Subscription or one-time purchase? — what three years actually costs

Subscribe when what you are paying for keeps working somewhere else: cloud storage and sync, access to AI models, a threat database updated hourly, compatibility with the files clients send you. Buy once when what you are paying for is the program itself — a photo editor, a vector tool, a page layout application, a video editor that runs entirely on your own machine.

Applied to the software readers ask about most: design and layout have a real one-time answer in Affinity, and since its 2025 relaunch the current suite costs nothing at all. Video has a stronger free answer in DaVinci Resolve, whose paid Studio edition is sold as a one-time licence. Documents and spreadsheets have LibreOffice, which is free, and Microsoft still sells a perpetual Office bought once for one machine.

Three cases resist that logic. Security software is a subscription because the product is the daily stream of updates, not the installer. Cloud and AI services are a subscription because you are renting somebody else’s computers. And if your income depends on opening a client’s PSD or INDD without surprises, what you are buying is compatibility — which is a service too.

Here is the arithmetic on the subscriptions ROSH™ Company Labs sells, at ROSH™ Company Labs prices, over three years. Nothing renews by itself; each block is bought when you decide to buy it.

• Adobe Creative Cloud — 400 MAD for 4 months. Three blocks fill a year, so 1 200 MAD a year and 3 600 MAD over three years.
• Microsoft 365 — 100 MAD for 3 months. Four blocks a year, so 400 MAD a year and 1 200 MAD over three years.
• CapCut Pro — 700 MAD for a year, so 2 100 MAD over three years.
• Google AI Pro — 250 MAD for a year, so 750 MAD over three years.
• Bitdefender Total Security — 399 MAD a year for 5 devices, so 1 197 MAD over three years: fifteen device-years, a little under 80 MAD each.
• Apple Music — 50 MAD for 3 months, so 200 MAD a year and 600 MAD over three years.

Now put a one-time purchase beside that. A designer who works in Affinity instead of Creative Cloud spends 3 600 MAD less over the same three years, and is still working in month thirty-seven without paying again. An editor on DaVinci Resolve’s free edition keeps the 2 100 MAD CapCut Pro would have cost. For a freelancer in Morocco those are not theoretical gaps.

A perpetual licence pays a publisher once and then costs them money for years: support, security patches, compatibility with every new version of the operating system. A subscription turns one unpredictable payment into a steady stream, and that stream is what funds continuous development. That is the whole of it. It is not a conspiracy and it is not aimed at Morocco.

The shift also reflects what software has become. Half of what you use inside Creative Cloud, Microsoft 365 or Google AI Pro does not run on your machine at all; it runs in a data centre billed by the hour whether you open the app or not. Generative features consume compute on every click. Storage costs money every month it holds your files. None of that can be sold once at a fixed price.

The consequence for you fits in one line. Rented software stops the day you stop paying: the files stay yours, the tool that opens them does not. Owned software keeps opening. Everything else in this decision follows from that single difference.

A perpetual licence is not forever. It is a version, frozen. It stops receiving features immediately and stops receiving security patches at the end of a support window the vendor publishes — check that date before you buy, not after. Two operating system upgrades later, an old build can refuse to install at all.

Be careful with anything a third party sells as a lifetime licence. A lifetime lasts exactly as long as whoever honours it, which is a risk you are carrying rather than a promise you are holding.

Where ROSH™ Company Labs is the wrong choice, stated plainly. ROSH™ Company Labs is independent: not an authorised reseller, partner or agent of Adobe, Microsoft, Google, Apple, Bitdefender or anyone else. ROSH™ Company Labs is not a formally registered company and issues no tax invoice. If the purchase is for a business, if your accountant needs a facture, or if the cost goes on an expense claim, buy directly from the vendor and treat the retail price as the cost of doing it properly. Buying here is at your own risk: no guarantee, no warranty, no refund policy behind it, and you should decide with that in front of you.

Write down every paid tool you use. Beside each one, note how often you actually open it — daily, monthly, twice a year — and multiply this year’s price by three. Then ask one question per line: is the value in the program, or in a service behind it?

• Daily, value in the program: buy once. Affinity for design, DaVinci Resolve for video, LibreOffice or a perpetual Office for documents.
• Daily, value in a service: subscribe. Security, cloud storage, AI models, anything a team works inside.
• A few weeks a year: rent in short blocks, then stop. That is what a four-month or three-month block is for.
• Once, for one project: take the smallest block that covers the deadline, and put the end date in your calendar.

If a short block is what you need, orders close over WhatsApp: you say what you need, we confirm what it covers and what it costs, you pay, and the licence is activated on your own account. Nothing renews on its own, so the decision comes back to you at the end of every block instead of quietly repeating.

And the inconvenient half. A number of people reading this should install Affinity or DaVinci Resolve, spend nothing, and never contact us. If that is you, do that.