Balsamiq Cloud doesn't charge you for the months you're not using it.
I like this approach because it works for the customer and the business (Kind software):
- The customer doesn't get locked in paying for a product they're not using any more, but forgot to cancel. This is my biggest issue with subscriptions as it encourages dark UX patterns.
- Software constantly evolves and needs to be maintained. That costs money. Using subscriptions covers the ongoing maintenance costs.
The downside would be a higher upfront cost and complexity. I don't have much experience with the Stripe API, but I imagine you'd need to add logic to freeze/unfreeze subscriptions automatically based on usage.
This setup would already be more complex than some of the completed smaller projects I've built. I still think this could work for projects where I want to balance the risks from the customer and developer point of view, e.g. the Group Meditation App I'm working on: the app itself will be trivial, but maintaining and troubleshooting realtime apps can get gnarly.
