On TextExpander 6 and Subscription Pricing
In case you don’t know, Smile Software just released a major update of TextExpander, and it is a big one, in ways you would not expect. The app is now packaged as a service, with a $4.95 subscription. Understandably, this made for some unhappy people (including myself).
After stepping away from the computer for a minute and enjoying a morning coffee, I began to see where smile was coming from.
We went big evolving the new TextExpander to do something it couldn’t before. Our past approach of pursuing mostly incremental improvements via major upgrades on a 12-24 month schedule was not healthy for the ongoing future of TextExpander.
As I’ve learned, writing software that does even anything of slight value is hard, especially when there are limited resources, little time, and high pressure. We really do take good developers for granted, and Smile has some good developers that make a useful tool.
Once I have some products to show for all my toil, I might want to at least partially test out going indie. For most people, it’s unimaginable to have an inconsistent income that hinges on the success of major releases. Such burst-income isn’t comforting when starting a family and settling down or trying to pay rent.
…while TextExpander may lose me as a customer over this, the people who do become monthly subscribers are going to be more engaged, more devoted customers. Which is undoubtedly a good thing. Whether they get enough of these subscribers to sustain their business is the big variable. I wish them all the best.
At first look, TextExpander’s newest update felt like highway robbery. I’ve been a supporter for years, and it didn’t sit well 1 However, there are many alternatives that won’t break the bank. Nonetheless, TextExpander has by far the most polished experience.
As for the actual update itself, there are some new things that took more than a few months to develop. With the in-house service, you can view and edit your snippets in browser (though I’m not sure why you’d want to do that).2 Although of no use to me (yet), there’s sharing for teams with a team subscription. Interface-wise, they have overhauled the snippet editor with some dropdown menus that make it easier to find special TextExpander tokens.
I’m going to give version 6 a month’s trial for now. A couple months ago I’ve began to really dig into the app, and I’m hoping to use more cross-platform JavaScript snippets.
- <p>In some ways, this says more about me than it does about them. <a href="#fnref1:1" rev="footnote" class="footnote-backref">↩</a></p>
- <p>The Meteor-based web app is really something to look at! <a href="#fnref1:2" rev="footnote" class="footnote-backref">↩</a></p>