4 ms·
Charge some number of dollars once. There's no service here, so why would we need a subscription?
by cush 2mo ago
Charge some number of dollars once. There's no service here, so why would we need a subscription?
- hbn 2mo agoMaintaining an app isn't free. You let it sit stale for a year or 2 and you'll get kicked from the App Store for non-compliance. Not to mention the developer account subscription is $99/year
- cush 2mo agoThis is hardly convincing. A $99/yr fee and a once every 2 years update doesn't warrant a monthly subscription fee from every user. Eg a $9.99 app could cover those costs with a few dozen downloads
- indianmouse 2mo agoMight be. But as an Indie developer and maintaining app is just not the app developer and maintenance. Upgrades and the development requirements around it are costly and needs constant upgrades! I'm not justifying, but trying my best to bring the reality. The time spent on development, hardware costs, licensing costs, design costs etc, are to be factored. If people are working on a full-time job and trying to create something in the free (!!) time (it still needs to be valued for the time and effort!) and they could chose to or not to charge for the app. It's more personal and a general view. IMHO, any and all subscription fees are justified based on the thoughts of the developer and how he values his effort, time and development complexity. Not stating anything about it even if it is not appealing or convincing. It is purely a personal choice and the dynamics of value, usage, benefits, cost and the problem it solves from the buyer's side will also kick into the thought process and decision making. I'm just saying only one side of the story and want to record my thoughts. Peace out!
- cush 2mo agoThese types of costs exist for any business. It’s called overhead, and I done care. Profit doesn’t equal revenue for any business, and it’s the developer’s responsibility to charge enough to cover their costs. If they can’t do that without inventing reasons to impose a monthly charge, again I don’t care. If you want to charge for new features, box it up in v2 and I’ll pay again.
- anigbrowl 2mo agoOK? That's just the reality of business. You launch something and then need to do marketing to keep getting it in front of people until word spreads around that your app is a must-have thing for whatever it does and you get a decent number of sales every month. In general, when I buy something I want to pay for it once and then have it. I don't want to rent or lease it, even if it's consumable. When I eat a restaurant I I pay for the meal when it's over; if it was delicious I might come back again. Even if I like it so much that I eat there every week, that doesn't mean I want a weekly subscription.
- hbn 2mo agoYou're using a device with an ever-evolving OS that constantly breaks compatibility. If you paid for it once and only got to keep the version of it as of when you paid for it, in a couple years the platform would remove your ability to use it.
- shibapuppie 2mo agoThat's their problem, not yours.
- dudu24 2mo agoEven when you paid for software in the Good Old Days it was guaranteed to be compatible with ONE version of your OS, e.g. Windows 95. When you upgraded Windows, you'd often need to buy a new edition.
- xp84 2mo agoEven that's not really true. Most software that ran on Windows 95 could be run without modification or even a single update on both Windows 98 and Windows ME. Even XP preserved compatibility for most programs, adding explicit compatibility modes you could enable for an application that wouldn't work out of the box. So, in the old days, you paid often $50-500 for a piece of software and the developer would usually have zero burden to update the software for you. By the time the OS completely broke it, it would have been 5+ years later. All that time, the developer was freed up to build and sell whole other applications, or, to innovate new and compelling features to get you to pay the upgrade price to get a new version. Today that developer would have to do 5 major updates with breaking API changes, and probably at least 1 full visual refresh just to keep up with Apple's changing design whims, just for that one app to not be bricked. They have less bandwidth then to build more apps, since each app carries its own annual burden of churn.
- prmoustache 2mo agousers don't need the app to be maintained, just installed once.
- dawnerd 2mo agoWhat’s their LLM sub cost? That’s the ongoing cost plus App Store fee. Some expensive sub to save photos is just dumb.
- joenot443 2mo agoI’ve been at it over a decade now and still found the only reliable way to make money from offline App Store apps is good old fashioned paid apps, $2.99 being a nice sweet-spot. If you had customers buying last year, it’s likely you’ll have even more customers buying next year. If you stop maintaining your app, that stream of new sales almost immediately dries up. Offline mobile apps which charge a subscription are a very silly fad to me. The few that get away with it are being steadily edged out by someone else who wants to eat their lunch. I love the OP’s idea and absolutely see the use case. I also think it’s very promptable. My unsolicited advice is to strike while the iron’s hot at $0.99, because I’d be very skeptical if they’ll attract enough subscribers before getting starved out by copycats.
- bryceacc 2mo agodemonstrably incorrect, it is very easy to find apps with "last updated" dates 2+ years ago. Paid example: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/a-dark-room/id736683061 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/a-dark-room/id736683061
- hbn 2mo agoI was not asserting there's a rule where you're cut off after 2 years. I'm saying it does happen, I'm sure it's happened in some cases within months of releasing an app that someone needed to update it because a new rule made it not-compliant. Can you find a single app that was released at the launch of the App Store or Android Market, and was never updated, that can be run on a modern device? Plenty of desktop software released at that time can still be run on modern systems. Smartphones aren't the same, keeping up with modernizing is a never ending task.
- spaqin 2mo agoWhy can't we be just... done? Why is software development a never ending treadmill? App does what it's supposed to, the developer earns something (or doesn't), and they can I dunno, abandon it if it wasn't successful enough and the API breaks, without any guilt? Do something else with their life?
- xp84 2mo agoIn 1995 or even 2001, this was a completely reasonable line. Most software was written for Windows, and Microsoft clearly considered it taboo to break old software, whether their own or third-party. You could install Office 95 on Windows XP if you really wanted to, which didn't seem unreasonable, as you spent $300+ on the suite. Giving this advice to developers today is frankly absurd career advice. 1. Few apps can achieve the scale needed for a one-time fee to be sustaining for the app - most apps appeal to a finite set of people, and eventually most who are in your target market (and who are willing to spend actual upfront money), have bought the app. 2. An entire generation has grown up that has never paid more than maybe 99 cents for software, and most refuse to even pay that - they're used to adware. You can't price an "app" at $75 and expect it to be bought by essentially anyone. While adware can actually be a very financially viable route, many developers hate ads and want nothing to do with this model. 3. Unlike the multiple years of stability of old desktop operating systems, platform owners today think nothing of breaking even a plurality of apps with any major OS version - and for some insane reason they also think a new "major version" ought to come out annually. If you want apps that cease getting updates after a few months and age very poorly, or just to have no choices out there besides adware, keep boycotting every developer who uses a subscription, regardless of how cheap it is. If you want apps that are diligently maintained and which keep working forever, reward developers who produce apps with reasonable subscriptions. I have a password manager that's $19 a year and covers my whole family, and a podcast player that's $15. That password manager comes out to a nickel a day.
- artisinal 2mo agoSo if you have thirty apps installed that comes to $600 a year in subscriptions or $50 a month. I pay exactly zero a month in subscriptions.
- xp84 2mo agoWhat a silly strawman though. I wouldn't have enough time in the day (or month) to use 30 apps, or even 10, once you subtract all the first-party ones and ones that are just interfaces for things that are monetized separately (grocery store app, restaurant app, Uber, etc). I have 3 paid subscription apps.[1] Total cost $43 a year. My only point was that if there's an app that is useful why shouldn't you pay a small amount per year that sustains it, guaranteeing that it gets good attention from a developer who is accountable not to their advertisers, but their users. [1] Note: That doesn't count streaming services, but my family paid for cable 30 years ago and that was fine. It's entertainment.