| Lovely looking app, well done. I hope you're able to build enough of a business around this to keep the updates and improvements flowing. To those complaining about subscriptions, it's the only viable way to build a business around an app now (even one small enough to justify hobby time spent on it when it's not so fun any more). Why? 1. Customer acquisition cost is sky high, after the initial release bump, getting new users is a trudge and expensive, the amount people are willing to pay for a one off is too low to make most apps viable. 2. Software isn't one and done, even a little app like this needs annual updates to keep inline with the OS. 3. Users say they don't want new features, but they do, to do that the dev needs to be incentivised to keep working on it. 4. Subscriptions = better software ... because the dev gets to keep working on the app. 5. They allow indies in to the market, bigger companies with enterprise offerings and more routes to market can charge one and done, free, ad supported etc. Indies need regular predictable income, subscriptions provide that. The people who say "give me a lifetime price" are really saying "give it to me free". Even those who do land up paying the inflation adjusted correct price for it based on what you paid back in the day (seriously, look at the inflation adjusted price for the one and done software from 20 years ago, it's laughably expensive compared to a few bucks a month sub) land up costing the dev money in the long run. Any established indie app developer (especially if they have server costs) who offered lifetime regrets it after a few years. |
The fee also hurts. Especially if this is how you make a living. I pulled the app as the costs + income - time was not worth it (I put a big price-tag on my time)
> 4. Subscriptions = better software
this is the way to go, and one better has a darn good app because nobody will be paying you $1-$2-$5-$10 per month in perpetuity if it's not great