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> they already have a paid subscription which removes the ads on the official clients Apollo is shutting down because the founder thinks they'll incur about $2

by Alupis 3y ago

> they already have a paid subscription which removes the ads on the official clients Apollo is shutting down because the founder thinks they'll incur about $2.50 per month of costs per user, and apparently doesn't believe enough people will be willing to pay $5 monthly to keep Apollo running. So, this Reddit Premium (billed at $5.99 monthly) either has few-to-no paid users, or Apollo's founder isn't even trying to sustain his business.

phonon 3y ago
He addresses that in the post. He only has 30 days to accommodate the price increase. What is he supposed to do about his current clients that already paid for the year? Take a huge financial loss until his updated pricing catches up? He asked for more time, they said no.
- Alupis 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - toyg 3y ago
    I'd be similarly judgemental if Christian had been the only one to behave like this. But when you look at the field, everyone was taken by surprise by the prices. Pretty much all the major apps are closing. Were all developers hopelessly naive? All of them? I find that hard to believe.
    - takeda 3y ago
      The OP didn't even bother to read the conversation. This was announced in April, but Reddit did not provide prices. It only assured this won't be as expensive as Twitter API access, and the drama started once it actually did.
  - kimixa 3y ago
    That "hope" appears to be founded on statements made to them by Reddit themselves, according to the linked post and it's communication snippets. Or at least a much larger time to recalibrate that "hope".
  - Veen 3y ago
    He made those decisions based on information he'd received from Reddit. His mistake was believing they were acting in good faith (rather than being lying scumbags).
chimeracoder 3y ago
> Apollo is shutting down because the founder thinks they'll incur about $2.50 per month of costs per user, and apparently doesn't believe enough people will be willing to pay $5 monthly to keep Apollo running. > So, this Reddit Premium (billed at $5.99 monthly) either has few-to-no paid users, or Apollo's founder isn't even trying to sustain his business. If you read the post, it's not just about the willingness of users to pay. It's also about the existing obligations (prepaid subscriptions), the timeline of the changes, and the amount of work that would be required on his end to adapt to the new changes within the next three weeks. None of that would be an issue with the proposed solution of Reddit charging the users directly.
- BackBlast 3y ago
  He has to flush the existing subscriptions no matter what. It's done. He has said he can afford it. He could fire up a new system with appropriate pricing as soon as he can manage. All customers, if they want to come back, are then forced into the new system at new pricing levels. Maybe this takes a month or two or three. He's not losing money in the mean time and can re-open at something resembling a profitable stance when he can do so. Yes, it sucks. But there's a path here if he wants to go for it. I don't blame him for throwing in the towel. He's tired of getting yanked around. I would be very hesitant to keep throwing good time(money) after bad.
anoonmoose 3y ago
As a person who has been using reddit very regularly for about the last ten years...my bet is that Reddit Premium has few to no paid users.
- KeplerBoy 3y ago
  As someone who spends way too much time on reddit and would be their prime target audience: i have no idea why I'd sign up for reddit premium. Not a single feature i care about.
- LeonenTheDK 3y ago
  I didn't even know Reddit Premium existed until this debacle started. I had assumed all their revenue came from ads and people buying awards.
- PartiallyTyped 3y ago
  As a person who's been paying for Apollo for a while and intended to continue, once it goes down, I will simply just stop using reddit.
- neolefty 3y ago
  Reddit premium subscriber here — I use it because it hides ads, I get a lot of value from Reddit (and want to make that sustainable, if possible), and Premium gives me stickers I can award to comments occasionally in addition to upvotes.
  - a2tech 3y ago
    Thats how I felt. But this news tears it. Just cancelled my yearly sub.
- a2tech 3y ago
  I've been a premium member since the beginning because I believe in paying for access, but I just cancelled it.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
LorenPechtel 3y ago
He can't make the transition on that short a notice. Lots of people were paying $10/yr.
cutenewt 3y ago
> Apollo's founder isn't even trying to sustain his business. Good call out. It's like the business equivalent of: You changed the rules of the game because you didn't like how I played. So I'm not even going to bother playing with the new rules. I retire.
- buffington 3y ago
  Can you blame him? The rules of the game changed so severely that playing the game isn't just disagreeable, it's impossible. What would you have done instead?
  - Alupis 3y ago
    > What would you have done instead? Charge $5 monthly and refund the annual fee for those who want it (which is already being done it seems, regardless of Apollo's future). Apollo has options. They're just choosing to shutdown. That's the founder's prerogative, of course, but it is totally unnecessary. Look at the support in this thread alone - Apollo has tons of people willing to throw money at them.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - cutenewt 3y ago
      Exactly
8ytecoder 3y ago
Sibling comment already addresses it. But to add, I’d happily pay and I want to pay $5 or more to Reddit. But not everyone is like that. Reddit cornered third party apps into a single subscription model with very little time to adapt. I think Apollo could have accommodated these changes over 6 months. Reddit could have also added an ad based tier. Instead they forced a huge price hike with less than a month to react to it.
heisenbit 3y ago
I may consider 6$ per month if the money goes to app maintainer, content creators, moderators and good commentators. But 3$ to Reddit for providing an api, a few bytes db space is simply too much.
unreal37 3y ago
I don't understand your hostility, sorry. He has 50,000 customers who paid $10/year for the app. Now he's put into a position to support those customers at $2.50/month. (He estimates their server cost is $0.10 per month.) That's an instant $125,000 per month out of his own pocket that he can't recoup from existing customers for at least the next 6 months. Over the course of 2023, he'll have to pay Reddit $1 million MORE than he has made from the app this year. Reddit doesn't want to work with third-party apps. That's fine. That's their right. But it's certainly not the app developer's fault that he's forced to quit.
- Alupis 3y ago
  > Reddit doesn't want to work with third-party apps This sentiment is obviously false. Reddit doesn't want to support third-party apps at Reddit's own expense. That is reasonable. > He has 50,000 customers who paid $10/year for the app And now we get to the issue. This was never a sustainable business model. It depended on Reddit API being free - even at the massive volume Apollo operates at. That is unreasonable.
  - ckolkey 3y ago
    But like.. He asked if they had any plans to change it. And they said no. I can't imagine the hoop you're expecting him to jump through - get a seat on their board covertly?
  - unreal37 3y ago
    And he was willing to pay for access. His argument is that the price far exceeds their cost and, with 30 days notice, that's unreasonable. I take him at his word that he was willing to pay a reasonable amount. Again, Reddit has the right to run their business however they wish. Not arguing that it should be free.
    - Alupis 3y ago
      [flagged]
thepasswordis 3y ago
I know people keep floating this idea of paying for reddit, and that's somewhat hilarious to me. There is no chance I'm paying for a "service" where power-mods will ban you for disagreeing with their radical politics, where most of the subreddits are actively taken over by similar power mods who push their radical ideologies, and where any attempts to evade this stuff and simply use the website can get you permanently banned from the service. Imagine spotify, but if you listen to the wrong songs, you get banned from other random artists, and if you try to work around this you just get banned outright from spotify. No thanks.

