Fantastical Unifies Its Mac, iOS, and Apple Watch Calendar Experience With Weather, Tasks, Meeting Proposals, and More

[egrimo]

I just left them yesterday after seing Calendar 5 does the same thing and they have both paid option and sub base option.

In my opinion:

• Interesting calendar is a premium feature
• daily/monthly etc views are not(it is copied from macOS version)
• weather is pre feature, we did not need it since many of users who bought fantastical is also bought carrot weather app or are using free apps that we wouldn't need it.
• UI is good, I kinda would give a new purchase of that, but sub?, with that price, nope.
• Unifying app is a good idea, the other option(where things are still 3 separate platforms) was old trend

After all, they did some parts wrong. They should:

• offer new lifetime purchase price
• create lower sub models so people should not paying frickin 5$ /month or 50$ /year....

 

[jagooch]

Used to love it but don't use it anymore. I believe in supporting developers but there is only so much I can pay every month or annually. Everything adds up at the end of the day and now I'm going through my budget to see what else I'm paying that I don't use. Sticking with Apple Calendar, Reminders and Weather for now.

Same here. I use hundreds of apps, if they all went subscription , I’d be broke immediately!

I don’t do subscriptions for a few reasons.

1 As I aleady mentioned that it doesn’t scale.

2 I review products before I buy them. I don’t blindly give money and hope that I get my money’s worth

3 I want the power to decided to upgrade to a version with new features. If the product already does what I need there is no need to pay for new features.

4 In most cases, you lose service when you stop your subscription. I’ve been financially strapped before where I used assets that I owned for freelance work to get back on my feet. Since then, I’ve made sure that I own everything vs renting or leasing or paying with a loan.

 

[Kramerjn]

The app is being flooded with negative reviews on the App Store, and its score has dropped from 4.2 to 3.7 within a day.

I hope this serves as a cautionary tale to other developers. There are other apps that successfully transitioned to a subscription-based model with less backlash, because they made sense (recurring cloud service), are reasonably priced, and didn’t make ridiculously poor design decisions to insult existing users. In this case, the developer got snarky and dismissive on Twitter, and insisted that they were being generous (at least in the earlier hours, possibly due to denial.) I don’t consider that I have retained the same functionality when the app relies on UI traps to badger me into subscribing. The biggest functionality was a clean interface without ads, and we don’t have that now.

The rating was 4.3 when I first left my new review. I'm glad people are responding to it.

 

[Spaceboy88]

I just left them yesterday after seing Calendar 5 does the same thing and they have both paid option and sub base option.

In my opinion:

• Interesting calendar is a premium feature
• daily/monthly etc views are not(it is copied from macOS version)
• weather is pre feature, we did not need it since many of users who bought fantastical is also bought carrot weather app or are using free apps that we wouldn't need it.
• UI is good, I kinda would give a new purchase of that, but sub?, with that price, nope.
• Unifying app is a good idea, the other option(where things are still 3 separate platforms) was old trend

After all, they did some parts wrong. They should:

• offer new lifetime purchase price
• create lower sub models so people should not paying frickin 5$ /month or 50$ /year....

Nailed it.

Interesting Calendars is a premium feature, however Outlook offers this in their iOS app for free 🤷‍♂️

The only premium feature I think that works for pros is the scheduling assistant. If you're not at a company with this feature built into your network, it's easily justifiable as a subscription service. But to lock daily/monthly views behind a paywall is downright offensive.
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The rating was 4.3 when I first left my new review. I'm glad people are responding to it.

Yesterday it was ranked #8 in productivity. It's #150 right now.

 

[egrimo]

Nailed it.

Interesting Calendars is a premium feature, however Outlook offers this in their iOS app for free 🤷‍♂️

The only premium feature I think that works for pros is the scheduling assistant. If you're not at a company with this feature built into your network, it's easily justifiable as a subscription service. But to lock daily/monthly views behind a paywall is downright offensive.

I know that Outlook is doing but it's a big company whose price plan is not throught mobile app, so we can think this as a premium content. Views are not, app icons are not( think if they could also apply dark version for premium, lol.

After all, they lost many old users by putting them into free tier what they purchased without giving them extra features. I'm serious on that.

• Calendar sets were free, they made it limited and only allows us and premium to create(and you can only do this on mac, on iOS it asks premium)
• Vertical views are new to present, not new to make premium content since they support this on mac for years.
• You could be able to change first day of week, they made it for premium and allowed current users only for macOS, not iOS.

This is losing customers, not gaining and I would really feel sad for people who's buying this on sub model.

I mean, cmon, location suggestion was not a premium feature... and you are asking leave by time feature that is free on apple's own calendar app... I don't want to be salty, but cmon....

 

[Spaceboy88]

I know that Outlook is doing but it's a big company whose price plan is not throught mobile app, so we can think this as a premium content.

