I subscribe to many apps and services, not this one though. I used to use Fantastical, not anymore.
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Fantastical Launches New Premium Subscription for Families
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No thanks to a subscription, for a freakin calendar service no less. Plus I really love the combination of AwesomeCal and WidgetCal. They have subscriptions but their free versions are extremely good, FYI to those devs if they ever read on here, I'd gladly pay one time for your apps but not a subscription.
Perhaps we are wrong and Flexibits is selling a bucket load of Fantastical 3 subscription. But to me, $40-65/year seems ludicrous when you compare to Microsoft 365 ($70/year for individual, $100/year for family of 6).
I would love it if Flexibits offer:
I would love it if Flexibits offer:
- Flexibits subscription plan includes cross platform licenses for all of their products: Fantastical, Cardhop, and Chatology, including Family Sharing
- Offer Fantastical 2 features as In App Purchase, $50 for Mac, $10 for iPad, $5 for iPhone
- Allow Fantastical 2 license holders to hide Fantastical 3 features that require subscription
I see, all ex-Fantastical users ..me too
There must be a reason 🤔
There must be a reason 🤔
I once was a loyal fatastical user, bought every app version snd upgrade and supported them that way. But when the moved to the subscription model they lost me. I even gave them a bad review because the way the acted to their loyal customers by removing features or aggressively advertising a subscription. It is sad to see how this develops. Their newest offer shows that they have learned nothing from their mistake!
I have no problem paying for a sub to this — I find tremendous benefit from the app across all my platforms, especially now that I'm working from home. I know it's not for everyone, but to me it's well worth the $3.33/mo for a single sub.
I was hoping for more improvements to the stock Mac/iOS calendar and reminders app, but those arent suited for professional use.
I will of course reevaluate when my sub is up next year, but to me, Fantastical is an essential app.
I was hoping for more improvements to the stock Mac/iOS calendar and reminders app, but those arent suited for professional use.
I will of course reevaluate when my sub is up next year, but to me, Fantastical is an essential app.
I'm currently a Fantastical user. I really like the app tbh, but yeah the monthly subscription does grate.
Can anyone recommend me an alternative? Key feature is that it has the option to create/attach both Zoom and Google Meet video conferences to an event.
Mac availability key. iOS/iPadOS a nice to have.
Can anyone recommend me an alternative? Key feature is that it has the option to create/attach both Zoom and Google Meet video conferences to an event.
Mac availability key. iOS/iPadOS a nice to have.
This would be good.
When they first launched the subscription model I wrote them a longer email on the topic. Honestly duplicating the infuse pricing model would probably get them what they want without having burned their user base in the process!
It is simple:
1. Major releases can be purchased as a one time purchase in the App Store. You get free updates for minor releases to the major release and paid upgrades to whatever major release if you chose to upgrade.
2. You can subscribe to the app for $1/m and get every release major and minor as long as your subscription is active.
3. You can purchase a lifetime subscription to the app for $60 one time and get access to all future releases.
All subscriptions support Family Sharing at no extra charge. And subscriptions cover all platforms.
~$1/m or so makes perfect sense for a Calendar App since the "data" you're storing is all on your phone or server somewhere else. You're paying only for new features which are hard to justify paying as much as Office for. And for users like me who HATE subscriptions you can get us to pay upfront, but having it priced equal to 5 years of the annual sub only a few users will go that route.
Everyone is happier and they can have the subscription revenue from users who like that model. They can have the one time revenue from users who hate it. They also won't burn their user base and still have a bridge out for when the subscription bubble bursts.
But they didn't listen to my suggestion it seems. A shame.
This is kind of what I've found. Haven't yet found an alternative that does everything Fantastical does. Particularly the features I highlighted above. Apple Calendar certainly (sadly) isn't feature rich enough
since apple added natural text entry to reminders last year, i was expecting it to come to calendar this year.
also, i love how everyone here thinks they run business development for flexibits.
I don’t mind subscriptions if the app is really important to me and they have, say, recurring server costs. But these days, every developer is looking for ways to add subscriptions to their app. Apple built a pretty decent system for every app on the store to have access to data storage per-user on Apple’s servers, but companies keep wanting to put your data to their own servers. In many cases, I’m not comfortable with this.
There are plenty of apps where I’d be happy to pay $10 or $20 every couple of years, for a new version, if they keep bringing useful updates, but the app isn’t worth $5/month to me (to be clear, a handful of apps are worth that to me). Subscriptions at non-trivial prices tend to separate out the handful of users that really depend on the app from the sea of users who like the app but don’t need it to survive. Companies are making the decision to turn their backs on this latter category of casual users, either with the expectation that their most dedicated users can carry them, or the misperception that a lot larger percentage of their users are enormous fans of the app.
In my case, I loved Fantastical, used it every day, and recommended it to lots of people, right up until the release that coincided with the subscription model - they added a lot of features I didn’t want and/or didn’t care about, and wanted to use their servers for some of my data. They made the UI prettier at the expense of showing less information on the screen - I valued Fantastical for its dense information display. They added things like weather (I built my own weather tracking system, theirs is useless baggage to me), and interfacing with videoconferencing - I make all those calls from my work computer where I won’t be installing Fantastical, so actionable alerts are useless to me. It feels like they threw in a lot of not-really-calendar functions to try to justify the subscription price. As well, if you’re not a subscriber, the app leaves buttons all over that trigger useful features - except they don’t, they just put up ads for subscribing. As someone who paid full price, several times, for the app, it’s infuriating to have it littered with ads now. They lost me as a user.
