# What software programs have you paid for that you felt are worth it over freeware options **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 25, 2025, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-software-programs-have-you-paid-for-that-you-felt-are-worth-it-over-freeware-options/1017463 "2025-04-25T04:04:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2025, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-software-programs-have-you-paid-for-that-you-felt-are-worth-it-over-freeware-options/1017463/21 "2025-04-25T19:59:20Z")
Yeah, I forgot about Sheets - my kids used that in college & introduced it to me, and I found it could be useful for like 80% of what I did. But I like my VBA (Sheets has its own language that I was unfamiliar with), and I also do web data queries in Excel, and the IMPORT function in Sheets felt very clunky. To be clear, I think Sheets is a great product, especially if you’re sharing files, it was just a little short of what I wanted. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2025, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-software-programs-have-you-paid-for-that-you-felt-are-worth-it-over-freeware-options/1017463/22 "2025-04-25T20:05:32Z")
Perfectly fine. Like I mentioned upthread, internet download manager is vastly superior to the freeware versions of video downloaders. Sometimes the paid version is worth the extra features and functionality. ---
**Author:** ![Kimble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kimble/32/19185_2.png) [@Kimble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimble)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2025, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-software-programs-have-you-paid-for-that-you-felt-are-worth-it-over-freeware-options/1017463/23 "2025-04-25T20:23:35Z")
Back in the day: - Photoshop and Illustrator (Paint.net and Inkscape are good enough for what I use it for now) - BBEdit (I spend most of my time on my PC partition, so Notepad++ is what I use) Now: - Mathematica (about 1 version behind – a Pi Day treat a couple of years ago) - Scrivener (when I tried to get serious about writing – see a thread I made in 2021 to see about how far I got) Future: probably ClipStudio Pro or Procreate, depending on what’s on sale whenever I end up trying to get into drawing ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2025, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-software-programs-have-you-paid-for-that-you-felt-are-worth-it-over-freeware-options/1017463/24 "2025-04-26T01:48:52Z")
> [@Kimble](#): > > BBEdit (I spend most of my time on my PC partition, so Notepad++ is what I use) Have you ever tried Sublime Text? ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2025, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-software-programs-have-you-paid-for-that-you-felt-are-worth-it-over-freeware-options/1017463/25 "2025-04-26T01:50:39Z")
I find Photoshop to be worth it. GIMP (Gnu Image Manipulation Program) is free, and as far as I can tell it does do everything that Photoshop does, but Photoshop offers better support. Moreover, Photoshop seems to integrate better with some third-party filters that I use. GIMP support tells me that I can do the same with their product, but I haven’t been able to make it work. On the other side of the coin, although the star stacking program Sequator is completely free and Astro Pixel Processor costs a couple hundred for a lifetime license, I get much better results from Sequator. Astro Pixel Processor output images are horribly vignetted and I have to run them through a couple of astrophotography add-ons in Photoshop. By contrast, Sequator produces images that are immediately usable and presentable. I can tweak them in Photoshop if there’s some effect that I want to achieve, but it isn’t necessary that I do so. I did buy a lifetime license for Astro Pixel Processor; at least I’ll have a permanent alternative resource if GIMP ever goes away. That’s the only reason I sometimes hesitate to rely on freeware: the people who produce and support it owe me nothing whatsoever. ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2025, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-software-programs-have-you-paid-for-that-you-felt-are-worth-it-over-freeware-options/1017463/26 "2025-04-26T02:06:39Z")
GIMP is probably never going away… it’s not just freeware (which usually implies a single author or tiny company writing a program to give away)… it’s an open source project maintained by a worldwide community of hundreds of volunteers ([GitHub - GNOME/gimp: Read-only mirror of https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp](https://github.com/GNOME/gimp)) That said, while GIMP can do a lot of what Photoshop does, the 20% of extra features offered by Photoshop is often worth it for anyone working professionally, especially if you also need to work with Illustrator for vectors or InDesign for print layouts. I’d pay for it too if I still did graphics stuff. ---
**Author:** ![Kimble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kimble/32/19185_2.png) [@Kimble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimble)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2025, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-software-programs-have-you-paid-for-that-you-felt-are-worth-it-over-freeware-options/1017463/27 "2025-04-26T03:17:40Z")
I did try Sublime Text in 2021, based on the files that it opened up when I opened the app. I don’t remember why I didn’t like it as much, but I mostly use Notepad++ for text snippets (or maybe config files) as opposed to code (Google Colab for stuff I want to share, IDLE and VS Code for stuff I don’t). ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2025, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-software-programs-have-you-paid-for-that-you-felt-are-worth-it-over-freeware-options/1017463/28 "2025-04-26T03:29:13Z")
Cool, thanks! I’m still on the lookout for a good, fast, powerful text editor (pick two?). Used Sublime for years, but it’s slow on bigger files. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-software-programs-have-you-paid-for-that-you-felt-are-worth-it-over-freeware-options/1017463.md?page=1)