Ulysses Mac 1024Ulysses, the company behind the popular Ulysses writing apps for Mac, iPhone, and iPad, today announced that it is transitioning to a subscription model going forward.

Starting today, Ulysses will be priced at $4.99 per month or $39.99 per year, with a subscription plan unlocking Ulysses for use on all devices. Ulysses is also offering a student plan with six months of access for $10.99, and there are now two-week free trials available.

With a subscription model, Ulysses says the company will be able to do steady, small releases more often, focusing more on the needs of the user base rather than aiming for big updates to lure in new customers.

Co-founder Max Seelemann about the new subscription model: "This step was necessary to put Ulysses' future development on a solid foundation. We weighed several alternatives -- paid updates among them -- and concluded that the subscription model, as it is available with the App Store since 2016, is best suited to meet both our customers' needs and our needs as developers."

To encourage existing customers to switch over to the new subscription model, Ulysses is offering a permanent life-long discount on the yearly plan, dropping the price from $40 per year to $30 per year (50% off a monthly subscription).

Customers who recently purchased Ulysses for Mac can get up to 12 months of free use, while customers who have purchased the app on an iOS device can get up to six months of free use based on grace periods calculated from the date of purchase. Ulysses plans to inform customers about the offers from within the app.

The single-purchase versions of Ulysses have been removed from sale but will remain functional. The apps are updated for High Sierra and iOS 11, but going forward, new features will only be added to the subscription versions of the apps.

Ulysses for Mac can be downloaded from the Mac App Store for free. [Direct Link]

Ulysses for iOS can be downloaded from the App Store for free. [Direct Link]

Tag: Ulysses

Top Rated Comments

adamjackson Avatar
107 months ago
via the Ulysses Blog:

A tiny bit of history
Software purchases used to be very different from how they are today. Until not too long ago, you would purchase an application and get a physical copy on a bunch of floppies (or later a CD). The thing you got — that was it. No patches, no updates. Developers had to put forward an extreme amount of attention to get everything right, because once an app was out, development had to be done.

And that’s also what you paid for: A finished product. Essentially, you paid the development time spent up until the app’s release. New features were then delivered via a new version, and you had to pay again, if you wanted that new version.

Things changed with the advent of the internet, of course. As soon as we had dial-up connections, developers could offer small patches to fix issues that were found after shipping. And once broadband connections were ubiquitously available, larger and more frequent patches were possible. At first, these resulted in new features being added on-the-fly, but it quickly evolved into issuing more and more substantial patches — until today, where most v1.0s are mere sketches of a future product.


I disagree with the way things are today completely. I'm sick and tired of paying $70 for AAA Video games that spend the next 6 months patching bugs and AI issues long after I've beaten the broken game that shipped with thousands of bugs or the balls for that dev to charge me $50 in DLC to get all of the stuff they wanted to ship with the game.

The issue is compounded with Software where developers are shipping (to use Ulysses' words) "where most v1.0s are mere sketches of a future product." This also is ********. Just like when I bought a packaged version of Roxio Toast or Microsoft Office or iDVD back in 2001 and had a full expectation that every feature worked without having to call the developer to pay S&H to get them to mail me an updated version that works, I feel the same way about apps today.

Ship 1.0 feature-complete. Work on 2.0 and charge me an upgrade fee. Don't ship software until its done. If someone else beats you to market, you ship later but better than them because you took the time to perfect things.

Subscriptions are not the way you afford to release "1.0s that are mere sketches"

If your application isn't ready, don't ship it. I would greatly prefer to receive a new piece of software every 18 months that's feature complete and nearly bug-free (no software has 0 bugs). The only reasonable expectation I have in the Internet age is that developers patch security bugs, bugs that would cause instability of your app and file corruption on my computer. If your app works without any security issues, don't update anything and save it for 2.0 when I have to pay another $50 to have the latest version.

--

Imagine buying Roxio Toast and installing it and going to burn a DVR-RW and Roxio says "Coming soon, DVD-R only. Write us an email with a $5 payment to unlock DVD-RW burning. 1.0 was just a mere sketch of what we plan on doing with this app over the coming year"
Score: 32 Votes (Like | Disagree)
adamjackson Avatar
107 months ago
I own Pixelmator, Ulysses, 1 Password, DaisyDisk, AppZapper, Onyx, a better finder rename, Cyberduck, Transmission, Deliveries, iStat Menus, Img.urls, MacTracker, MarsEdit, Parallels, Reeder, Sequence, Skitch, Omni (focus, graffle), Tweetbot among dozens of other Mac apps.