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Big Sur does seem to have natural text entry on the calendar.
Still really poor video conferencing options though (aka none).
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good to know. i installed it yesterday but havent had a chance to play with it yet. am trying to go stock-only apps on that partition.
I was just about to say this.
It's a great app and the price/subscription isn't even that bad. I just have too many subscriptions and it's marginally better than Apple Calendar/Google Calendar and Things. And the only reason I went back to Things was because Wunderlist up and went to Microsoft.
It's a stunning and powerful app, so for those who are on the fence about it, I'm not saying don't buy/subscribe. Just that right now I'm at about ..... 7 different subscriptions, not counting entertainment and such.
For Work:
Adobe
Dropbox
iCloud
QuickBooks SE
Grammarly
Avid
IMDB
For Play:
Netflix
Disney
CrunchyRoll
Pandora
Apple Music
caveat, not complaining, just find it hard to add on another reoccurring. They add up pretty fast.
I understand app developers migrating to this model as it’s more sustainable to them. At the same time, I think most of the prices are out there for what it is. I bought all these Fantasical apps, and I have never learned why or how it’s better than Apple calendar.
Another example of a developer who doesn't understand the ACTUAL value of their app. I appreciate why developers are moving to the subscription model and am not against it. I am, however, against the ridiculous prices some developers are charging. Apps that would have cost around $50 for a perpetual license a few years ago are suddenly $5/month today. It's absurd. Developers need to stop overvaluing their apps. An app like Fantastical is worth maybe $1/month.
Fantastical — The calendar and tasks app you won't be able to live without.
Fantastical, the calendar app you won't be able to live without. Quickly create new events and reminders with natural language input and more.
flexibits.com
Off the top of my head:
Event templates
Zoom/Google Meet integration
Proposed events (multiple suggested times)
Team availability
are the things I use regularly that either aren’t present in Apple Calendar or are much stronger in Fantastical.
I’d imagine there’s plenty of others tbf.
What consumers perceive as fair (e.g., $1/month) may not be sustainable for Flexibits. Finding that right balance is very tough.
For a calendar app like Fantastical, the obvious ceiling is Microsoft 365 ($70-$100/year). To be fair, this is a compelling subscription that is difficult for indie developers (let alone unicorns like Dropbox) to match.
Flexibits charged about $70 for the entire Fantastical 2 platform (Family Sharing was allowed from what I remember) and it was generously maintained for about 4 years. That translates to $19.99/year (in contrast to $39.99/year for Fantastical 3).
Would twice as many customers subscribe to Fantastical 3 at $19.99/year? I personally would, but some customers are "anti-subscription" regardless of the price point.
While Infuse's pricing model is great, lifetime subscription is ultimately not sustainable. I like Due's Upgrade Pass model that relies on annual subscription ($9.99/year). Any features released during subscription window will remain available even if you cancel the subscription. This is admittedly not easy for the developer to implement but a great way to shed "anti-subscription" sentiment.
I honestly thought they would get smart and while perhaps not eliminate subscription entirely, I thought they would announce a new deal that for the single user yearly price of $39.96 would just give you the rights to your whole family. Before with Fantastical 2 you paid the *high* price for each piece of software but at least my wife and kids could use it... under the new model I was taken aback at the $39.96 yearly price for calendaring software but it was 10x's worse when I realized that price would be for EACH user and my whole family tends to use the same thing. SOOO I switched to something else. It's 90% as good, but I'd still prefer Fantastical. I guess I could switch back now for $65.04 for my entire family but that still seems so out of line for what the software is and the fact I would be the only "power" user of it. Frustrating, so very frustrating... I want to give this company my money but I honestly feel disrespected and the only people they want to support now are business clients who are going to expense the cost rather than passionate home users who just like using the best software and EVANGELIZING it which now we no longer do.
Another great app ruined by a too expensive subscription model. Im looking at you weather underground.
I pay somewhere around 40-50 USD for 1Password. For that price, they host my password vaults securely, I can access them at any time through a web browser or any of my multiple devices, and it covers me and my wife. That sounds like a valuable service to me.
Fantastical - I was super excited about them when I was able to buy their apps; I bought all three of them before they turned to the subscription model. But then the subscription hit, and it doesn't really make sense because Fantastical doesn't host my calendar data on their website; they just read Apple's calendar database and display the data. They make event entry a bit easier, sure. But I don't see $40-65 in value-added services there.
I am well aware that I am just not their target market and that is fine... some folks may balk at paying $40-50/year for a password manager for the family, too. I get it.
I do wish Fantastical had not gone subscription, though. I think I paid for one month of subscription but that was it; it just didn't do much for me.
Fantastical - I was super excited about them when I was able to buy their apps; I bought all three of them before they turned to the subscription model. But then the subscription hit, and it doesn't really make sense because Fantastical doesn't host my calendar data on their website; they just read Apple's calendar database and display the data. They make event entry a bit easier, sure. But I don't see $40-65 in value-added services there.
I am well aware that I am just not their target market and that is fine... some folks may balk at paying $40-50/year for a password manager for the family, too. I get it.
I do wish Fantastical had not gone subscription, though. I think I paid for one month of subscription but that was it; it just didn't do much for me.