TreeSize will not renew perpetual-license help until customers subscribe

Making these accessible for obtain indefinitely and with out restriction is one thing we think about a danger to our prospects, significantly in enterprise environments. There’s additionally the technical and organizational overhead of sustaining and supporting previous variations and their related keys indefinitely.

Though TreeSize says this can be a long-standing coverage, the backlash highlights the disconnect between what many individuals count on when shopping for a perpetual license and what they get when a software program vendor shifts its enterprise mannequin towards subscriptions.

“To verify prospects aren’t caught off guard, we proactively notify them by electronic mail, nicely earlier than their upkeep ends, to again up their set up file and license key themselves. That is meant to make sure nobody loses entry to software program they’ve already bought,” Christ mentioned.

Ought to this be a subscription?

There’s additionally the query of whether or not it is sensible to subscribe to a disk house analyzer, particularly when there are free alternate options like WinDirStat.

Christ admitted that the change has been “irritating for some prospects.” When requested about on-line requests for refunds, Christ mentioned, “since our prospects do obtain what was agreed, specifically indefinite use of the software program model they bought, we don’t think about a refund to be warranted…”

A free model of TreeSize exists, however it lacks some options, together with the flexibility to seek for duplicate recordsdata, deduplicate redundant recordsdata, and examine disk house utilization over time. It isn’t for enterprise use.

TreeSize’s evolution illustrates the rising subscription economic system, significantly the software program business’s fixation on recurring income. Over the previous decade, software program distributors have more and more shifted to subscriptions in pursuit of extra predictable income streams.

In TreeSize’s case, JAM Software program needed to “proceed providing our prospects a related, well-maintained product over the long run,” Christ mentioned.

“The broader financial setting is more difficult as we speak than it was a number of years in the past, and we really feel that too as a software program vendor,” he added. “To proceed assembly our personal requirements and our duty to enterprise prospects who depend on high-quality software program, we’re inserting higher emphasis on predictability in improvement and help. A subscription mannequin offers us that predictability in a method one-time purchases don’t.”