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With all these subscription-only apps that are proliferating, I am curious how many enterprising app developers would be interested in making and marketing "clo

by PakG1 8y ago

With all these subscription-only apps that are proliferating, I am curious how many enterprising app developers would be interested in making and marketing "cloudless" apps that rely on up-front high prices for revenue, but neverending free updates (mostly bug fixes, I would hope). With GDPR, this seems like it would be actually be easier to deliver. Of course growth numbers may suck, given how hard it is to make it for any app these days. Long-term growth would probably actually not be sustainable because if it blows up, there is no additional revenue down the road from lack of subscription, and also no network effects to power exponential growth in terms of market share. As far as I can tell, if you're not going to do subscription, there's no way to force users to pay to upgrade to a new version (new features) in the Apple App Store, not sure about Google Play. Your only option is to maybe create a new separate app that's able to import data from the old app, but that seems tacky to me. So, this really wouldn't be a big long-term play at all. But I imagine that there must be short-term markets out there willing to pay for apps that don't keep their data and usage hostage. I'm myself thinking of making an app like this for budget tracking, just because I haven't found any out there these days that don't require neverending subscriptions and also fit my unique needs. Cloudless is also fine for me, as my phone is storage enough, or if it isn't enough, maybe use my iCloud storage, Dropbox storage, Google Drive, OneDrive, etc for holding the data? Besides that, it'll finally give me the kick in the behind I need to finally learn Swift, which I've been meaning to do for a while. Alas, I imagine cost of customer acquisition may be too high to make even a short-term profit. So... would this just be a small project for me to prove I can learn Swift and show future employers that I can make smartphone apps too? Or is there actually a real business here and in so many other niches because some people hate being locked into subscription fees? Curious if anyone else has some thoughts.

codetrotter 8y ago
> I'm myself thinking of making an app like this for budget tracking, just because I haven't found any out there these days that don't require neverending subscriptions and also fit my unique needs. Did you try GnuCash? It's not user friendly but a friend of mine swears by it. https://www.gnucash.org/ https://www.gnucash.org/
- Rovanion 8y ago
  I heard there was a more user friendly FLOSS program called Homebank, though I've never used it myself.
  - quadrangle 8y ago
    I prefer (and use) Skrooge https://skrooge.org/ https://skrooge.org/
- geff82 8y ago
  This software is slow and a real pain to use for anything else than personal finances or the 12 bills a year you write as a contractor.
  - TomK32 8y ago
    I moved from GnuCash to hledger. And while I did use both for the 26 bills a year I write as a contractor, I also had all my personal finance in both. Expenses are more like 12 or 4 (the big ones) a month and control was really necessary. What you'll like about hledger and legerCLI is a) the undo function of your favourite text editor and b) separate files that you can include into a master c) awesome reports on the terminal.
- PakG1 8y ago
  Target user will also be my wife who would really love a super user friendly app. Figure it'd be a good test of my design skills also. I've really only made enterprise stuff in the past where good UI was not really paramount, as long as it was usable. Would love to get better at that too. So this is really just an exercise in my mind at the moment, nothing more.
dingo_bat 8y ago
This article is not about subscription only apps. 1password is available both as a standalone app and a subscription based one. But on the Apple app store they decided to offer only the subscription variant because of apples restrictions.
- PakG1 8y ago
  Right, I believe that jives with my point about how this philosophy of app deployment doesn't make for a good long-term business. I guess their line of thinking is the same as mine, but they come to a different conclusion because they have long-term concerns to think about.
  - dingo_bat 8y ago
    I think this illustrates that apple's app store only serves apple's interests in the long term. If I happen to buy and use any Apple product, I'll go out of my way to avoid apple's supported methods to pay for my software.
JustSomeNobody 8y ago
Have you tried ledger-cli for budgeting?
- PakG1 8y ago
  Thing is that my wife is also a target user, and she does not have an inclination to use a command line-based app.
TomK32 8y ago
Ha, I've started a budget tracking (more like forcasting) app two weeks ago. Rails and mongodb and will be a subscription app. Have a look at hledger and ledgerCLI, the former has a lot of its functions in an API and you could thinker about using that as a base for a nice UI in something that is not haskell.
DavideNL 8y ago
> budget tracking You might want to check this out too: https://github.com/firefly-iii/firefly-iii#introduction https://github.com/firefly-iii/firefly-iii#introduction
s73v3r_ 8y ago
" I am curious how many enterprising app developers would be interested in making and marketing "cloudless" apps that rely on up-front high prices for revenue, but neverending free updates (mostly bug fixes, I would hope). " One of the biggest reasons that subscriptions are proliferating is because it's really hard to make money with the old model. People don't want to pay large up front prices. "As far as I can tell, if you're not going to do subscription, there's no way to force users to pay to upgrade to a new version (new features) in the Apple App Store, not sure about Google Play." You can put a V2 in the store, and stop updating the V1. It's a terrible solution, but it's as good as it's gonna get.

