IMHO, this model works for both developers and customers.

Like most other people, I don't like the "burden" of constantly increasing operating costs, but worse than that is purchasing a module outright that simply doesn't work with the version of Dolphin you're running.

I bought such a module in early December 2015 and even though the developer said it was compatible with 7.2.1 in the market, it wasn't. The developer is working on full compatibility, but it's almost 2 months now and see more am still waiting. That's really an unacceptable delay when the module was purchased outright with no discounts and it's not functional.

On a subscription / trial basis, I would have simply cancelled the subscription with only a loss of a few dollars and went with another developer with a competing module.

Reading the comments, it's also a good option to go with subscription and pay outright, of course if the developer wishes to offer this.

Some people's comments here are valid in that there is potential for vendor abuse, market forces will usually decide this however ie. vendor abuse is short term and isn't a good long term business model.

At the same time I've read in the past that customers also abuse mods by pirating them, subscription models (with a central licensing server) typically stops that bad behaviour.

In regards to a previous poster also querying "how to stop a $3/month purchase then cancellation, then stopping the mod from being used", we used to license a 3rd party white-labelled software product for over 4.5 years, the license that was issued to us was always different (with every add-on we purchased) and was time limited ie. we would need a new license key every 30 days supplied by their automated call-back system.

We paid monthly, they made sure their licensing server always issued us another 30 day license.

That deals with that problem pretty easily ie. in the scenario of a dolphinpro mod, the maximum time you'd be able to use a license is for 30 days, when you pay your next installment you automatically get a new license key, if you don't pay it the license you have expires in the software and you can no longer use it.

Andrew/Alex/Boonex team, if you wish to know which software I'm talking about above, PM me. It's very expensive software and only works on a perpetual monthly licensing model, customers have no choice if they wish to use it and they do, because it's the best software of its kind in the world.