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Comment by LapsangGuzzler | Hacker News Reader

Right, but what if your subscription tool that you want to cancel is pipelined into your workflow in such a way that you’re paying a technical or operational cost to cancel beyond just severing the account itself, i.e. vendor lock-in?

This is why it’s often better as a solo dev to not rely on these tools in case you have to jettison them and break your workflow.

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Another way of wording what you just said: "What if cancelling the subscription is more costly than keeping it?"

Uh... then keep it, because that means it's providing value to you.

If the insulation in my building was asbestos, it could be more costly to remove it than to leave it there and pay for regular testing and extra maintenance. But that doesn't mean it would be providing value.

Switching software has a cost. Avoiding that cost is not value.

Then factor in switching costs or find a way to reduce them when initially making a purchase.

Y'all are twisting yourselves into pretzels trying to justify why you can't easily cancel a subscription.

> Then factor in switching costs or find a way to reduce them when initially making a purchase.

That's what people are doing!

They're saying that there are many pieces of software that could be helpful, but with that potential switching cost looming in the distance they won't buy a subscription at any price because it can't be relied on.

They're not saying it's hard to stop paying, they're saying it's hard to stop using, so permanent license or bust.

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