Why I Built a Word Processor With No Subscription

I switched to Mac and immediately felt dumb. There had to be good writing software somewhere, right?

Pages is genuinely great. But opening it just to edit a .docx feels like calling an Uber to walk downstairs.

TextEdit exists. I guess that's something.

LibreOffice can do anything. Theoretically. If you can find it under seventeen menus that look like they were each designed by a different person who never checked what anyone else was doing.

And then there's Word. Which is excellent. Really. It does everything. You just have to give Microsoft $70 every year to use it.

Here’s the thing though. I remember word processors from a long time ago. You opened them. They opened. You typed. They saved. That was it. No accounts, no onboarding wizards, no “what’s new in version 47.” Just a blank page and a cursor.

Maybe that’s nostalgia. Maybe I’m romanticizing something that was actually clunky and limited. But I don’t think so. I think those editors were simple because the problem is simple. You have words. You want them in a file. The end.

Somewhere along the way, word processors decided they needed to be platforms. And platforms need subscriptions.

That bothered me. Not because the subscription is evil or anything. It’s not. Microsoft has a whole company to run. It’s just. A word processor you run on your computer doesn’t need servers. Doesn’t need cloud sync. Doesn’t need to power real-time collaboration with strangers. It just sits there on your disk, opening files you ask it to open, letting you type words into them.

And yet you pay $70 a year.

The Math Is Weird

Microsoft 365 Personal is $70 a year. The Family plan is $100. Over five years that's $350 to $500 for software that doesn't require any servers to run.

Look, I'm being unfair here. Office includes a lot. Cloud stuff. Collaboration. The ability to work on a document with five other people at once. Sync across your devices. That's real infrastructure.

Most people just want to open a Word file and edit it.

The subscription makes sense if you're actually using the service part. Slack needs servers. Figma needs servers. A password manager needs to keep your passwords in sync across your phone and laptop and whatever else. That costs money. Monthly makes sense for that.

A local word processor doesn't need any of that. It's just code on your computer. Your files live on your disk. When you close the app, the app closes. There's almost no infrastructure cost.

Why does it cost $70 a year?

The Ulysses Thing

There's this writing app called Ulysses. It was beloved. Indie, beautiful, the kind of app people genuinely loved.

In 2017 they switched to subscription-only.

The reaction was instant. Everyone who had paid $50 once, years ago, suddenly had to pay $6 a month to keep using the thing they already owned. Some people left. Some people never came back. The app lost something that day.

Technically their argument made sense. Subscriptions fund development. You need money to build things.

But it told users something real: we care more about recurring revenue than we care about you using this forever. Those aren't always the same thing.

The Thing That Actually Bothers Me

Here's what's weird about subscriptions, and I'm going to be honest about it.

When I charge once, I have to make an app so good that people want it forever. They buy it, I never see them again. If it's broken or slow or abandoned, they have no reason to open it. I have every reason to keep it good.

With subscriptions, I just need you to not cancel this month. The incentive structure is different. It doesn't have to be evil. It's just. A word processor that costs $70 a year has to find ways to make you feel like you need to keep paying. Add features so it seems worth the renewal. Make it slightly harder to leave.

One-time pricing is honest in a weird way. Either you built something people want, or you didn't. No recurring revenue to hide behind. No subscription momentum. Just success or failure.

What This Actually Costs

I should be honest about the trade-off. Verso will probably update slower than Word. I might not add every feature someone wants. I'm betting that most people care more about not paying $70 a year than about getting constant updates. That could be wrong.

But. A word processor doesn't need to evolve that fast. The thing it does is settled. Open file. Type words. Save file. Done. Anything beyond that is probably feature creep.

Word needed to become everything to everyone. Verso doesn't.

The Verso Deal

It costs $14.99. One time. No subscription.

During early access it's free. After that you pay once and own it. Your files stay on your computer. No account. No cloud. No one's trying to keep you subscribed.

It's a simple deal. You pay a small amount. You get a word processor. I get enough money to have built it. The app doesn't stop working if you stop paying. It doesn't nag you. It doesn't try to convince you that you need cloud collaboration when you just need to write.

There's a cleanness to that.

The Real Deal

This means I'm betting the app is good enough that you want it. Not that subscription inertia keeps you around. That's a harder bar. I like it.

It means the incentives are clear. Make something people want to use. Don't annoy them. Don't disappear. Don't ask them to pay again for something they already paid for.

Will Verso update as fast as Word? No.

Will it have every feature? Probably not.

But it will open your .docx files. It will let you type. It will save your work. And you'll own it.

For fifteen dollars. Once.

I wanted to build something that felt like those editors I remember. Simple. Fast. Yours. Maybe that’s nostalgia. Maybe it’s just good design. Hopefully it’s both.