Most of the time I avoid subscriptions for three reasons.

First, they tend to come with a nasty lock-in. I have a subscription to a small business accounts package. It is near impossible to extract data and switch to a less greedy alternative. So I'm stuck.

Second, the cost is open-ended. The software I mentioned above has raised its prices in both of the last two years at a rate far higher than inflation. It knows because of the lock-in, people have little choice but to pay the extra.

Third, the other incentives are all wrong for the developer. There is no need to provide an adequate level of support.

Another point is that most subscriptions are too high. You'd expect to pay less than for a one-off. That's rare.

The only subscription I'm happy with is Microsoft Office, which sells four licences for around New Zealand $125 a year. Or ~NZ$30 a pop. That's a relative bargain, I've seen apps that offer less than one tenth of the functionality sell for two or three times that price.