Over the last couple of days there has been a lot written about the Smile Software decision to move to a subscription model for version 6 of TextExpander, their popular text snippet app for OS X and iOS. Most of the words have understandably been pretty negative with users feeling that the change is purely a money grab by Smile. Obviously the economics of making a niche product like TextExpander pay its way are not simple and I really don’t know if the change was actually an unavoidable option, but regardless of the reasons behind the decision it is fairly clear that a fair number of Smiles previous customers will be thinking twice about the upgrade and looking at alternative options.

There are a few alternatives to TextExpander and one of the main ones, Typinator from Ergonis are offering a discount to existing TextExpander users to move to their product during April.

The app is normally EUR 24.99 for a single user or EUR 37.99 for a family pack so the reduction makes it EUR 18.75 and EUR 28.50 respectively. To access the offer go to this link before the end of the month.

If you are not happy spending this much on an alternative then a cheaper option is aText at just $4.99.###UPDATE:

So it seems that the reasoning that Smile have given for the decision is based on the sharing features added in the updated version of TextExpander. They state on this page that the iCloud/Dropbox services would not allow them to implement the Group Sharing features that are the key new element of TextExpander.

Group sharing in the new TextExpander is quite different than syncing via Dropbox or iCloud. Sharing, as it stands, couldn’t work using either sync service.