If you don’t understand, this plugin is rather a wrapper for cloud like Loopcloud. Why Loopcloud doesn’t allow one-time purchase? Same reason as here – someone has to pay for servers where the data is processing.

All AI services are running on remote servers, that’s why the companies offer subscription model. Otherwise it wouldn’t be possible to set a proper price.

I’ll hold strong with you, brother! Let’s make sure companies know that we, at the very least, want a one-time purchase option before we’ll invest in their products. Only subscription I’d do is something like Loopcloud, which has been great for me so far and it’s easy to just purchase a month, use it for a while, and cancel renewal, and they refund accidental renewals without issue. But for things like plugins and creative software (my first time seeing this was with Adobe Creative Cloud; did they start this trend themselves, or were there others before?) I’m sticking with things that’ll let me use perpetually and without internet access. I make it a point to have everything I need from creative software to videos I value available without internet for travel, camping, and to last through power/internet outages, blackouts, censorship, etc.

Unfortunately we can’t sell a permanent license because the transformations rely on running servers. As a young startup company we can’t sell the promise of keeping them running until the end of time. (Also because the sun will eventually expand and swallow the earth and that’s where our servers are) Note that you can keep all the work you have already transformed with samplab forever, so downgrading from premium will not destroy any of your work. Hope this helps to understand why we have to rely on the subscription model.

Cheers,
Gian-Marco from Samplab