Why is Streamline moving to a subscription model?
Short answer: to offer you better icons and illustrations and tools to speedup your workflow. Plus, it will gives us a stable income to focus on building products. Starting in December, Streamline will be available only as a yearly subscription.
We sell more than icons, we sell productivity.
- When I started to sell icons in 2010, things were so simple. I just provided a big .zip full of vectors in various file formats (.svg, .ai, etc.)
- Since 2018, we started to provide more than icons or illustration. We develop tools to speedup your workflow. In the past two years, we’ve launched the Streamline web app, three plugins (Figma, Sketch, Adobe XD) and the NPM packages for developers. More features are on the way: favorites, project folders, color edition for a whole set, desktop app for Mac and Windows…
- Developing software is expensive and time consuming. We have now three full-time developers working on Streamline. Managing the software projects takes a lot of my own time! 😓
In the past year, I’ve spent half of my time managing the software project and making customer support for various bugs or helping people using the app, plugins and NPM packages. - We need a stable income. For the past 10 years, the income depended mostly on launching new products or new versions (like Streamline 3.0). It is time consuming, stressing and after a big sales peak for the launch, the income goes down until the next big launch... Not great for the maker who need peace of mind to focus on building.
- The subscription model gives us a stable income to work continuously on improving our products and software. Subscriptions encourage us to develop the product you pay for, every day. That’s the opposite to the ‘one time-fee, use forever’ pricing model; where once you pay for a product, there is little incitation for the maker to make it better.
Think about all these graphic assets that you bought: how many of them got updates? Of many of these products died?
It was a hard decision to take, but we will all profit from it. ✌️
I was considering a subscription model for almost 2 years. I spent tons of time thinking, making plans, designing around it… I threw away so many designs, copy, pricing tables. I thought about different pricing models, also some mixes of one-time fee and subscriptions (like Sketch is doing).
At the end, I’ve picked the simple way, offering only a yearly subscription.
Why was it so difficult?
Because I care for my customers. I want a fair offer for them. Like you, I don’t like to add up a new subscription to my expenses without good reasons.
If I launch this subscription, it’s because it will provide us the fuel for creating amazing new features and products. If you like Streamline now, you will love it even more in one year. We have big plans. 🤩
What benefits will you get from the subscriptions?
Thanks to the subscription model, we will launch a lot of new features and assets in the next months:
- Tons of new icons and illustrations, instantly added to your account. Over the past two years, we’ve actually built a ‘Vector cloud’ connected to all our tools. So, anytime we will add a new icon or illustration, it will be instantly available in our Streamline app, plugins and NPM packages.
Note: you will get new assets only for the packs you’ve subscribed to. - Frequent updates and improvements. We will review — again — all our icons and illustrations. Improving them and releasing instantly the updated version through our vector cloud.
- More plugins. We will launch more plugins in the next months, for Powerpoint, MS Word, etc.
- Extensions for code editors, our developers friends will love it! We plan to add extensions to VS Code and WebStorm. So, you’ll be able to add icons and illustrations right in your code editor, keeping the focus on your work.
- Desktop application. Streamline will always be accessible from your dock, and you’ll be able to drag & drop icons or illustrations in any app. Plus, all assets will be cached on your computer so it will be super fast, like what you get with Iconjar.
- More features to speedup your workflow : favorites, download multiple icons as a .zip, improved search, coloring multiple icons at the same time,, etc.
- Synchronization with your Adobe Creative Cloud account. We’ve partnered with Adobe to create a bridge between the Streamline app and your Adobe account. With just one click, you can add an icon to your Creative cloud projects.
- Tools for large teams and big companies: allowing a master account to attribute licenses to sub-accounts, share a list of icons or illustrations with your team, etc. We’ll launch around spring 2021 a documented API to connect our assets to your application or corporate DAM tools (Digital Asset Management).
When will you launch the subscriptions?
We plan the launch it before mid-December. Crossed fingers 🤞
After the transition to the subscription model, we will start to add a lot of new icons to the Streamline icons. We actually have thousands of new icons waiting for the subscription to be ready!
I already bought the Streamline icons, what will happen when the subscription starts
👌 No worries, you will keep your advantages forever:
- Use all the icons or illustrations you bought forever. We will keep the link to the downloadable sources active. Indeed, these sources won’t be updated with new icons or illustrations after the subscription launch.
- Keep a lifetime use of the Streamline web app. So, you can still search icons or illustrations, modify colors, download them as vectors, etc.
I’m an Iconjar user, will I still get the Iconjar files?
Unfortunately, no. But wait… Your workflow will be even better :-)
Even if we make frequent updates of your icons and illustration packs, you won’t have to download new Iconjar files every time we add an icon and update it in Iconjar.
New icons and illustrations will be automatically added to your Streamline app or plugins. No need to worry or waste time, you always have the last and best version of our assets.
Also, we will have soon a desktop version of our Streamline app, with drag & drop and all assets stored on your computer. It will be super fast and easy to use.
Will we still get the zip with all the source files (SVG, PNG, Figma, Sketch, etc.)?
Not anymore. We will rely only on the ‘Vector Cloud’ and our plugins, desktop or web app. Because it guarantees that you will always get the last and best version of an asset. Plus, it makes our workflow to produce assets a lot easier, allowing us to focus on creating assets and tools.
