REAPER

REAPER is a professional digital audio workstation that costs less than two months of most subscriptions and never expires. It records, edits and mixes as many tracks as the machine can hold, runs the plugin formats everybody else runs, and the whole install is small enough to keep on a memory stick. The interface is famously plain and famously configurable, which means a first session is harder and the tenth is faster. The licence is priced by how you use it rather than by what you get.

One purchase, two prices. The discounted licence is $60 and covers individuals, and businesses whose yearly gross revenue is under $20,000. The commercial licence is $225 for everybody above that line. Either includes free upgrades through version 8.99, and the vendor notes there is only one version of the program rather than tiers. Sales tax is added separately where it applies. The 60-day evaluation is unrestricted.

Podcasters and musicians who want a real workstation they own rather than rent, and who do not mind spending the first week configuring it.