In its way, Setapp is a re-imagined Mac App Store. MacPaw’s subscription service also takes much of the boilerplate work like payment processing off the board for developers. Its own survey shows developers are excited about subscriptions, and have a dour view of the Mac App Store. Setapp promises updates for its apps are included, but many are in maintenance mode, so new features are few and far between. Apps available for the platform are often limited to older apps, which are given a second life via the subscription service. No notable Mac app has launched via Setapp. Users also don’t get the latest apps or services. Setapp’s suite is also sandboxed, so you won’t be able to continue using an app that may be pulled from the service at some point. Setapp allows users to download a set of apps for use on their Mac, so the 107 available apps quickly distills to a few favorites. It’s a good business model for MacPaw, but the payout model for developers is still a bit murky.
“So, in some ways, we were lucky to catch the trendsetting subscription wave we are still riding.”
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“Recurring revenue made sense for any developer, whereas breaking down the full price into monthly payments appealed to the ever greater amount of users,” it writes in a blog post. The company admits it took advantage of a cultural shift toward subscription apps.
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But, nevertheless, with time and effort, trial and error, step by step, we got the value proposition right and started introducing people to Setapp by solving their specific problems, only to show them later that the same tool could solve 100 more. Scaling the product that is meant to be “for everyone” was an arduous task. MacPaw thinks it has the Setapp model knocked: MacPaw, the company behind Setapp, reports 15,500 of the latter became paid subscribers, and notes $1.5 million in ARR (accounting rate of return). The service now boasts over 100 apps (107, to be exact it started with 40) and 300,000 users. One year in, Setapp hasn’t steamrolled the Mac App Store, but has proven itself nonetheless.
It bundled apps, then made them available for use under a subscription model. On launch, Setapp was considered a possible App Store killer.