I use some of these apps once a month and some I use once a week. I would prefer to pay $250 a year for all of them than $5 per month for each of these. An annual $5-$50 for major improvements to the app is worth it to me on these applications I rely on for some of my tasks.

I open Ulysses on a monthly basis when I'm working on something long-form that will eventually go into MS Word and be shared with colleagues in .docx format w/ fancy graphs. But the long-form writing, I'll do it in Ulysses. At $5 a month, that means I'm spending $5 per document to draft out a long-form idea that will be edited elsewhere. If I didn't already own it, I wouldn't subscribe to that model. I don't use Ulysses every day so my subscription isn't spread out in any meaningful way. It uses my iCloud drive for syncing and I've never emailed the company asking for support. There are no additional features I'm asking them for.

Subscriptions work in apps that I use every single day. I see Office 365 a valuable subscription. Lightroom, something I use every 2 weeks, I bought outright. I did the math on my blog last week ('https://adamchandler.me/blog/2017/07/25/technology-still-against-software-subscriptions/').

I looked at my Amazon History. I paid $144 for Lightroom 6 standalone in May of 2015. On a monthly basis, I’ve spent $5.50 a month to own Lightroom and if it’s ever updated to version 7, I could continue to run version 6 for the next decade as it suits my needs.

If I had spent $10 a month on Adobe Creative Cloud photographers, I’d have Photoshop which I never use and will have spent $260 for the same software.

For some applications, a subscription makes sense. But Onyx which I run twice a year to clean up my Mac or A Better Finder Rename I open every 3 months to mass-rename some files or Sequence I use to assemble a Time Lapse once a year when I go on my road trip, if those developers decide to charge $1-$10 a month to use their application, they can piss off.

Edit:

"But what about maintenance updates, coding the application to support new MacOS releases and keep it from crashing at launch and supporting the existing user base? These cost the developer money long after you've spent it"

If a developer doesn't want to patch bugs in their application, I'll just buy another application in 2-3 years when yours stops launching. If you want to release 1.0 for $25 and then abandon it and not write another line of code, that's fine, there are a lot of applications on Mac that perform similar tasks. I don't owe you $5 a month when I can save my pennies and give them to someone else in 2-3 years when your app finally craps the bed.

code gets stale, bugs pop up, OS upgrades break apps and competitors rise with cooler features. You can choose to remain competitive at a loss and accept an annualized major upgrade that causes all users to pay you for the cool new stuff or accept the money you got up front and never touch the code again

In fact, there is a lot of mediocre Open source software out there that costs nothing to use. If every single Macintosh application is a subscription in 10 years, I'll write my own apps or go 100% open source and deal with the rawness and unpredictability of them.
Score: 31 Votes (Like | Disagree)
tkukoc Avatar
107 months ago
As a developer I can honestly say subscriptions are the easy way out. Essentially you've run out of ideas and cash flow has dropped so you hit back at those who originally purchased or continue to use your product. Never ever do I agree with this route. I just create a new app and move on, it's my fault for not being able to add new features to keep things fresh. Unfortunately that's not how some other developers see it.. they don't care about the end user.. they just want the cash to keep coming in. Pretty sad. Most apps are half done anyway, that's just bad programming done on purpose.
Score: 30 Votes (Like | Disagree)
MirekEl Avatar
107 months ago
Subscriptions suck, but the devs gotta eat.

Take your boo-hoo's elsewhere people, if I were to create an application today I too would follow a similar model.
So, if I disagree with your opinion, I need to take my “boo-hoo” elsewhere?

Typical arrogance associated with the subscription model.
Score: 26 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Peer Bentzen Avatar
107 months ago
Just four words: Scrivener
Score: 21 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Wackery Avatar
107 months ago
I'm not mad, all i have to say is, "no thanks, I'll go elsewhere"
Score: 17 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Popular Stories

apple oct 2024 mac tease

Apple Expected to Announce These Two to Three Products 'This Week'

Sunday October 12, 2025 7:05 am PDT by
Apple plans to announce new products "this week," according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. Apple's "Mac Your Calendars" teaser last October In his Power On newsletter today, Gurman said the products set to be updated this week include the iPad Pro, Vision Pro, and "likely" the base 14-inch MacBook Pro, with all three likely to receive a spec bump with Apple's next-generation M5 chip. Gurman...
Apple TV Plus Feature 2 Magenta and Blue

