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Charge more for app subscriptions

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Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#131

Post by valuearb »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #96
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…

What does Apple need to understand? I don't believe there are any rules about publishing MyApp2.0 and then heavy advertising it in your previous versions.

One pain is sandboxing makes it difficult to migrate data from v1 to v2. You need to build an elaborately kludgey data export/import feature by hand, in both versions.

More importantly, how do you charge upgrade pricing? Any user who encounters 2.0 on the store is charged the same price, whether they own 1.0 or not. There is no easy way to give 1.0 owners a discounted price.

There are elaborate kludges to work around these limitations with a great deal of work. Apple could make producing upgrade versions easy, like they’ve done with subscriptions, so devs can focus on improving their product value instead of purchasing mechanisms.

Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#132

Post by fbelzile »

sudhirj wrote: post #77
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 wrote a tool to calculate product or service prices for different parts of the world based on the Big Mac Index (the price of a local mcdonalds lunch burger). That method makes more sense to me because all your customers have a similar point of reference. McD is thought of as a premium product in some very poor areas, but on the whole they aim for mass market affordability, which makes it a fair comparison. https:/…

My trick for international pricing was to copy Microsoft.

Minecraft in the US sells for $26.99 USD [0]

Minecraft in the UK sells for £22.49 GBP [1] or about $29.60 USD (+9.22%)

Minecraft in Mexico sells for $479.00 MXN [2] or about $22.18 USD (-19.56%)

Surely, if it's good enough for Microsoft, it's good enough for a company of one.

The Big Mac index, while provides similar results, is a bit too disconnected from the cultural attitudes towards paying for software.

[0] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/minecraft-for-windows-10/9...

[1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/p/minecraft-for-windows-10/9...

[2] https://www.microsoft.com/es-mx/p/minecraft-for-windows-10/9...

Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#133

Post by zepto »

Shared404 wrote: post #79
zepto wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of subscriptions is that they aren’t sunken cost.

If I subscribe to something for a month, and then feel compelled to use it that month instead of some better tool because I paid for it, I would say that's a sunken cost. A time limited one, but still there.

Technically true, but seems like an exotic case, and proves the point that sunk cost isn’t a substantial issue here.

Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#134

Post by tonyedgecombe »

semireg wrote: post #127
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Everyone is still buying the one-time licenses. I'm not surprised, everybody can multiply $15 by 12 and see that doesn't add up.

Can you help me understand how you, as a user, would prefer to see it add up?

If something costs more to rent over the next 12 months than buy outright then I am going to buy it outright.

Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#135

Post by jaclaz »

Valkhyr wrote: post #42

The 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…

>The current model is really "app rental", and it's inherently customer-hostile.

Additionally, it doesn't generally speaking fit the actual usage and that is something that irks the customers.

Take car rental as an example their pricing (right or wrong) more or less used to be on a per day basis with a certain (logical ) amount of km included per day and excess km paid extra at a given rate.

Now they are mostly on a per day basis with "unlimited" kms included.

The amount of the "unlimited" is clearly calculated on historical data/averages, etc. and the result is most of the times an affordable rate, often considered fair by everyone that actually runs it for a near to the average distance.

You still have a few that rent the car for several days and drive it for only a fraction of the distance and a few people that take great advantage by driving the car for a much greater distance in a short period, but they are a limited amount of "extremes".

With an app, as you say in an "app rental" agreement, you probably have a much larger amount of people that will use it very rarely and (if it is a good tool) a much larger amount of people that will use it every day, all day.

The first category won't be happy.

Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#136

Post by bromuro »

bayindirh wrote: post #130
rootlocus wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have both a Mac and iPad and, I'm in a developing country. Paying $100/year for a utility like this a bit too much. Exchange rates aside, I'm coming from register once, pay to upgrade world. When deciding not pay means losing access to the app, not to the latest version only; It's very hard for me to fork the cash.

In the “developing world”, owning an Apple devices costs more dollars than in EU or US.

Also customs are incredibly high - try to get a 5k display from the US, you may pay like 1600 dollars in import fees.

Someone may assume they don’t want us to “develop”, but for sure, the attitude is not helping.

Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#137

Post by GordonS »

stordoff wrote: post #59
Valkhyr wrote: post #42

The 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…

This is roughly how the collectorz.com desktop apps work. Once your service plan expires, you lose the ability to update and some cloud features, but you can always use the version you currently have (or update to the last version that was available within your service plan). If I open Movie Collector, which I had a paid subscription for but let lapse, and try to update, I get: Your current version: 18.4 build X You…

I do similar with my B2B security software too (which doesn't have a cloud component).

We have an optional software maintenance, which gets you software updates and support for the duration of your subscription. If you don't renew your subscription, you get to keep using the last version that was available at that time.

Sometimes if a lapsed customer later buys a lot of new licenses relative to the number they already have, I just reinstate their maintenance for free, because it feels like the right thing to do

Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#138

Post by GordonS »

dwighttk wrote: post #35

> The first thing you’ll notice is that people are much more willing to make a one-time purchase. This X 100 I would rather pay you $50 with a major update every year that costs $50 than $50/yr subscription. Because if the resubscription comes up and things are a little tight I lose access to the app. Or if I don’t use the app I don’t have to worry about accidentally autoresubscribing

For desktop software, and mobile apps without a backend, I agree.

For everything with a backend though, I just don't see how it's a sustainable business model to allow customers to keep using the backend in perpetuity. Of course, a lot of consumers know knowing about the tech that's involved, so as a software engineer I have a different perspective here.

Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#139

Post by leoedin »

fbelzile wrote: post #132
sudhirj wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote a tool to calculate product or service prices for different parts of the world based on the Big Mac Index (the price of a local mcdonalds lunch burger). That method makes more sense to me because all your customers have a similar point of reference. McD is thought of as a premium product in some very poor areas, but on the whole they aim for mass market affordability, which makes it a fair comparison. https:/…

My trick for international pricing was to copy Microsoft. Minecraft in the US sells for $26.99 USD [0] Minecraft in the UK sells for £22.49 GBP [1] or about $29.60 USD (+9.22%) Minecraft in Mexico sells for $479.00 MXN [2] or about $22.18 USD (-19.56%) Surely, if it's good enough for Microsoft, it's good enough for a company of one. The Big Mac index, while provides similar results, is a bit too disconnected from the…

That price is not really based on mass market affordability though. The UK GDP per capita is $43k USD and the US is $63K USD. The average salary in the UK is $38k/year and the average salary in the US is $63k. By all measures the UK is a significantly less wealthy country.

Perhaps Microsoft choose their pricing based on other measures.

Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#140

Post by GordonS »

throwaway4good wrote: post #82
throwaway4good wrote: post #81

I recently downloaded "Jambl" which is a music/synth app for iPhone based on a TikTok ad. It immediately pushed me to start a 7.99 GBP a week subscription. About 550 USD a year.

Music Ally Startup Files: Jambl, the music-making app for non-musicians https://musically.com/2020/02/12/startup-files-jambl-music-m... "The rationale for aggressively pushing a £7.99-a-week subscription (the same pricing as sister app Beat Maker Go) whilst showing freemium users unskippable ads is that, by pushing away all but truly determined users, Jambl can get feedback, iterate and make its app super-sticky – th…

Aren't they only going to be left with about 3 lunatic users, and perhaps 2 very rich ones that don't notice they're paying for it?

$550/y is a lot for consumer software. Windows OS, O365, nope, I can't even think of any other consumer software priced that high!

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