Adobe Photoshop used to cost 999 euros. You bought it, installed it, and used it for years. Today you pay 35 euros a month—or you don’t use it at all.
This isn’t an isolated case. It’s a model.
What Has Changed
Buying software as a one-time purchase was a transaction: money in exchange for a product. What happened afterward was up to the buyer. Updates were optional. The version from three years ago still worked. You had a tool in your hands.
Software by subscription is an ongoing relationship on the provider’s terms. Prices change. Features disappear or are added—whether you want them or not. Google Workspace integrates Gemini into every plan and raises the price. Microsoft 365 gets Copilot, also included, also more expensive. AI integration is not an offer—it’s a fact that you pay for.
If you cancel, you lose access to your own data. Or at the very least, you have to export it first, in formats that aren’t always open.
The difference isn’t the payment model, but two questions: What happens to my data when I stop paying? And who decides what the product will be tomorrow?
The Real Problem Isn’t the Price
The monthly amounts are manageable on their own. The problem is the structure behind them.
A subscription means the provider continuously decides what the product is. Not just once at the time of purchase, but constantly. What works today may become a paid feature tomorrow. What is included today may become a separate package tomorrow. You’re not paying for a tool—you’re financing a platform whose development you don’t control.
Then there’s the dependency. After working with a subscription service for three years, your data is there, your workflows are built around it, and your team knows the interface. Switching is possible, but expensive—in time, not money. The providers know that.
What Works Instead
Software that you operate yourself follows different rules. It doesn’t become more expensive overnight. It doesn’t integrate AI features without asking. It doesn’t discontinue a service because user numbers aren’t high enough.
That doesn’t mean self-hosting is free—servers, time, and maintenance all cost something. But it does mean having control over what runs, which version, and with which data.
Nextcloud instead of Google Drive. Your own mail server instead of Google Workspace. Gitea instead of GitHub. No monthly bill that changes. No feature bundle you never ordered.
The effort is real. The only question is this: would you rather pay with money and control, or just with money?
