Is a Non-SaaS software business still a viable model, or has the world moved on?
Yes. SaaS is losing its advantage as the browser is becoming a better environment with better processing, soon it will not make sense to pay for many things hosted because of open source alternatives that are very easy to run nowadays - meanwhile saas/subscriptions fatigue is only growing.
soon it will not make sense to pay for many things hosted because of open source alternatives that are very easy to run nowadays
You underestimate how many businesses don't want to waste their time running things in-house that they don't have to. So your point maybe true for B2C, but B2B will always have a need for SaaS. I pay for a lot of software that I could run myself, but I don't because I can't be bothered. I have my own software to maintain.
soon it will not make sense to pay for many things hosted
the opposite is where we started in the first place. As applications grew in complexity the SaaS model became more popular. The advancement of the internet connection made it possible.
SaaS model boils down to 2 big advantages that are hard to beat by on-prem:
1. Instant upgrades
2. No maintenance effort and infrastructure costs
That's definite for B2B but even for more busy B2C's the above 2 are a life savers. SaaS model allows you to focus on your core bussiness rather than running "OS on-prem shop".
SaaS model also stimulates competitiveness, imagine SaaS model doesn't exist at all. What would happen is we would end up in a world of homogenous, mundane and primitive software. When you build a company you do a one-time purchase of "the office suite" consisting of document editor, project management tool and maybe a communicator, etc.
1. Instant upgrades 2. No maintenance effort and infrastructure costs
That is exactly what is getting lower and lower for free software compared to SaaS. Currently I can run a codeLlama 34B in the browser and use as a personal chatGPT running local. What SaaS can beat this? The UI/UX around this tech isn't ready yet but things will change fast in the next months and disrupt almost all recent AI SaaS startups. I wouldn't start a SaaS today thinking it is the holy grail of business models.
Comments
Yes. SaaS is losing its advantage as the browser is becoming a better environment with better processing, soon it will not make sense to pay for many things hosted because of open source alternatives that are very easy to run nowadays - meanwhile saas/subscriptions fatigue is only growing.
You underestimate how many businesses don't want to waste their time running things in-house that they don't have to. So your point maybe true for B2C, but B2B will always have a need for SaaS. I pay for a lot of software that I could run myself, but I don't because I can't be bothered. I have my own software to maintain.
the opposite is where we started in the first place. As applications grew in complexity the SaaS model became more popular. The advancement of the internet connection made it possible. SaaS model boils down to 2 big advantages that are hard to beat by on-prem:
1. Instant upgrades 2. No maintenance effort and infrastructure costs
That's definite for B2B but even for more busy B2C's the above 2 are a life savers. SaaS model allows you to focus on your core bussiness rather than running "OS on-prem shop".
SaaS model also stimulates competitiveness, imagine SaaS model doesn't exist at all. What would happen is we would end up in a world of homogenous, mundane and primitive software. When you build a company you do a one-time purchase of "the office suite" consisting of document editor, project management tool and maybe a communicator, etc.
That is exactly what is getting lower and lower for free software compared to SaaS. Currently I can run a codeLlama 34B in the browser and use as a personal chatGPT running local. What SaaS can beat this? The UI/UX around this tech isn't ready yet but things will change fast in the next months and disrupt almost all recent AI SaaS startups. I wouldn't start a SaaS today thinking it is the holy grail of business models.