I think it will come around when people realise they're being fleeced.
Look at Apple, sales on the iPhone are down, perhaps people know it's just full of gimmicks and no real substance, keeping their existing and perfectly functional phone for longer.
I could easily afford to buy new phones, but what I opted to do was buy reconditioned phones for a fraction of the price. Does the same thing.
The cloud will work for some businesses as you say, tradespeople who are out on road going site to site.
Our setup requires a desktop installation of Sage, and their cheapest perpetual offering provides (until April) all the functionality we require.
We pay for Sage Cover to enable the bank feeds, which on checking works out at £14.00 a month (although paid annually). I am happy to pay that, as it saves me an hour or so entering data.
From April Sage then want another £10.00 a month for the MTD addon. An addon I will use once a quarter. £10 a month sounds very reasonable, until you realise it will only get used once a quarter to submit a VAT return, so it's actually £30 per VAT return, compared to the zero we're paying now. So I'll happily pay £20 a year for a bridging software, £5.00 for each return, and it will take 5mins rather than two minutes.
If I took both Sage subscriptions, I be paying £24 a month, for outdated, yet perfectly functional software.
I can get the latest Sage 50c, for £18.00 a month, MTD compliant, bank feeds, and all the updates sage can think of included.
As I've paid my sage cover until September, and I only paid that for the Bankfeeds, sage support have been next to useless when I've had issues, I'll be using a lower cost MTD solution until at least September, where I may switch to 50c, because it will work out cheaper for the same functionality.
However... If you're small business, not VAT registered, with very few transactions, and don't really need the 'cloud', why wouldn't you pay £99 for Sage Accounts Essentials, that will be sufficient for the next few years?
