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by DrillShopper 517 days ago
This is the problem with any fitness app.

They either need to show you ads, charge you for premium for services that used to be free making your free tier functionally useless (looking at you, MFP who gated barcode scanning behind their honestly ludicrously priced subscription), or sell your data, and they often do all three.

The entire industry is like this, and honestly an app that charges one time and fucks off would be ideal but given the amount you'd probably need to charge as a one off (or for major upgrades) most consumers would rather have the slow bleed of $10/mo than $25 one time.

2 comments

You really don't want to pay a one-time fee, it incentives the developers to stop maintaining the app.
I like the general idea of ongoing revenue, but I want to pay something on par with buying a full version every 3-5 years. Subscription software usually costs much more than that.
I would love for developers to stop messing with most apps.
Haha, you say this until Apple does a breaking change to the barcode library or Apple Health export and things stop working. Then you probably want them to change some stuff :)
It would be nice if OS vendors would stop breaking things, too.
This would often be a feature.
Except most app stores require future maintenance and compliance to keep publishing the app. Someone has to keep the lights on.
Most don't require a subscription before a trial.

I'm paying for a fitness app subscription that annually is less than 1 month of gym membership. But I had a 7 day trial which got me hooked before I had to sign up for the subscription.