Sudden change to "A subscription that sucks after all" model

I’ve been meaning to write this for a while. Apologies in advance for the long post!

I’ve used Banktivity since 2018 (started with v6, then v7), and for years I thought I understood the deal: when I eventually moved to Banktivity 8 or 9, I’d subscribe for one year and then keep using it indefinitely in "basic mode". This was the entire philosophy they promoted when they launched v8 back in 2020 (link).

They even contrasted themselves with Adobe and YNAB, calling their practice of locking users out of their own data "odious". In that blog post they said that Banktivity would never do that, and that cancelling would still allow adding/editing transactions, budgets, reports, etc. That was the whole selling point. And honestly, it was a good one.

I stayed on Banktivity 7 happily for years with the expectation that, whenever I was ready, I’d upgrade by paying for it, and if I didn't renew, I'd still be able to use it.

Well… that’s not how things turned out.

A) Discontinuation implemented overnight and slipped into a post about "Banktivity 9.5 and Monthly Subscriptions"

Fast forward to 18 October 2024. IGG publishes a blog post titled:

"Banktivity 9.5 and Monthly Subscriptions"

(Link)

If you’re on Banktivity 7, 8.x.y or even 9.2, you’d never guess that this post contained a complete reversal of the policy they’d promoted since 2020. But buried in the middle, there’s a paragraph saying the "subscribe once and use forever" model is discontinued as of now.

No email.
No announcement on their site.
No warning.
No grace period.
No "this will stop working after X date."

Just: "We’re discontinuing it. Effective immediately."

People who subscribed before 18 October 2024 are safe forever.
Everyone else is stuck with the new model: once you cancel, the app becomes read-only.

The timing alone creates a pretty huge gap between customers. If I had subscribed in September 2024, I’d still have full manual access today. But my subscription started a few weeks too late. Phenomenal luck.

B) Justification given (it doesn’t make much sense)

Here’s roughly what they said to justify dropping the old model:

• Since they now offer monthly subscriptions, they think it’s confusing to decide who should get permanent offline access.
• They say it’s "difficult" to figure out whether someone paying monthly should qualify like annual subscribers did.

That’s… honestly not convincing. Their old model required 1 full year, not 1 month. And their billing system obviously knows how long someone has paid. Every subscription system on Earth can do this.

A user actually commented on the blog post calling this out:

"I’ve been a professional developer on Apple platforms for twenty-seven years. I call BS. It ought to be straightforward to determine whether a subscriber has paid one annual fee or twelve monthly fees and if so allow continued use of the software without connectivity."

Banktivity replied with a hypothetical scenario about a user switching back and forth between gold/silver/bronze months, as if this was an unsolvable mathematical puzzle. It felt like dodging the real issue.

And then that same user proposed an incredibly simple “credit system” that solves the entire problem:
12 months of any given tier = unlock the offline functionality of that tier forever.
Straightforward, fair, and easy to implement.

So the argument that the old model had to disappear because of “confusion” doesn’t really hold up. There were simple solutions but they just chose not to pursue them.
(There was no reply to the "credit system" suggestion.)

C) Two different groups of users

It's frustrating that this one decision split the entire user base into two groups:

• Anyone who subscribed before 18 Oct 2024 gets to use Banktivity forever, with full offline editing, exactly as they’d been told since 2020.
• Anyone who subscribed after that date is stuck with a model that becomes extremely expensive over the years, because we now have to keep renting the software just to enter our own transactions.

Same product. Same features. Same promise for four years.
But two totally different outcomes depending purely on timing.

It’s really hard not to feel punished for subscribing "too late."

D) My personal mess: getting trapped between versions

Here’s something that really stings in my case:

When I subscribed a couple of weeks after their model had changed, Banktivity upgraded my v7 file to the v8 format. I spent a year:

• adding transactions
• adjusting categories
• cleaning old data
• fixing years of history

Basically doing a full spring cleaning of my finances.

My subscription ended a year later and suddenly Banktivity 8 is read-only.

Banktivity 7 can’t open a .bank8 file, so I can’t simply go back.
The only export option is QIF, which is risky for seven years of data.
I’d have to manually reconstruct everything, or pay again just to unlock editing.

This is exactly the situation IGG said in 2020 they would never create - your data trapped unless you keep paying.

E) Extremely high long-term financial burden of the new model

What really bothers me is that I don’t need new features.
I don’t need the app to change from document-based to ledgers (link 1, link 2).
I don't need a new assistant that helps first-time users (see link 2).
I don't need UI changes.
I don’t need 9.5 or even 9.0.

Banktivity 7 (and 8) already do everything I want and have done so for years.

But under the new model, if I want to keep manually entering transactions (something that used to be basic functionality) I’d have to subscribe indefinitely.

Over five years, ten years, whatever… the cost becomes extremely high.
For the Gold Tier: $99.99... $199.98... $299.97... $399.96... $499.95... etc.
Far higher than the old "pay one year and you’re good" model.

It’s basically renting your own financial history and saying to us:

"If you stop paying, you can look but you can’t touch."

Which is the exact behaviour they criticised as "odious" in 2020.

I’d even be happy to pay occasionally for Direct Access when needed, but I want the reassurance that if I stop paying, I can still keep using the software manually — exactly as Banktivity promised for years.

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So my questions to everyone here:

• Did anyone else feel blindsided by the sudden removal of the "use forever" model?
• Did you even know it happened?
• Do you think it’s fair that users who subscribed before the cut-off can use Banktivity forever, while those who subscribed shortly after must rent it indefinitely?
• Should Banktivity 8 have been left alone, given it was sold under the original promise?
• Does the justification for removing the old model make sense to you?
• Did you go back to Banktivity 7 or migrated to another software?

Curious to hear how others feel, especially long-time users who were still on Banktivity 7 (or earlier) for years knowing they'd upgrade at some point and were blindsided by how things turned out.