31–40 of 96 posts
Overall, nice. But it immediately hits a pet peeve of mine: requiring an in-app purchase to enable native features built into my device’s OS. In this case, $6 US for dark mode.
That’s better than every other pay scheme I can think of since you have the option to do without.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.simon.harm...
The fact that this isn't grubby subscription pricing immediately puts this app on my radar as something worth buying. I was steeling myself to write it off as soon as I saw the "in-app purchases" section. I'll agree that charging $6 for dark mode does come off as nickel-and-diming. Honestly, I'd have avoided a free version and just made the basic price at least $6, one-time, with options for larger donations to the d…
I would definitely get less heat, but the user would paradoxically end up in a worse position. I feel like there's always a disconnect between the user and developer when it comes to a freemium model. Developer thinks that it's a paid app that the user can actually try and make an informed decision before buying. User thinks that it's a free app with arbitrary annoying restrictions. And I understand the user perspective.
I think things would be better if refunding was less painful for the user and developer both. If there was a zero friction way of refunding things, we could just abandon freemium.
I see you get a lot of comments about the paywall, I suggest you try offering a 7-day trial instead of the nag. Or, better yet, limit it to X number of openings or something like that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I get annoyed by these things too based on some sort of perceived cost/value of the feature being available and implemented, but paygated. Id rather just have a “donate $6 to help dev” in app purchase as it seems more authentic. However, maybe there are really people who think dark mode is worth $6. Kids raised on Roblox seem to have no ethical issue with paying $5 for a digital hat that is just flipping a bit.
It isn’t flipping a bit, it’s designing an entire free to play game, getting millions of users, designing a hat, then flipping a bit. And about a million other things not mentioned.
The OG is definitely email. What would really rock would be an IMAP gateway which you subscribe to with your favorite email client which then gives you threading, read/unread markers etc. It could abstract different front-page days as folders and each submission as the root of a thread. Then you could use whatever email client you like the most, with all their decades of polishing. It could even support replying to threads. And it could support different "backends", like HN, reddit, whatnot.
Anybody? That's something I'd pay for. Or do I need to keep dreaming?
Overall, nice. But it immediately hits a pet peeve of mine: requiring an in-app purchase to enable native features built into my device’s OS. In this case, $6 US for dark mode.
I get annoyed by these things too based on some sort of perceived cost/value of the feature being available and implemented, but paygated. Id rather just have a “donate $6 to help dev” in app purchase as it seems more authentic. However, maybe there are really people who think dark mode is worth $6. Kids raised on Roblox seem to have no ethical issue with paying $5 for a digital hat that is just flipping a bit.
No other profession probably degrades themselves as much as developers. If his app is worth it, people would pay or else they don't.
No developer need to beg for money if they are good at their craft.
Overall, nice. But it immediately hits a pet peeve of mine: requiring an in-app purchase to enable native features built into my device’s OS. In this case, $6 US for dark mode.
I'll think about a better approach of monetizing the app. I always struggle when trying to choose what should be behind an in-app purchase. In this case I just picked the least restrictive option of what the popular competitor apps do (you can still use the dark mode, but it gets switched back when the session ends). Judging from the feedback on these apps I assumed that people are fine with it.
It’s clear you put some thought into pricing and have avoided the subscription route which is what most people will complain about.
I wouldn’t put much stock into the complaints here.