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A friend of mine uses HLO to play Starfinder and aside from the lack of ship stuff the last time we played, she was fairly happy with it. The character creator itself works pretty well and better device portability is a big plus.
But, of the three cons I played Pathfinder at last year, two of them had no or very poor Internet. For my PF1 games I used Hero Lab Classic, and for my PF2 games I used... paper. That might cease to be a problem one day (either because everywhere has good connectivity or an offline mode appears), but it's an issue right now.
The licensing is also an issue since the website says you need to pay for content and also for access (although I learned form this thread they haven't bee charging that), and that just doesn't sit well with a lot of people. I know I'd much prefer an all-in subscription that includes all the content for the game for so long as I'm subscribed.
That would obviously cost more per month, but then I'm not thinking about separate purchases of content and such and there's little upfront cost to get going in a new game. Whereas right now I'm looking at the rule system purchase, plus backgrounds from the AP in question, plus any extra books I need abilities from, plus the subscription fee (at some point). As opposed to "oh HLO for PF2 costs $4/month and I can make my character immediately and start playing." That's a very low barrier to entry and it's relatively easy to get someone to start using it, at which point they're a lot more likely to keep it.
It also makes it a lot easier if my wife (who plays in some of the same campaigns as me) wants to use it as well, because that's just an extra sub for her instead of paying this large upfront cost twice, which frankly we can't afford (a concurrent use license for HLO would help that with the current pricing, but that also doesn't exist right now).
Those two things are what keep me from using it, at the end of the day. SaaS products tend to have zero to no upfront cost and make their money on the fees (imagine having to buy Word, Excel, and Powerpoint on top of paying for Office 365!). I really hope HLO looks at the pricing model they're using now and adjusts it to something simpler, I think it'd help a lot.
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