by PakG1 8y ago

codetrotter 8y ago

> I'm myself thinking of making an app like this for budget tracking, just because I haven't found any out there these days that don't require neverending subscriptions and also fit my unique needs. Did you try GnuCash? It's not user friendly but a friend of mine swears by it. https://www.gnucash.org/ https://www.gnucash.org/

Rovanion 8y ago
I heard there was a more user friendly FLOSS program called Homebank, though I've never used it myself.
- quadrangle 8y ago
  I prefer (and use) Skrooge https://skrooge.org/ https://skrooge.org/
geff82 8y ago
This software is slow and a real pain to use for anything else than personal finances or the 12 bills a year you write as a contractor.
- TomK32 8y ago
  I moved from GnuCash to hledger. And while I did use both for the 26 bills a year I write as a contractor, I also had all my personal finance in both. Expenses are more like 12 or 4 (the big ones) a month and control was really necessary. What you'll like about hledger and legerCLI is a) the undo function of your favourite text editor and b) separate files that you can include into a master c) awesome reports on the terminal.
PakG1 8y ago
Target user will also be my wife who would really love a super user friendly app. Figure it'd be a good test of my design skills also. I've really only made enterprise stuff in the past where good UI was not really paramount, as long as it was usable. Would love to get better at that too. So this is really just an exercise in my mind at the moment, nothing more.

dingo_bat 8y ago

This article is not about subscription only apps. 1password is available both as a standalone app and a subscription based one. But on the Apple app store they decided to offer only the subscription variant because of apples restrictions.

PakG1 8y ago
Right, I believe that jives with my point about how this philosophy of app deployment doesn't make for a good long-term business. I guess their line of thinking is the same as mine, but they come to a different conclusion because they have long-term concerns to think about.
- dingo_bat 8y ago
  I think this illustrates that apple's app store only serves apple's interests in the long term. If I happen to buy and use any Apple product, I'll go out of my way to avoid apple's supported methods to pay for my software.

JustSomeNobody 8y ago

Have you tried ledger-cli for budgeting?

PakG1 8y ago
Thing is that my wife is also a target user, and she does not have an inclination to use a command line-based app.

TomK32 8y ago

Ha, I've started a budget tracking (more like forcasting) app two weeks ago. Rails and mongodb and will be a subscription app. Have a look at hledger and ledgerCLI, the former has a lot of its functions in an API and you could thinker about using that as a base for a nice UI in something that is not haskell.

DavideNL 8y ago

> budget tracking You might want to check this out too: https://github.com/firefly-iii/firefly-iii#introduction https://github.com/firefly-iii/firefly-iii#introduction

s73v3r_ 8y ago

" I am curious how many enterprising app developers would be interested in making and marketing "cloudless" apps that rely on up-front high prices for revenue, but neverending free updates (mostly bug fixes, I would hope). " One of the biggest reasons that subscriptions are proliferating is because it's really hard to make money with the old model. People don't want to pay large up front prices. "As far as I can tell, if you're not going to do subscription, there's no way to force users to pay to upgrade to a new version (new features) in the Apple App Store, not sure about Google Play." You can put a V2 in the store, and stop updating the V1. It's a terrible solution, but it's as good as it's gonna get.