I listened to an interview with Greg of SmileSoftware trying to sell users on the model change by using the "snippet sharing" mantra, which for me and many others was a non-starter. Also nowhere in the interview did he mention what limitations of the cloud sharing services (i.e. Dropbox, iCloud, etc) they had hit.

In addition the the unacceptable price increase the biggest downside for me was if for some reason you don't or can't pay the annual subscription, TextExpander would stop working. I am on a fixed income and adding a forced annual expense for a piece of software that I previously could make a decision about upgrading or not was unacceptable.

Before the model change if I decided to not upgrade the software it would keep working and it was in the longterm interest of the company to make it work when a major upgrade broke it. Much to Smile's credit they addressed this by pledging to keep the old version working and reduced the cost of future upgrades. Because our population is aging companies considering a move to a subscription model need to consider before making the switch.

I understand that one of the big reasons for such a model change is to attract more business customers and create a more recurring revenue stream but for this particular product I am not sure that will happen.

sounds like they paid you well ;-p, I'm a bit sad that this blog degenerated into an ad platform and interesting posts became scarce!

I initially paid $27 for TextExpander in 2013. I upgraded in 2015 for $20. That averages out to $11.75 a year. Now Smile (like Adobe) wants me to pay twice as much while telling me it's more affordable. Come on, Emperor, you're naked!

I was initially unhappy about the switch-over to a subscription model, but I quickly came around. I use TextExpander dozens — if not hundreds — of times a day, and it’s worth it.

Sometimes it’s for text that could be done with, say, iOS’s native Text Replacements. Other times it’s dynamic things like the current date or time, but it’s often more complex things like HTML snippets that include clipboard contents, HTML tags, and cursor positioning. Fill-in snippets save me more time than you’d believe.

Recently, I’ve created a small collection of JavaScript-based snippets (with no small help from @ttscoff and this very website) that do Metric/Imperial unit conversions, complete with HTML abbreviations for units and encoded non-breaking spaces. It’s a level of attention to detail that’s only feasible with something like TextExpander.

Every single one of these snippets saves me time and improves consistency in my work.

I realized that nothing else would have all these features I rely on daily *and* have full OS X + iOS compatibility, which is why tremendously-capable tools like Keyboard Maestro or LaunchBar — which I also use and love on my Mac — are out of the running.

I then did a little quick math: the billable hours I’d spend looking for substitutes (then testing and implementing work-arounds to make up for missing features) would pay for several years of TextExpander. The decision to subscribe virtually made itself.

If computers are like bicycles for the mind, as Steve Jobs said, TextExpander is the bicycle for your keyboard.

**I** love TE. Syncing across all my devices (which other app does this?). One Latte M per month for helping Smile to stay in business and maintain this software. And help me typing fast as hell on my mobile devices. I do not even have to think about it.
(sarcasm on) But, of course, in a world where people lament on software for 99ct, Smile has committed at least a major crime. (sarcasm off)

The biggest problem in all of this was probably the lack of communication. Also, the fact that there are no new features worth mentioning in the new version. A toolbar, really? If they'd waited to release value for that new business model perhaps it would have gone differently. At least they did acknowledge their mistake and offer previous customers a deal. Too bad I already switched to Typinator and I'm very happy with it.

I wish everybody were not so anti sub model. it has worked amazingly for Adobe and Microsoft. not just money but fantastic software. Adobe products are so much better now that they can afford to update almost every month. No budgeting for major upgrade hoping you'll get your return in new or upgrade customers, they know there budgets flawlessly so now when they put resources in they know what to expect and it has lead to some epic advancements in CC. I've never like Office but since being forced into 365 with my old company I fell in love with a few things and again that would not be possibly with MS old releasing Office Xyear a year and a half after that year has passed.

TE is easily with $20 a year now how the hell to I get my old snippets in there? Double clicking and drag and drop not working.

I would like to hear what their limitations with iCloud/Dropbox syncing were, since we're essentially talking about synchronizing text files (this is NOT that challenging). Smile has no history, that I'm aware of, of running a cloud service, even one as simple as to synchronize text files, and thus no track record for security or privacy. Do I trust them to house my data? No, thanks.

Second, I'm still not sure why I paid for the TE 5.x upgrade from 4.x. The major selling point of 5.x was the suggested expansions, which I found (much) more annoying than useful. Given an annuity from their users, what incentive do they have to provide new (actually useful) features? I don't share my snippets with anyone other than myself, so that's a non-starter, and downloading a text file of someone else's snippets has worked great for those from which I want to plagiarize.

I've just purchased(!) an aText license for $5, and it appears to do about 80% of what TextExpander wants $20/yr to do (after a significant discount). Whilst I do a few of those features in the 20%, I don't use them enough to justify renting my software or trusting an untested third party with my data.

Smile, you've managed to erode in one week quite a bit of trust, and prompted me to evaluate the most effective way to spend my money.

I can't stand subscription pricing mainly because its painful to reconcile credit card statements. I don't want syncing either. And I can't see how any of the other stuff is worth the money because I still have to pay for IFTTT, Zapier etc.

Not enough to keep me in. Moving to Keyboard Maestro.