major_Grooves• 15 years ago

I pay for DropBox, but that is almost like a "but once". I currently pay for Spotify but that is only because I am studying a lot at the moment and hate the adverts. I will cancel it for next month but reactivate next time I am studying. I also have money in my Skype account which I use occasionally. I don't think there's anything else I pay for as a consumer.

staunch• 15 years ago

Flickr, Smugmug, Netflix, Dropbox, Skype, eFax, Wordpress, Typepad, Hulu Plus.

In my experience some people can't imagine how willing other people are to pay for things. If you're one of the people that hasn't even bought a $0.99 iPhone app you're very out of touch with a huge segment of the population.

streblo• 15 years ago

Flickr, Github, Linode, Rdio, and a usenet provider. I would pay for gmail if I had to.

pclark• 15 years ago

I pay for: Dropbox, Spotify, Last.FM, CloudApp,

Certainly Spotify and Dropbox are no brainers "need these to live" expenses.

gojomo• 15 years ago

Not exactly web apps, but doing well as subscription services for the home, are the backup services: Mozy, Carbonite.

impendia• 15 years ago

Chess.com.

albahk• 15 years ago

- Smugmug Premium (Photos + HD Video)

- Jungledisk+S3 (for off-site backup)

- Skype minutes

- Pinboard.in (as of 12 hours ago)

Being in a non-US location (Aka "Rest of the world") a lot of online content offerings including iTunes, Netflix and Hulu, are off-limits to me even if I wanted to pay.

seltzered• 15 years ago

pinboard, usenet, and occasionally small community forums. soon picasa web albums, rhapsody, and a vpn provider.

I'll pay for anything that saves me a lot time, has a great interface, and/or replaces something I already use.

I'd consider paying for a very usable todo-list app that synced over dropbox instead of charging me a monthly fee (i.e. remember the milk), and had an amazing user interface over the free google task apps.

I'd also love to pay for mint if it similarly just worked over something more secure/local, and had an open backend (I had accounts that didn't sync at all correctly on mint). Maybe wesabe should be revisited.

not counting vps'es or anything as that's more of a hobby/entrepreneurship thing.

bmelton• 15 years ago

I pay for Freshbooks, Pandora, Grooveshark, Dropbox, Linode, AWS, Flickr, Github. Does Netflix count?

Dramatize• 15 years ago

Dropbox, pinboard & last.fm

jlgosse• 15 years ago

Netflix and Grooveshark

slouch• 15 years ago

and only these two

siglesias• 15 years ago

Squarespace

willheim• 15 years ago

Consumer Apps? There really aren't many out there. The ones that are fall into the new content/entertainment segment of news/music/video, primarily. Everything else has been made free so it can get pretty tough to get people to open their wallets. I know a few who pay for Flickr Pro, netflix, and that's it.

Me - Carbonite, some skype minutes here and there

What could your app possibly do for $108/year ($9/mo) that would be "really useful" to me as a consumer?

worldvoyageur2• 15 years ago

Pricing doesn't have to be rental, or purchase. There is a continuum.

For example, Stardock has made a nice niche for itself in skins for Windows, among other products. Their flaship product, ObjectDesktop, costs something like $50.

For $50, the customer owns a copy of ObjectDesktop forever. Plus, they get a 'free' subscription to all changes and upgrades for a year. After that, the subscription automatically expires. The customer can renew if they like. Customers addicted to downloading the latest tweak or feature discover their subscription has lapsed, then decide to renew. Even if they don't renew, they can still use the software they bought.

Stardock is continually improving the product, adding cool new features, engaging users on its forums etc. etc. I suspect most of their buyers choose to renew their subscriptions, or decide to do so when a particularly neat new feature comes out.

Stardock started in the early 1990s as a university student part-time project and is now a multi-employee operation generating what I imagine is a very nice monthly cash-flow. The owner/founder clearly does whatever the heck he wants while keeping a tight focus on continuing to deliver value for paying customers. No VC money, no angels - just organic growth from revenues.

revorad• 15 years ago

You didn't read my question properly; I'm asking about web apps, not desktop apps.

worldvoyageur2• 15 years ago

Apologies, I'd not meant to appear thick. I'm just suggesting that there need not be a distinction. Pricing innovations in the desktop space can also apply to the web space.

Subscription means you have to convince the customer that enough value is being delivered consistently to make them feel comfortable paying month after month automatically. Single purchase means you only have to convince a customer that value is being delivered right now. The single purchase decision is a much lower decision hurdle.

In the real world, single purchase decisions vastly outweigh subscription purchases in both value and volume. So why do web apps, lemming like, aim at the higher hurdle? As the responses to your question suggest, unless you are netflix that is usually insurmountable. Even well proven physical subscription models (newspapers, magazines) are having a hard time making the subscription model work on-line. Hence the fallback to advertising revenue or hoping to be bought out.

If you can't give the customer something real, tangible and permanent now then you automatically assign yourself the tougher challenge of convincing them that the site will still be around, functioning and delivering value into the future.

Example: $20 gets you into our web app. All your needs met and delivered to you in Excel/OpenOffice/GoogleDocs format...whatever. This is yours to keep forever and you get one year free access to our fantastic service and all its upgrades.

I've a few more specific ideas, but I'm saving them for the day I decide to ditch my life as a well paid corporate drone.

Wait - just thought of another one. Its not on my list, suffers from a need to get physical and has probably already been done, but illustrates that a single purchase, subscription-like model is possible in theory.

webPrint.now Dump a digital image on webPrint.now and we'll get a high quality physical print to you overnight. A gazillion file formats supported. Sizes from tiny to gigantic. [Single purchases, but repeat customers will be the best business.]

alberto_pm• 15 years ago

Spotify, Last.FM, Flickr

focusaurus• 15 years ago

NetFlix, Rhapsody, Linode. If the free versions were not adequate (they are), I'd pay for mint.com, lucidchart.com and OKCupid.com.

paulmwatson1• 15 years ago

Flickr, Last.fm, Pinboard, Instapaper, GAFYD.

I'd pay for DropBox but they keep giving me more space than I need.

Ask HN: What consumer web apps do people pay for?

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