Personally I like apps which provide both - a subscription and pay once model. I have no problem paying monthly for an app I use on a daily base. But I don’t want dozens of subscriptions for all my apps to run in parallel.
The problem is that a lot of apps with subscription models don’t provide enough value to justify a monthly payment fee.
Charge more for app subscriptions
111–120 of 149 posts
Re: Charge more for app subscriptions
#112The way to fix app "subscriptions" is not to charge more (or less) but to fix the customer-hostile structure of app "subscriptions". The big issue with app "subscriptions" is that they don't actually work like subscriptions. Before the digital age, "subscription" used to mean (and for physical products it still means) that you get regular delivery of something as long as you pay. If you stop paying, you no longer get…
There is another model featuring 4 levels, that I find interesting: 1 month, 6 months, 12 months AND life-time. We saw that some apps are starting to adopt that model and were thinking doing the same. Even though the life-time price is on a different level, this 4th option might cater to a specific group of people that don't like subscriptions.
Re: Charge more for app subscriptions
#113Whenever 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.
>I can’t see how charging less would help with running a sustainable business. I would imagine charging more would help with that.
I believe you focused on the wrong half of the sentence. This is the part that they mean:
>that benefits as many people as possible.
The benefit is the utility people get.
So say you run a matchmaking app. You can charge $500 to create a happy couple and create 1,000 happy couples (you have just 1,000 customers worldwide) or charge $1 to make a happy couple and have 75,000 happy couples.
If you look at your profit, $500k is way higher than $75k. Plus you only have to deal with 1,000 users which you might do by hand whereas 75,000 overwhelms you personally so you have to hire dedicated customer service reps. The 75k users require bigger hosting and service fees.
At the end of all this you net just $20,000 from your 75,000 users whereas you would have gotten $450,000 if you had charged $500.
So why would you pick a $1 price point?
Because you enjoy hearing from the 75,000 happy couples you created, getting sent their wedding pictures, heartfelt thanks, etc.
You think you are giving a service, and you'd rather give it to 75,000 people than 1,000 people.
That's what OP means by "help as many people as possible." The higher the price, the fewer people can afford it. If you want your app to help more people, you have to lower the price.
Re: Charge more for app subscriptions
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The way I see it: unless you’re putting in a bunch of monthly resources for me (in terms of content creation or server resources), you have no business charging me a recurring fee. If it’s essentially an offline app (or easily could be) then I’m either paying up front or not at all. I’ve passed up on many apps that I would have happily paid for (in some cases up to about $100), but was unwilling to pay a subscription…
ES Explorer, I'm looking at you
Re: Charge more for app subscriptions
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
On mobile, do you also have to give to the app store 30% of $1 for each subscription?
Apple charges 30% the first year of a subscription and 15% after that.
Re: Charge more for app subscriptions
#116This 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…
The article is written by the CEO of Astropad which is a tool that allows you to turn an IPad into a secondary, touch display for Macs. The users of Astropad must own both a Mac and an IPad, so people in developing countries are most likely not the target demographic.
Re: Charge more for app subscriptions
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, it seems your comment is reinforcing my point. Consumers like you don't want to pay $30 and that's fine, you are not their target audience. You may like keyboard-driven apps but you don't like them enough to pay $30, so in terms of microeconomics, you don't believe you'll get as much value from the tool as you'd spend. Again, that is fine, because the company should only target customers who do realize your prod…
I’ve backed people on patreon and never accessed the rewards. I’ve bought humble bundles that I never played the games or read the books. I have, on occasion, bought apps just because I liked the idea and wanted to support the developers. I sponsor people on GitHub whose projects I like but don’t actually use. Not everyone is aiming to pay $0 for everything. Some of us like to support things we like our values even i…
Sure. You're not like most consumers however, and a business cannot rely on consumers like you in order to stay alive.
Services like Patreon are also different in that the product is not the rewards, those are just the bonus, the product itself is giving support to the creator. Imagine if you'd buy a service like Patreon that just takes your money and gives nothing to the creator, I'd assume not, so you can see how the product is creator support.
Re: Charge more for app subscriptions
#118I use a podcast downloader/player daily. I paid something like £5 maybe ten years ago for it.
Around a month or so ago, one of my feeds had weird description text that caused the download button to be bumped off the visible area, meaning I couldn't download that episode. I took a screenshot and reported it to the developers.
When filing the bug, I wondered about that £5 all those years ago and I imagined we'd both be happier if I had taken out a yearly subscription instead. The developers would be motivated to keep me happy because I'd stop paying if I didn't get my bug fixes done.
In the end, they promptly fixed the bug and pushed out an update by the end of the day without taking any extra payment, so I'm not sure what point I'm trying to make.
Re: Charge more for app subscriptions
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
Over the last couple of years, my income has gone up a lot, from "barely scraping by, >50% of my income spent on rent" to "comfortable, can make any small purchases I like without worrying". This has led to a huge change in my attitude to buying things like app, books, games, movies. If it's a small company/author who cares about their product/book etc. and charges a reasonable amount, I want to pay for what I'm usin…
I am with you on that. I buy apps if they provide value to me. If it has a one-time purchase option next to a subscription, even if it is $30 - $50, I pick the one-time purchase. If it's a journaling app, a calendar app, a habit tracker or a drawing app and it wants me to pay monthly, it's a hard 'no' for me as well unless it has a cloud component that I feel justifies the price. There is mostly nothing in it that ju…
That's fine. You are entitled to buy what you want as a consumer, just as a seller is entitled to sell to whom they want. Typically vendors should sell to their target market, and not everyone is in their target market.
Re: Charge more for app subscriptions
#120Man 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…
Some time ago I wanted to do something in photoshop and the old ”a few times a year” task. So I looked for alternatives and found Affinity Photo. Now I doubt that I will ever pay for photoshop.
Isn't the monthly subscription model even better for tasks you only do a few times a year, since you can subscribe when you want to use it and deactivate when you're done?