Update: Smile Software has heard the uproar and has modified their plan. Now, those who will be upgrading their TextExpander from 5 to 6 will get a special lifetime, lower subscription price of $20 per year or about $1.66 per month. With that you get both the Mac and iOS versions. For less than 2 bucks a month, it's worth considering. I have said in the past that TextExpander is an indispensable utility, but not for $5 per month. An while it's a better deal at less than $2 per month, there aren't many utilities I'd pay that much for. I just hope subscriptions aren't the wave of the future because I don't know how many bites at the apple I can manage every month.
I've been using TextExpander for years, more than a decade. It's a text expansion utility. At its most basic, you type a few characters and it pastes in a longer sentence or paragraph or more. At its most complex, it will trigger a complex script that can do nearly anything. I used to use a snippet that when triggered would create a complex form of show notes for the radio program in which I could just fill in the blanks.
I've also been a dutiful upgrader, purchasing new versions as soon as they were offered. Until now. The makers of TextExpander have switched from a purchase model to a subscription model. Rather than pay a flat fee, users must now pay a monthly fee, starting at $4.95 per month or $47.50 per year. That's a lot of money for a productivity utility. For $10 per month, I can get all of Microsoft Office or Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom, which both used to cost hundreds of dollars each, whereas TextExpander was $37.50 for the desktop version and I think $5 or $10 for the iOS version. In other words, I'm buying the software over and over again every month.
What would I get for my subscription? Well, they're now offering shared snippets for workgroups and organizations. But I have no need to share my snippets with anyone. Okay, they are also offering a Windows version. Interesting, but I'm a Mac and iOS guy. I have no need for a Windows version. Then, they are replacing the current ability to sync snippets among Macs and iOS devices with iCloud or Dropbox with their own homegrown synching service.
But I don't want or need a new synching service. Unfortunately, that's too bad because the old ones won't work and the new one requires the subscription. So, in other words, for my 5 bucks a month, I get no new features, except a synching service that replaces the perfectly good one I already have.
As you might expect, there's a firestorm of irate customers on Twitter. I suspect Smile Software was prepared for that. I don't know if it's enough to cause them to rethink their plans. For my part, I will use the version of the software I currently have until a future operating system updates breaks them. At that point, I'll see what else is out there. Certainly, aText looks promising and it's only $5. Not monthly. Just $5.
Very bummed out to hear this. Would Keyboard Maestro be an alternative (I’ve never used it myself)?
You could in a pinch. It’s a lot more fiddly to setup for simple text replacement and there’s more of a delay between typing something and getting the action you expect. On the other hand, you get a lot of power in Keyboard Maestro. I’ve been using both of them for years.
You’ve probably seen it, but looks like Smile just revised their new subscription model for “Life Hackers” aka Single users, which still maintains sync through iCloud or Dropbox. ~$20 year perpetually, instead of as a one-time discount.
Thanks, Josh. I hadn’t seen that yet. Hmm, $20 per year is about $1.66 per month. I think I can swing that. It seem much more reasonable.