Afternoon everyone,
I wanted to go over a few points related to pricing, stats and the roadmap
Pricing
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Sync for Lemmy is completely free with ads (the same as Sync for Reddit)
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You can remove ads in the account picker or drawer for a one time fee of ~$20
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Sync Ultra also removes ads but it’s not required
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I’ll be working on regional prices over the coming weeks
There are now 24k installed users up from 100 the previous day!
I’m going to be spending the next few days going through all of the comments / messages and fixing any crashes.
As always thanks for the support and hope you’re liking Sync!
Lj
Edit: testing edit
Yeah man…I am a dev myself but $20 to remove ads is just too much, especially without regional pricing.
Agreed. $5 MAYBE, $20 is out to lunch. And a subscription model for full features? Nah get outta here with that, that MIGHT be worth $20. The direction app development has gone over the last few years is a huge disappointment
$5 as a one-time payment is not enough for a single developer to sustain his livelihood on.
And ultimately, “worth” is based on what the market decides.
This is by far the best app for Lemmy. By a mile. It’s a lot faster and nicer looking. That said, pricing feels a little steep. Imagine being able to sustain your livelihood on making an app for Lemmy, an otherwise free service providing no additional content. It’s not like we are paying the persons who invest in all the infrastructure for the servers running the Lemmy instances. They provide for the actual service. If a part of the money went to instance servers it would feel way better. Because if they go down, so will Sync.
Not taking anything away from the massive work Lj is putting into this, but pricing do feel a tad off. If 1500 people subscribe he has a yearly income equal to a decent job. If he gets 5000 subs he will earn almost 100 000 dollars a year. Which in Sweden equals to about 2.5 times of a well paid job. That’s excluding ad revenue from everyone who don’t subscribe or pay for removing ads. Pricing can be fairer without compromising the livelihood of said dev. That’s all.
$20 once, for an app you’re going to use daily for the foreseeable future mind you, is not the unreasonable take that people on here seem to think it is.
You get what you pay for, and Sync has proven it’s track record with the Reddit app already. This isn’t just some random app dev asking for money on his bejeweled clone.
It’s $100 once. The $20 option is a yearly subscription.
Edit: Some misunderstanding. It’s $20 to remove ads, and $100 to get all features. Maybe the $20 subscription is for full features and removing ads?
You have completely misread the app. The “Sync Ultra” is not the same as the one-time “Remove Ads” option.
If you want “Sync Ultra” for a lifetime, it’s $100 or w/e it’s listed as, that comes with all the extra features listed in the app. If you just want to remove ads and use the app without the Ultra features, you only have to pay $20 once.
I’ll be working on this full time and plan to make this the best Lemmy app possible.
I think the pricing is fine if the quality matches it. Considering how much time we spend on our phones it could be great value for money.
I’m very curious to see how the advertising option works out for you, as currently I’m not aware of any lemmy sites with sustainable finance models.
I bought Reddit Sync Pro way back when you gave out coupon codes for a discount when you first created it. (just found my receipt… November 2013 for ONE DOLLAR!!!) Used it for what was probably a decade for that low initial price and watched it just get better and better over time.
I assume that I’m going to be using Sync for Lemmy for a decade, and I have zero issue with the upfront ad free cost.
Aside from regional pricing issues, I think some of these potential customers just don’t realize how much they’re going to be getting from you for this price.
Ultra Lifetime is really tempting…
I just wanted to say I’m sorry for the backslash you’re getting for charging money.
I’m also sorry people expect it to be $1 because the Reddit app was $1 back in 1825. I genuinely believe it’s children complaining, because no functioning adult would complain about a price increase when rent has tripled or quadrupled since the $1 Reddit app. It’s also annoying to see that people think that saying they bought the Reddit app for $1 and enjoyed it for 10 years is an argument. It goes to show it was severely underpriced.
It must be frustrating to have that type of response. Lemmy users seem to be really entitled when it comes to software, and the response you’re getting scares me for the future. I really hope the Boost developer doesn’t cancel his app after seeing how entitled Lemmy users are being right now.
What frustrates me more is the people complaining are continuing to use the free open source apps. Like great, you already have an alternative you prefer. Shut up. Stop bringing others down.
I wish you the best. Thank you for choosing to develop for Lemmy. I have my eyes on Boost, but I’m gladly using your free tier for the time being.
Thanks again!
It’s the best app but the pricing is insane. I mean, maybe you have experience from your other apps and you know this is the optimal price, but otherwise, consider changing it. People are surprised by the high price right now.
If it was me, I would price it like this:
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Remove ads - $10 lifetime.
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Ultra - $3 per month, $20 per year, $50 lifetime.
Those sums are realistic and people are likely to find them acceptable. You would get more users instead of less users paying more.
But this is just me and I speak only as someone who never had an app in a appstore. Maybe you know better. But that’s what I would do.
I don’t have 20 dollars to spend on removing ads for a mobile app. I also previously bought Sync for Reddit Pro. Why is the price so much higher for a client to a service that definitionally doesn’t have API charges?
It’s a lot for an app, but it’s something I use for a couple hours a day so it was honestly a no brainier for me. The initial cost is higher than a lot of apps but when I look at how many thousands of hours I got out of sync for reddit, the price evens out. Just something to consider.
did you reply to the wrong person? what you said doesn’t really have any bearing on their thing. they still don’t have $20 to burn, and this is still a whacky price increase that lacks meaningful reasoning.
i’m glad you can reconcile that price to yourself, but the “just something to consider” reads as though this were a logical conclusion everyone should come to, and it simply isn’t.
Most people spend more money on things that they get less out of. Sure, $20 is a lot compared to many other smartphone apps but you could also easily blow the same amount, if not more, on lunch or something like that. If you like the app and intend on using it, spending $20 to support the dev really isn’t that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. I do understand that with exchange rates, the equivalent to 20 USD in many countries is prohibitively expensive but LJ said he’s working on regional pricing.
Could you please post a screenshot that shows how in app ads look like? I haven’t seen a single one as for now.
There’s no clear way to look at all, there’s an “everything” but it’s not clear if that’s classified as “all” like other Lemmy apps
I have sync for Reddit but I won’t be paying $130+ CAD for ultra, especially when sync for Reddit cost me less than $10
