More and more, I see people who are complaining over the fact that they have to pay for their software.

Basically, everything you need online is already free: your e-mail provider, your cloud storage, your GPS navigation system and don’t forget social media, so why shouldn’t we start normalizing paying for software that could improve your life and productivity.

Reasons you should pay for software you want

I recently started using an iPad Pro, and as you want to use apps that really improve your productivity, you will notice that good apps aren’t free. I use a bunch of paid apps that help me being productive each day.

I use an app called Things 3 for my to-do lists. For iPhone, it costs €10.99, and when you purchase it for iPad, it costs €21.99. So I use both of them.

I would pay for an app like this because I genuinely believe that if you can improve your life by spending a little bit of money, it is worth it. For example, let’s say you want to buy a notebook from the bookstore, and you pay for that, right? But that notebook doesn’t have an unlimited amount of blank pages.

Every app needs to be paid for

Don’t think because you can download an app for free that it costs nothing. There’s always someone paying for the app. It needs to be hosted somewhere and to be maintained.

If an app has many users, hosting can get quite expensive, so how does the developer generate their revenue?

When an app is free, they usually run ads to generate some income. Advertisers pay a lot of money on some occasions to display their ads. The downside with this for the users is that these advertisers sell your data to external companies. They use your data and many others to analyze your behavior, and this way, they can improve their products. That explains why big companies always run the ads that you’re interested in or displaying your products or apps that you’ve just looked up.

So if you don’t like ads running while using your favorite app, consider purchasing the pro version without ads. This way, you prevent advertisers from collecting your data, and you support your favorite developer.

Takeaways

When I was younger, I refused to pay for software, I usually tried to fetch some free version of the internet, and I was satisfied, but now there are a couple of reasons why I don’t that anymore:

1. I can afford to pay for the apps.
2. I understand the developer’s put hard work into the app
3. Online licenses make it hard to gain free access.

And especially that last one has been a pain in the ass for the people who won't get free access to software and apps. Nowadays, most apps and software require you to purchase an online license that’s bound to your account, so that makes it really hard for ‘crackers’ to ‘pirate’ this software.

Originally Published on Medium