How Designing Tools Charge Us?

The age of information has changed our way of living and work. We give more and more credits to a variety of tools and complete our work relies on them. Hence, it is reasonable that we have paid tools now. And, of course, they have different payment strategy. In this article, let's talk about how they charge us.
At present, there are three commonest kinds of payment strategy in the market, no matter desktop tools or web apps: volume, subscription, and perpetual license. What's more, we have another example: unlimited perpetual license.

Volume:

Many web client tools may choose this way to charge us. The volume here is not just refers to the number, it also represent the room and flow. This strategy has a clear strength, it gives users enough space to control thier cost. By the volume they use, the users will be divided into different levels, and they will be charged according to the level. On the other hand, this strategy also has short comings. One of them would be lacking user viscosity. For example, when I'm using a cloud sever, even though the original one is safe and stable, I still might try other platforms and look for a cheaper offer.

Subscription:

It seems that designing tools prefer to charge us in this way, such as Mockplus, Justinmind. Axure used to have the license, but at the end of 2016, it not just enhance the ability of being cracked, but also opened the door of subscription. Comparing with charging by volume, this way is more beneficial to consolidate the number of users, and enlarge the scale. But, in the short term, it might be not that obvious. Somehow, these kind of problems can be fixed with providing free trial. Axure and Justinmind offer a 30 days trial. As a tool has both free and pro version, Mockplus still offers 2 weeks free trial.



Perpetual License

For the stable users, the perpetual license is a good choice for them. Literally, perpetual license means that you don't need to pay for further versions or updatings after you have made the purchase. But, in fact, there's hardly a tool which is doing this. Most of the perpetual license are relatively perpetual. Such as the balsamiq, you can buy a balsamiq mockups 3 and use it forever, but once you want to use the next version, you need to pay. This payment strategy is not friendly to the new users, but, for developers, this perpetual license can help them to recollect the money and give them a stable number of users.



Unlimited Perpetual License:

However, someone starts to be creative. Mockplus was just providing an annual subscription, but now, it has the Unlimited Perpetual License. This is a really rare payment strategy. If you have purchased this license, you don't need to pay any further fee to update or get a new version of this tool. It is the real perpetual license in some way. Although, it may seem not profitable to sever the users with this license for the rest of thier life. But, this strategy will definately bring more valuable users. It is creative and helpful. Maybe this is the way of Mockplus being different and useful.



In a conclusion, different products have different strategy. Even though, this is just a way of charging, some people still can make a break through and even make a brighter future.

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