by Alupis 3y ago

phonon 3y ago

He addresses that in the post. He only has 30 days to accommodate the price increase. What is he supposed to do about his current clients that already paid for the year? Take a huge financial loss until his updated pricing catches up? He asked for more time, they said no.

Alupis 3y ago
[flagged]
- toyg 3y ago
  I'd be similarly judgemental if Christian had been the only one to behave like this. But when you look at the field, everyone was taken by surprise by the prices. Pretty much all the major apps are closing. Were all developers hopelessly naive? All of them? I find that hard to believe.
  - takeda 3y ago
    The OP didn't even bother to read the conversation. This was announced in April, but Reddit did not provide prices. It only assured this won't be as expensive as Twitter API access, and the drama started once it actually did.
- kimixa 3y ago
  That "hope" appears to be founded on statements made to them by Reddit themselves, according to the linked post and it's communication snippets. Or at least a much larger time to recalibrate that "hope".
- Veen 3y ago
  He made those decisions based on information he'd received from Reddit. His mistake was believing they were acting in good faith (rather than being lying scumbags).

chimeracoder 3y ago

> Apollo is shutting down because the founder thinks they'll incur about $2.50 per month of costs per user, and apparently doesn't believe enough people will be willing to pay $5 monthly to keep Apollo running. > So, this Reddit Premium (billed at $5.99 monthly) either has few-to-no paid users, or Apollo's founder isn't even trying to sustain his business. If you read the post, it's not just about the willingness of users to pay. It's also about the existing obligations (prepaid subscriptions), the timeline of the changes, and the amount of work that would be required on his end to adapt to the new changes within the next three weeks. None of that would be an issue with the proposed solution of Reddit charging the users directly.

