If I were professional photographer, I would never mind subscribing CC for 9.80 USD per month, and would think the fee is just fair.
The thing is that I'm not professional, I've never done or been in need of any of the batch process, I don't need catalog, and so on.
I enjoy panoramas, but ICE (Image Composit Editor) of Microsoft has been vastly improved over the years and doesn't look any inferior to Photomerge, so far as the resulted images are concerned. (I have to admit that converting the X-Trans RAW files to TIFF in Capture One before stitching is way more clumsier than Photomerge, though)
Also, the development of the digital cameras help reduce the need of extensive post process. In addition, the last versions of Capture NXD (with the reintroduced U-Point) I used was very good, and Capture One Express for my current Fuji cameras are simply amazing and extremely easy to use.