> This worked well for nearly a decade but by 2013 the cracks were already showing. By then we had client apps for all platforms, with each one requiring their own separate purchase, often across multiple app stores. And paid upgrades to major new versions were so incredibly painful for everyone involved that we rarely had any.
I think they are being fairly transparent. Starting in 2013 there old business model stopped making sense. They were selling individual products for each platform, while trying to integrate all platforms at the same time. The natural solution was to move to a subscription model for a unified service. This provides a mutli-platform solution and generates a continuous stream of income.
As a consumer, I actually prefer this model for a security app since it means that it will continue to receive regular updates. There is lots of competition in the space of password managers so I am not worried about them increasing the cost of the service to more than a few dollars a month (if they did this I would just switch to another service).
I think they are being fairly transparent. Starting in 2013 there old business model stopped making sense. They were selling individual products for each platform, while trying to integrate all platforms at the same time. The natural solution was to move to a subscription model for a unified service. This provides a mutli-platform solution and generates a continuous stream of income.
As a consumer, I actually prefer this model for a security app since it means that it will continue to receive regular updates. There is lots of competition in the space of password managers so I am not worried about them increasing the cost of the service to more than a few dollars a month (if they did this I would just switch to another service).