Live data from Hacker News

Charge more for app subscriptions

mronge.com

81–90 of 149 posts

Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#82

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 – then shift to full-on growth."

Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#83
post #78

I’m an indie dev that wrote a useful Electron app for designing and printing labels (both rolls and sheets), data import, rendering batches of images, etc. My competition is either free (DYMO/Brother) or $500 commercial software for expensive printers. So how do I price? For a year I had my price at $47.99 one-time and did OK. A month ago I segmented my licenses/users into Personal (same price of $47.99) and Business…

>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.

Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#85

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.

I'd like to believe it but I don't think its true. Adobe has done quite well out of subscriptions and I expect that to continue.

Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#86
post #77

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:/…

This is cool. I think it would be helpful if the input was in terms of units of currency, rather than Big Macs.

Like: I want to charge €10 a month for my product in the EU. Use the Big Mac pricing model to tell me what that is in Brazil.

According to your site, a Big Mac in the EU is €4.21 (is it really the same across all EU countries?) which means €1 buys you 0.237 burgers. €10 is therefore 2.37 burgers. At the current Brazilian price of 20.9 BRL per burger, you should charge 2.37 * 20.9 = 49.53 BRL (at the time of writing Google says €10 is worth 62 BRL)

Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the goal is "never leave money on the table", your strategies will be very different than if you goal is "raise enough income to do something you want to do". To whatever extent Netflix or Adobe are attached to the former goal, then certainly they are not going to offer pay-what-you-say-you-can. Whether that's the best goal for them to have, either for themselves or for society at large, is an entirely different q…

> If the goal is "never leave money on the table", your strategies will be very different than if you goal is "raise enough income to do something you want to do". The pay-what-you-say-you-can approach is problematic when you want to "raise enough" when you can't rely on people to be truthful about what a fair price is though. I can easily imagine this killing a niche app that's not making thousands of sales.

Yet things like humble bundle have been very successful. Sometimes you have to put cynicism aside and trust that people will support you for it. It doesn’t always work out, of course, but society will be better for it.

But in the end you have to decide what is right for you and if your app is super niche then maybe it’s not the way you wish to go.

Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Affinity line of apps are also pretty great, and have (I think) full feature parity across desktop and iPad.

Affinity Designer not having DXF / DWG import export...

Is preventing me from using it in a professional capacity.

I purchased Affinity Designer without checking for the feature, and people have been asking for the feature for at least 5 years.

Edit to add the forum link I forgot to paste in:

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/6756-dxf-o...

Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#89
post #26

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.

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 of any cost.

Re: Charge more for app subscriptions

#90

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…

Apple does this automatically with their price bands?

Absolutely. I’m surprised nobody’s mentioned this. Apple will let you choose a different price for every country. At Band Mule, we just have one low price. The thing is, we are also freemium. But the feature base in the free offering is good enough for most users and has no ads other than an occasional reminder that they can upgrade to premium to allow an extra audio playlist within the app.

So the key for us is, actually make it free for most, and not a crappy free, good enough that they may never feel the need to upgrade. The premium level gives some bonus features, nice-to-haves.

Post reply on HN