Comments on: New subscription option for Jungle Disk Desktop

By: Martin Baker

Martin Baker — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 15:25:54 +0000

Geez.. I hardly think anyone can blame Jungle Disk for moving to a subscription model. The “buy once and forget” model was clearly unsustainable long term and I can see that the various options were confusing to customers.

By: Roman

Roman — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 09:33:03 +0000

“fair and simple” – and a lot more expensive, too. $20 forever vs. $36 per year is a world of a difference.

So much, in fact, that the new user I was trying to sign up is gone looking elsewhere. The moment you turn off the existing lifetime licenses (which, I’m sure, is only a question of time) the 4 of us here will be gone too.

People hate paying for updates, but I personally hate paying a subscription, because I must pay regardless of whether I use your new features or, in fact, regardless of whether you actually introduce any new features.

By: Jungle Dave

Jungle Dave — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:13:28 +0000

@Aaron – while you have a point regarding accounting rules, that did not enter into the decision to move to subscription licensing, which was a decision made before the Rackspace deal. We’ve already stated our reasons for moving to subscriptions, including simplified pricing, lower cost of entry, and ability to continue offering support and upgrades without charging software maintenance fees. Given that users are already paying for storage on a monthly basis, a reasonable charge for the software seems fair and simple.

By: Aaron CPA

Aaron CPA — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:44:27 +0000

Here’s my perspective: JungleDisk and Rackspace (Publicly Traded Company) aren’t allowed to recognize any revenue on sales of lifetime licenses with free upgrades because of the accounting rules that a publicly traded company has to abide by. So, even though they get the cash up front for the software, because they do free lifetime upgrades, they are never allowed to recognize revenue on their books, and every year their income statement shows a huge loss. Welcome to the world of public companies. They make decisions based on investors rather than customers.

We were considering purchasing several Jungle Disk licenses for our company, but since the lifetime subscription model is gone, we may reconsider.

By: Jungle Dave

Jungle Dave — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 02:25:18 +0000

Curt – upgrades will continue to be free for lifetime users.

By: Curt W.

Curt W. — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:49:19 +0000

I am a long time user with a lifetime license. I haven’t updated since Jungle Disk 2.10. I would like to do so, but I am unclear as to whether or not I will have to switch to the new $2/mo plan. Are previous lifetime users still able to continue using the newer versions of the software without switching to the subscription model? I know that when you first offered this model that was true but haven’t been able to verify that it’s still the case. Thanks!

By: Richard B.

Richard B. — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:47:50 +0000

Further to my previous post…

Effectively, you are penalising users who don’t wish to use “Plus” features. These users will be forced to pay for the development of features they won’t use.

Also, for people who do wish to have “Plus” features, why not reduce their pricing to $1/month after 20 months (ie. once they have paid for the app).

By: Richard B.

Richard B. — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:40:50 +0000

I would also like to see the old lifetime licence brought back. One of the points for removing it was that a lot of the new features required a “Plus” licence. however, people without a “Plus” licence aren’t using any of these new features, so unless some of the original features are removed in the future, then the implementation of these new features wouldn’t affect them.

I find it hard to believe it’s really that confusing, but if it has been, then why not hide a link to buy the lifetime licence on a separate page (eg. this blog entry), and keep the main purchase/pricing pages as they are with the single perpetual licence.

I was considering using JungleDisk, if I could get a lifetime licence, but without it as an option you have lost a customer.

By: Jungle Dave

Jungle Dave — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:14:23 +0000

Marcus – do you consider ongoing support and upgrades important? Subscription or maintenance fees are needed to fund ongoing support and development. Of course our existing lifetime users get support and upgrades forever for free – but consider that your reward as an early adopter!
We could do what many companies do, which is sell you a perpetual license, then charge a percentage every year for support, plus big upgrade fees whenever a new version comes out, but we felt a low monthly subscription fee was a much simpler model.

By: Marcus L

Marcus L — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:12:17 +0000

I’ve bought 2 JungleDisk licenses in the past, one for myself and one for my business. I do not want any of the “Plus” features such as accessing my JungleDisk files over the web, due to the requirement of having to give my Amazon S3 credentials to JungleDisk (which also allow access to my SimpleDB databases & EC2 instances).

For my use-case (and, I suspect, many others) the “perpetual licensing” cost is unjustified as JungleDisk is not providing any additional value for the monthly expense. The option to forgo monthly licensing costs was the primary reason I avoided other services such as Mozy/DropBox/Box.net in favor of JungleDisk.

I strongly recommend JungleDisk to reconsider the decision to remove the “lifetime” license option, as that is the only type of license that I would consider buying, and I can no longer recommend JungleDisk to others with this change in licensing scheme.