Apple TV+ Being Rebranded as Apple TV

Monday October 13, 2025 8:25 am PDT by
Buried in its announcement about "F1: The Movie" making its streaming debut on December 12, Apple has also announced that Apple TV+ is being rebranded as simply Apple TV. A single line near the end of the press release states "Apple TV+ is now simply Apple TV, with a vibrant new identity," though Apple's website has yet to be updated with any changes, so we're unsure on the details of the...
M5 MacBook Pro

Apple Announces New 14-Inch MacBook Pro With M5 Chip

Wednesday October 15, 2025 6:07 am PDT by
Apple today updated the 14-inch MacBook Pro base model with its new M5 chip, which is also available in updated iPad Pro and Vision Pro models. In addition, the base 14-inch MacBook Pro can now be configured with up to 4TB of storage on Apple's online store, whereas the previous model maxed out at 2TB. However, the maximum amount of unified RAM available for this model remains 32GB. Like...
Apple iPad Pro hero M5

Apple Debuts New iPad Pro With M5 Chip, Faster Charging, and More

Wednesday October 15, 2025 6:16 am PDT by
Apple today announced the next-generation iPad Pro, featuring the custom-designed M5, C1X, and N1 chips. The M5 chip has up to a 10-core CPU, with four performance cores and six efficiency cores. It features a next-generation GPU with Neural Accelerator in each core, allowing the new iPad Pro to deliver up to 3.5x the AI performance than the previous model, and a third-generation ray-tracing ...
iOS 26

Apple Preparing iOS 26.0.2 Update for iPhones

Saturday October 11, 2025 6:59 pm PDT by
Apple's software engineers are internally testing iOS 26.0.2, according to MacRumors logs, which have been a reliable indicator of upcoming iOS versions. iOS 26.0.2 will likely be a minor update that addresses bugs and/or security vulnerabilities, but we do not know any specific details yet. The update will likely be released within the next few weeks. Last month, Apple released iOS...
joz macbook tease

Apple Teases Upcoming M5 MacBook Pro Launch: 'Something Powerful is Coming'

Tuesday October 14, 2025 11:59 am PDT by
Apple marketing chief Greg Joswiak today teased the launch of an upcoming product, saying "something powerful is coming" on social media. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos. A short animation accompanying Joswiak's teaser reveals a brief glimpse of a MacBook Pro along with the words "coming soon." The shape of the MacBook Pro is a V, which is the Roman numeral...
maxresdefault

Here's Everything Apple Announced Today

Wednesday October 15, 2025 3:54 pm PDT by
We didn't get a second fall event this year, but Apple did unveil updated products with a series of press releases that went out today. The M5 chip made an appearance in new MacBook Pro, Vision Pro, and iPad Pro models. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos. We've rounded up our coverage and highlighted the main feature changes for each device below. MacBook Pro M5...
airpods max 2024 colors

AirPods Max 2: Everything We Know So Far

Tuesday October 14, 2025 8:43 am PDT by
Apple's AirPods Max have now been available for almost five years, so what do we know about the second-generation version? According to Apple supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, the new AirPods Max will be lighter than the current ones, but exactly how much is as yet known. The current AirPods Max weigh 0.85 pounds (386.2 grams), excluding the charging case, making it one of the heavier...
iPhone 17 Pro Colors

iPhone 18 Pro Already Rumored to Have These 6 New Features

Saturday October 11, 2025 10:10 am PDT by
While the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max are still nearly a year away, a handful of new features and changes have already been rumored for the devices. Below, we have recapped some of the early iPhone 18 Pro rumors so far. Smaller Dynamic Island The standard iPhone 18, iPhone 18 Pro, and iPhone 18 Pro Max will be equipped with a slightly smaller Dynamic Island, but the devices will...
Vision Pro M5 Announcement

Apple Updates Vision Pro With M5 Chip, Dual Knit Band, and 120Hz Support

Wednesday October 15, 2025 6:14 am PDT by
Apple today updated the Vision Pro headset with its next-generation M5 chip for faster performance, and a more comfortable Dual Knit Band. The M5 chip has a 10-core CPU, a 10-core GPU with Neural Accelerators, and a 16-core Neural Engine, and we have confirmed the Vision Pro still has 16GB of RAM. With the M5 chip, the Vision Pro offers faster performance and longer battery life compared...