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Charge more for app subscriptions

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Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#2

Post by dave_sid »

Very good post. I wonder how much these percentages would differ between B2B and B2C apps. I’m not sure I can imagine many people paying anything like $10 per month for a non-business app (not including Spotify, I see that as a special case). I would understand it if the budget isn’t coming out of their own pocket.

Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#4

Post by com2kid »

dave_sid wrote: post #2

Very good post. I wonder how much these percentages would differ between B2B and B2C apps. I’m not sure I can imagine many people paying anything like $10 per month for a non-business app (not including Spotify, I see that as a special case). I would understand it if the budget isn’t coming out of their own pocket.

The two fitness apps I use are $60/year and $30/year.

Headspace is ~$55/year and they have a ton of subscribers.

Plenty of language learning apps are over $100/year.

If the value is there, and especially if there is a direct comparable to a non-app based service, people will pay.

Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#5

Post by cercatrova »

I watched a very interesting video about selling to consumers as opposed to businesses [0]. The key takeaway is that consumers' target price to pay is actually $0. Therefore, any price above that, even a 3 to 4 dollar a month difference, is seen as extremely annoying to them, because again, they actually only want to pay nothing. This is why you should, if not charging business, at least charge prices that are sufficiently high such that only those who see the value in them will pay, which are usually in a different class of consumers from bottom-feeders who look for the lowest price, ideally 0. An example is Superhuman, an email app that costs $30 dollars a month. Only those who see the value in a fast, keyboard-driven email app will pay that much.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEc-qGK5cjY

Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#7

Post by dave_sid »

com2kid wrote: post #4
dave_sid wrote: post #2

Very good post. I wonder how much these percentages would differ between B2B and B2C apps. I’m not sure I can imagine many people paying anything like $10 per month for a non-business app (not including Spotify, I see that as a special case). I would understand it if the budget isn’t coming out of their own pocket.

The two fitness apps I use are $60/year and $30/year. Headspace is ~$55/year and they have a ton of subscribers. Plenty of language learning apps are over $100/year. If the value is there, and especially if there is a direct comparable to a non-app based service, people will pay.

That’s interesting you say your fitness apps cost 60 and 30 per year. Would you say that’s another factor, and that yearly less frequent subscriptions and more appealing than monthly?

Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#8

Post by egypturnash »

Man I dunno, for the sector they're in, folks are pretty likely to already be paying for a subscription to the Adobe suite, and honestly I think the whole "subscription" thing is gonna strangle Adobe in the future when there's a generation of artists who grew up using other tools that were buy once, use until upgrading something else breaks it, and/or were easier to pirate.

Also I have a piece of hardware I bought from the Astropad folks and if the app suddenly stops working because they demand a subscription I'm gonna be pretty damn unhappy.

Part of the problem, of course, is that app stores have completely killed "upgrade pricing". There's no good way for your existing users to give you money for "hey we added some new features and fixed some bugs" without bullshit workarounds like "okay the new version is a totally new app, go buy it".

Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#9

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

This analysis is very US/Euro-centric.

Bumping the price from US$20 to US$100 might indeed allow you to focus more on your most dedicated customers.

It also bumps the price way above anything that billions of people around the world can pay for such a thing.

At Ardour, we have 3 subscription price levels:

   Regular: US$10/month
   Low Cost: US$4/month
   Developing World: US$1/month
We leave it to users to decide which category to select. Maybe you don't care about people in Senegal or Bangladesh or the Phillipines. That's certain an option, but some demonstration that this has crossed your mind is probably a good idea.

It may also be important that on a technical level, our subscriptions are not like e.g. Adobe's. Stop subscribing to this GPL'ed software and nothing changes except for your ability to get updates for free.

Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#10

Post by input_sh »

cercatrova wrote: post #5

I watched a very interesting video about selling to consumers as opposed to businesses [0]. The key takeaway is that consumers' target price to pay is actually $0. Therefore, any price above that, even a 3 to 4 dollar a month difference, is seen as extremely annoying to them, because again, they actually only want to pay nothing. This is why you should, if not charging business, at least charge prices that are suffic…

In an ideal world where people have a decent disposable income, those arguments might be true.

In the real world, it's not that "people don't want to pay anything", it's that people have a small amount of money to throw at things for a marginally better experience. I sure like keyboard-driven apps, but I'm never going to pay as much as I pay for my entire Internet package for any online service. Hell, all of them I pay for barely add up to $30/month.

Superhuman and similar are tools for rich people, equivalent to a Rolex or the latest iPhone. Those with less income are assumed not to be its target audience. I'd argue that they could double the price without losing more than a single digit percentage of current users.

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