Regarding the freemium/subscription option, I just had some experience with the graphic design software, Canva (https://www.canva.com/). I was creating the ebook and paperback cover for my new book Bitcoin, Hands-On!.

TL;DR - the freemium/subscription model can be pretty bad.

I tried working with the free version of Canva, but WOW do they make that difficult, there's constant reminders that x/y/z is only available in the paid version. So, I signed up for the paid subscription, on a month-to-month basis.

You'd think the constant, irritating, upsell would stop. But no, it doesn't. It turns out that they sell more than just the paid subscription, they're selling all kinds of extra objects, templates, and packages. It seems like half the screen is taken up with those items.

ALSO - they're always changing the layout and functionality to funnel people to the paid parts of the software. Tutorials and documentation from just a couple months ago are out of date, because the software has changed to feature different packages that they can upsell.