Review by ConsumerAdvocate (dakotad555) at (gmail) dot (com)

The newest trend in software is to sell you a subscription rather than a piece of software that you own and may use as you like. What’s the difference and why is it important? Allow me to explain:nnA subscription is like a lease. You pay a set amount of money either monthly or for one year and gain access to something (an apartment, a piece of software) and may use it for the agreed upon amount of time. Once the lease (or the subscription) is terminated, you LOSE your right to use said item. That might be fine for apartments, but much less so for software. You are beholden to the company that created the software forever. If they decide to STOP making the software, you lose your data, and even more importantly, your ability to access and use your previously collected data. Or at least you might, and that’s a huge risk for something like accounting data. You might be stuck manually entering years worth of data by hand from printed reports (assuming you have them all).

When you purchase something, you have several protected rights. One is the right to use what you purchased however you like and for as long as you like (fair use). You also have the right to sell that thing to someone else (First Sale doctrine). With a subscription you have neither of those things, and the lease or subscription holder can take your ability to use the software away from you any time they like. Perhaps they won’t, but its an undeniable factor that must be taken into account.

All that said, SAGE and QUICKBOOKS use the same model, so you’re not really going to have much choice but to have a subscription if you want a professional accounting software. That’s sad, but true. It wasn’t always this way, and maybe with enough consumer push back, it won’t be this way in the future.