BackBlast 3y ago
He has to flush the existing subscriptions no matter what. It's done. He has said he can afford it. He could fire up a new system with appropriate pricing as soon as he can manage. All customers, if they want to come back, are then forced into the new system at new pricing levels. Maybe this takes a month or two or three. He's not losing money in the mean time and can re-open at something resembling a profitable stance when he can do so. Yes, it sucks. But there's a path here if he wants to go for it. I don't blame him for throwing in the towel. He's tired of getting yanked around. I would be very hesitant to keep throwing good time(money) after bad.

anoonmoose 3y ago

As a person who has been using reddit very regularly for about the last ten years...my bet is that Reddit Premium has few to no paid users.

KeplerBoy 3y ago
As someone who spends way too much time on reddit and would be their prime target audience: i have no idea why I'd sign up for reddit premium. Not a single feature i care about.
LeonenTheDK 3y ago
I didn't even know Reddit Premium existed until this debacle started. I had assumed all their revenue came from ads and people buying awards.
PartiallyTyped 3y ago
As a person who's been paying for Apollo for a while and intended to continue, once it goes down, I will simply just stop using reddit.
neolefty 3y ago
Reddit premium subscriber here — I use it because it hides ads, I get a lot of value from Reddit (and want to make that sustainable, if possible), and Premium gives me stickers I can award to comments occasionally in addition to upvotes.
- a2tech 3y ago
  Thats how I felt. But this news tears it. Just cancelled my yearly sub.
a2tech 3y ago
I've been a premium member since the beginning because I believe in paying for access, but I just cancelled it.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

LorenPechtel 3y ago

He can't make the transition on that short a notice. Lots of people were paying $10/yr.

cutenewt 3y ago

> Apollo's founder isn't even trying to sustain his business. Good call out. It's like the business equivalent of: You changed the rules of the game because you didn't like how I played. So I'm not even going to bother playing with the new rules. I retire.

buffington 3y ago
Can you blame him? The rules of the game changed so severely that playing the game isn't just disagreeable, it's impossible. What would you have done instead?
- Alupis 3y ago
  > What would you have done instead? Charge $5 monthly and refund the annual fee for those who want it (which is already being done it seems, regardless of Apollo's future). Apollo has options. They're just choosing to shutdown. That's the founder's prerogative, of course, but it is totally unnecessary. Look at the support in this thread alone - Apollo has tons of people willing to throw money at them.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - cutenewt 3y ago
    Exactly

8ytecoder 3y ago

Sibling comment already addresses it. But to add, I’d happily pay and I want to pay $5 or more to Reddit. But not everyone is like that. Reddit cornered third party apps into a single subscription model with very little time to adapt. I think Apollo could have accommodated these changes over 6 months. Reddit could have also added an ad based tier. Instead they forced a huge price hike with less than a month to react to it.

heisenbit 3y ago

I may consider 6$ per month if the money goes to app maintainer, content creators, moderators and good commentators. But 3$ to Reddit for providing an api, a few bytes db space is simply too much.

unreal37 3y ago

I don't understand your hostility, sorry. He has 50,000 customers who paid $10/year for the app. Now he's put into a position to support those customers at $2.50/month. (He estimates their server cost is $0.10 per month.) That's an instant $125,000 per month out of his own pocket that he can't recoup from existing customers for at least the next 6 months. Over the course of 2023, he'll have to pay Reddit $1 million MORE than he has made from the app this year. Reddit doesn't want to work with third-party apps. That's fine. That's their right. But it's certainly not the app developer's fault that he's forced to quit.

Alupis 3y ago
> Reddit doesn't want to work with third-party apps This sentiment is obviously false. Reddit doesn't want to support third-party apps at Reddit's own expense. That is reasonable. > He has 50,000 customers who paid $10/year for the app And now we get to the issue. This was never a sustainable business model. It depended on Reddit API being free - even at the massive volume Apollo operates at. That is unreasonable.
- ckolkey 3y ago
  But like.. He asked if they had any plans to change it. And they said no. I can't imagine the hoop you're expecting him to jump through - get a seat on their board covertly?
- unreal37 3y ago
  And he was willing to pay for access. His argument is that the price far exceeds their cost and, with 30 days notice, that's unreasonable. I take him at his word that he was willing to pay a reasonable amount. Again, Reddit has the right to run their business however they wish. Not arguing that it should be free.
  - Alupis 3y ago
    [flagged]

thepasswordis 3y ago

I know people keep floating this idea of paying for reddit, and that's somewhat hilarious to me. There is no chance I'm paying for a "service" where power-mods will ban you for disagreeing with their radical politics, where most of the subreddits are actively taken over by similar power mods who push their radical ideologies, and where any attempts to evade this stuff and simply use the website can get you permanently banned from the service. Imagine spotify, but if you listen to the wrong songs, you get banned from other random artists, and if you try to work around this you just get banned outright from spotify. No thanks.