RayRippey

If I may, I'd like to give my humble opinion on some of the differences between subscription and purchased software, and why you might want to make sure your software company is doing well. First, if a software company doesn't have some kind of recurring income from their customers, they will soon go the way of the dodo bird. 1) Subscriptions give the software company a nice steady income, and the customer really has more of a voice, because subscription based software companies do not want to lose subscription based customers.. they all add up. 2) Purchases allow the software company to make a one time amount of money, but in order to support said software, they must charge an annual support fee of some kind. The problem here of course, if the software is very good and the customer doesn't think he/she needs support, then the software company will get no recurring income. A company can literally program themselves right out of business. So for the customers, purchases can seem like a very good way to go, but if your software company is gone because you purchased no more support, then you get to eventually go out and buy new software. If you are subscribing you have a much better chance the software company will be there for years to come. Software companies that excel are the ones that are constantly adding new features to the program. This keeps customers interested in keeping up to date, and the expanding possibility of new customers. As was mentioned in this topic, once a program is done... and there is the problem, a software program is never done. There are industry changes, customers want this and that, the operating systems change (How fast did we go from Windows 7 to Windows 10?). We have been working on our program (Digital Wrench) for about 3 years now, and there is no stopping the requests. Of course no matter what, you must make sure the software you are looking at has the features you need. But if your software company is done writing the software, what's going to happen when that new feature everyone else has, will not get added to your software? Software is more of a service than a product, and all software companies know this. Of course, I can completely understand why you might not want to pay every single month with no way out. In that case, see if you can subscribe, then purchase later. You really should have a choice, but some companies really can't afford to give you that kind of a choice. (Shameless plug: We do!) Another thing you might want to look at is if your software has an export capability to export at least your customers and inventory, should you decide to change to another company. It is your data, make sure you can keep it. Ray Rippey Digital Wrench Repair Software www.workordersoft.com

And, make sure your software can do those important marketing strategies. Plus, actually answer the phone. I can tell you that there are a lot of shops that don't answer their phone ( I know because we call them on our follow up calls when they download our software .. of course maybe it's just us But there are a lot of businesses that just don't answer the phone. People are always surprised when we answer our phone. And I'm always pleased to find out the other software companies don't answer theirs.... uh oh, just gave away our secret to success

If you get a negative review, do not ignore it. Sign in to the website where the review is, and respond to it. Give your side to the story... you can turn it around with the truth. You can't please all the people all the time, although we all try. I've heard of companies hiring people to give them good reviews and fighting bad reviews, and it comes back around and bites them. :-0