The 1Password Memberships/Subscription Conundrum

Dave Teare, writing about 1Password Memberships:

1Password is what it is today because we all love working here and have fun helping our customers. We are completely self-funded, independent, have turned down all offers from venture capitalists, and our board of directors consists entirely of people who work on 1Password and help customers directly each and every day.

I love indies who make it work, without outside help. That is what we’re doing with our publishing business, and it’s not easy.

Now of course not everyone is on 1Password memberships yet, so we do indeed still work through these issues every day. So it’s not truly a No More list. At least not yet. Still, the number of people on memberships continues to grow every day, so we’re quickly seeing more and more of these bright spots as we move throughout our day.

I am glad the 1Password team has found a pricing model that works for them, but it’s not for everyone.

This isn’t going to happen. First, it would be evil to take away something you’ve already paid for.

I bought 1Password a long time ago. So long ago in fact, that Wi-Fi syncing was still the only option available. I think. Dropbox came later, if I recall correctly. Anyway, I bought a copy for my Mac and both my iPad and iPhone. I might have purchased licenses for some of family members too.

Since then, 1Password has not asked me to pay for an upgrade or added an in-app purchase for new features. Not once. It’s been so many years, I would have happily paid for an upgrade.

And you need not worry about 1Password 7 for Mac, either, as it will continue to support standalone vaults just like version 6 does today.

That’s good to know. But the thing with subscriptions (or memberships, as 1Password calls them)…

I already pay for two iCloud subscriptions (which will soon be upgraded to one 2 TB sub that I will share with my family — we currently have separate 200 GB and 50 GB plans — an Adobe Photographer Plan subscription, a Netflix subscription, a family Apple Music account (which we share between two people, so we’re a long way from the five people limit), an Amazon Prime Video subscription (The Grand Tour), and a few others I can’t recall right now. The thing is, I have already hit the maximum number of subscriptions I’m comfortable with. And I’m not even mentioning paying for my phone, electricity, water, etc. There are perhaps a few apps I would consider subscribing to, if the price was right — Tweetbot is a good example, since there are no real alternatives that I like for both Mac and iOS — but I prefer to buy my software outright. I had no qualms over paying for Affinity Designer and Photo for Mac. Bought the latter for iPad too, and I will purchase the other apps, which are still in the works, without much thought.

I would have paid for 1Password upgrades without thought too. Not much functionality, that I use, was added over these past few years, but I would have upgraded, because I really like the team behind the app. The thing with switching to a subscription model is that 1Password has alternatives, which more or less do the same thing. I feel wrong, writing that I would rather switch, than pay another subscription, but there it is. Unless…

Dear 1Password team,

I’ll use Apple Music as an example. Poland, where I currently live, is priced at 29.99 polish zloty. This is exactly half of what it costs in countries such as the U.K., Germany, France, etc. Before Apple switched us over to the zloty, we paid €4.99 for a single plan and €7.99 for a family subscription. The 50% price cut is based on the simple fact, that Poland (among others with a similar pricing model) is a poorer country and not many can afford to pay the “regular” price of €10 or €15. Other companies also employ a similar strategy for our market.

1Password Memberships are currently priced at $2.99 or $4.99 for the single user and family plans (two people in our case), which is roughly the same in euros. This is simply too expensive. I would consider paying €1 for a single subscription, per month, or €2.5 for a family plan, though it would be cheaper to get just two single subs in this example. €3 would be too high though. But. And this is a big one. I want to sync via iCloud, not through your own syncing service. Or at least have the option to do so.

Please reconsider your strategy. I really don’t want to go looking for alternatives.