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Charge more for app subscriptions

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Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#21

Post by Kaze404 »

EduardoBautista wrote: post #14
dguo wrote: post #11

Whenever I read "charge more," I think of the implicit assumption that service owners want to maximize total profit. While I can understand that desire, there's no law of nature that says we have to act in a profit-maximizing manner. A SaaS service could have a different goal: running a sustainable business that benefits as many people as possible. So they could choose to charge a deliberately low amount such that mo…

I can’t see how charging less would help with running a sustainable business. I would imagine charging more would help with that.

Parent never said that. Charging less helps with the goal of having a sustainable business that benefits as many people as possible because it lowers the barrier of entry.

Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#22

Post by Kaze404 »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #9

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 cate…

This is incredible. Thank you for not forgetting about half the planet's population like most services do.

I'd like to point out that https://sloppy.io (not sponsored) recently helped me out with regional pricing. On top of being a great service, I can tell the people running it actually care.

Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#23

Post by valuearb »

The higher revenues for onetime purchase show the weakness of subscriptions vs the old upgrade model, and I wish Apple would understand it. Subscriptions carry the fear of paying for something you won’t be using, or being nickel and dimed for years on end.

Upgrades are a much simpler purchase decision. Am I using the app? Is it offering a good value? Does the upgrade provide new features I want or need at a reasonable price?

Some customers will say no to one of those questions at first, but eventually change their minds. Like subscriptions this model matches revenues to usage, so engaged customers support future development. iOS would be a much better platform with easy upgrades vs. easy subscriptions.

Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#24

Post by egypturnash »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #16
egypturnash wrote: post #8

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 fr…

> 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. In the future when? Isn't that now ? Adobe changed to subscription model in 2013. Everyone that is paying subscription now grew up with the buy-once model, right? In the future, people will have grown up with adobe's current subscription mod…

Yeah I think it may be about now. And now that I think about it very few of the younger pro artists in my circles are using Adobe’s stuff, they’re using Clip Studio or Procreate for the most part.

Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#25

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

seanwilson wrote: post #20
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #9

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 cate…

> 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. Is there some automated way you could come up with reasonable pricing based on IP detected country? I use Paddle for payments and they offer localised pricing - you either ente…

Right now, most IP address detection mechanisms will place me in Albuquerque, NM. In reality, I'm about 70 miles from there. In the circle defined by that radius, there are families who barely earn $10k/yr and single individuals who earn millions per year.

So IP address is not particularly useful in determining the "right price".

That said, and as mentioned below, we do use IP address and OECD data on the cost of dining out to pre-seed the one-time payment option (the user is free to edit it as they wish).

Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#26

Post by Valkhyr »

valuearb wrote: post #23

The higher revenues for onetime purchase show the weakness of subscriptions vs the old upgrade model, and I wish Apple would understand it. Subscriptions carry the fear of paying for something you won’t be using, or being nickel and dimed for years on end. Upgrades are a much simpler purchase decision. Am I using the app? Is it offering a good value? Does the upgrade provide new features I want or need at a reasonabl…

This. With very few exceptions (content subscriptions (e.g. Netflix) and services that have a server-side component core to its functionality (e.g. Dropbox)), I avoid subscriptions like the plague.

With applications, I don't choose between more or less expensive subscription, but I'll chose your competitor who sells upfront.

Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#27

Post by zepto »

Kaze404 wrote: post #21
EduardoBautista wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t see how charging less would help with running a sustainable business. I would imagine charging more would help with that.

Parent never said that. Charging less helps with the goal of having a sustainable business that benefits as many people as possible because it lowers the barrier of entry.

Maybe, but it’s also possible that if you charge too little, people subscribe but don’t benefit, because they don’t use the service much.

Subscribing doesn’t necessarily imply benefitting, but the higher the price, the more correlated these are likely to be.

Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#28

Post by m3kw9 »

Subscriptions for purely software updates seem like a steep price hike over buy once and get updates for a long time. I really don’t like how devs are under the guise of we need to make a living and start charging subscription for such. I won’t buy that unless is totally indispensable

Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#29

Post by OJFord »

seanwilson wrote: post #19
OJFord wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regional price discrimination is nothing new, but I haven't heard of making it buyers' choice before - why aren't you using IP or some other method of determining region? The obvious answer is that it's defeatable, but if the alternative is then to make it a radio button (trivially 'defeatable'), that's clearly not it.

> The obvious answer is that it's defeatable, but if the alternative is then to make it a radio button (trivially 'defeatable'), that's clearly not it. Do people really do this? I use Paddle for subscription payments and they offer regional pricing plus they charge country specific tax and VAT processing at checkout. If a business tried to get around this, wouldn't they be at risk of accountancy issues?

Yes, they do, since as the commenter I replied to points out, otherwise you're either pricing yourself out of, or leaving money on the table in, some markets.

The cost of mobile data in the USA is 1-2 orders of magnitude higher than in India, for example. You can't charge the same for some mobile app subscription in both markets and not lose out vs. discriminating.

Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#30

Post by jimkleiber »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #9

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 cate…

I really appreciate this approach. I thought about charging a low rate of $1/month, but with Stripe processing fees of $0.30 + 2.9% and Memberful fees of 4.9%, I was going to be charged something like $0.38, leaving me $0.62 per $1.00 transaction.

Have you found a way around this or just accepted the essentially 38% tax on those $1 monthly transactions?

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