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
80 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
80 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
80 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
80 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
80 months ago
Just four words: Scrivener
Score: 21 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Wackery Avatar
80 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 WWDC23 macOS Sonoma hero

macOS Sonoma Launching This Week With These New Features

Sunday September 24, 2023 12:45 pm PDT by
Apple previously announced that macOS Sonoma will be released this Tuesday, September 26. The free software update includes many new features and changes for the Mac, including the five that we have highlighted below. In addition to these five features, we have shared the full release notes for macOS Sonoma below for a complete overview of everything new. Desktop Widgets macOS Sonoma...
iPhone 16 Mock Header With Dynamic Island

Skipping the iPhone 15 Pro? Here's What's Rumored for iPhone 16 Pro

Friday September 22, 2023 9:29 am PDT by
Are you skipping the iPhone 15 Pro and waiting another year to upgrade? If so, we already have some iPhone 16 Pro rumors for you. Below, we recap new features rumored for the iPhone 16 Pro models so far:Larger displays: The iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max will be equipped with larger 6.3-inch and 6.9-inch displays, respectively, according to Ross Young, CEO of Display Supply Chain...
iPhone 16 Side Feature

iPhone 16 to Include an Additional Capacitive 'Capture' Button

Monday September 25, 2023 12:50 pm PDT by
The iPhone 16 series is expected to gain an additional capacitive button, known internally as the "Capture Button." Codenamed "Project Nova," the button is likely to be one of the main selling points of the iPhone 16 lineup, assuming it gets past the initial testing phase. The Capture Button is located on the same side as the Power button, only positioned slightly lower - where the mmWave cutout...
ipad mini blue

Apple to Launch iPad Mini 7 Later This Year, Industry Report Suggests

Monday September 25, 2023 3:16 am PDT by
Apple could be preparing to release a seventh-generation iPad mini before the end of the year, based on a new report by DigiTimes. In an article discussing stagnating global tablet demand in the second half of 2023, the Taiwan-based outlet forecasts an uptick in Apple's share of the market owing to orders for a "small-size" iPad in the fourth quarter. From the report (see bold): In the...