Right. I'm fine if Fantastical wants to charge a premium for that feature. I was just trying to say that I don't think there's really a cost to them that needs to be passed on to the customer to add that.

I'd be totally fine if they said you have to subscribe to a monthly fee to get weather integration, interesting calendars and scheduling assistant. Go ahead and throw "calendar sets" in there too because I really for the life of me can't figure out how this feature is useful at all.

 

[iDento]

I don’t have a problem paying for Fantastical but there are quite few thing I still don’t like about the app.

1. The icon is hideous, all the new icons are hideous.
2. In the month view, if I add a task on 1pm and I have an event on 1pm too, the event will take half the column width, I understand that this is the case with almost every calendar app but it should not be like that.
3. Did I mention that the icon is hideous?

 

[MacGarage]

The upsetting part is that I paid quite a bit to use their apps across all of my platforms already and now what I paid for is gone. How is that okay with Apple's App Store?

If they wanted to go to a subscription method, fine, but do not delete the apps I paid for in full. Other developers have just created a new version of their app and left their old paid apps as "Classic" and left them unsupported (i.e. I use AltaMail and this is what they did and am fine with it).

 

[Razeus]

I believe that's the point. 2.0 wasn't subscription so they want to 3.0 so they can have the resources to update more regularly with mew features to warrant the price.

So for $40 A YEAR, what news features would a CALENDAR app need/use?

I'd like to see some bullet points on this. For $40 A YEAR.

 

[citysnaps]

I don't have app auto-updates turned on. After reading all the comments here it sounds like going to 3 will be a loss of functionality I already paid for as well as annoying upgrade notices (preventing this is precisely why I've always updated my apps manually).
Fingers crossed I don't accidentally hit the update button every time I update my other apps going forward.

And... I routinely tap the Update All button. Hope I don't accidentally hit that, now.

 

[R10k]

Go ahead and throw "calendar sets" in there too because I really for the life of me can't figure out how this feature is useful at all.

They're great for people with lots of calendars. You can quickly switch between groups of calendars. For example, I have a few calendars related to business. I can hide everything and show those only. The only issue with this on the Mac version is you can't just tick a box to show one calendar, or combine the sets. Everything has to be in a set.
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[*]Calendar sets were free, they made it limited and only allows us and premium to create(and you can only do this on mac, on iOS it asks premium)

There's no change here - the Mac one is the same as V2. iOS never had it.

 

[dudeslife]

If you are looking for other calendar options, take a look at SaiSuke ..

 

[turbineseaplane]

So for $40 A YEAR, what news features would a CALENDAR app need/use?

I'd like to see some bullet points on this. For $40 A YEAR.

Well - to be fair, they need to pay for developers to go to WWDC each year, which is a pretty penny... lol

 

[Rookwood]

I'm really upset that it essentially broke the Mac app: it removed Day, Week, Month, and Year views (all views!) with a message "Day view is only available with Fantastical Premium".

They removed all views for existing customers?!?!

I do support subscribing as well as outright paying for quality software to support its development. But after this move, am I supposed to trust Flexibits enough to pay a premium (and it is steep at $40 per person per year, no Family Sharing) for calendaring?
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I don't understand the pricing complaints here. Fantastical is now FREE. The subscription is for additional features; but the core app — and all the things that make Fantastical great — is FREE.

On the Mac, they took away all views (day, week, month, year) from existing, paid Fant 2 owners. For free... they took away a bunch of function that I already had and put it behind paywall for me to continue using it.

I suppose if you've never bought it, then what you get for free now (with constant upgrade-to-premium reminders) is what it is, and not to be complained about.

But you're hearing from complaints from existing, payed customers about this botched, forced-upgrades. I don't know if Flexibits is going to "mea culpa," or is fine losing many existing customers and having their good-word-of-mouth become the opposite: "Fantastical/Flexibits beware! They betrayed me by locking what I'd bought and been using behind a subscription paywall later. I wouldn't deal with them again."

Maybe the smaller number of paying users and the lack of positive word of mouth is a better business model for them? In which case, they are right where they want to be.

 

[Rookwood]

You don't have to subscribe if you don't want to. If you were a paid Fantastical 2 user, all of the version 2 features are automatically unlocked in version 3, plus some new stuff like limited weather support.

Nope. See my other post. Removed basic, major function from Fantatical 2 on Mac. I described in another post. This statement that Fant 2 users get to keep what they had is just wrong.

 

[Kramerjn]

Nope. See my other post. Removed basic, major function from Fantatical 2 on Mac. I described in another post. This statement that Fant 2 users get to keep what they had is just wrong.

thank you! For some reason, I’ve heard you dint have to sign up for an account if you don’t want to, yet I can not get past the account sign up screen. I paid for F2, and now I can’t even use basic functionality after the update.

 

[ericg301]

yet if they released 3 new apps at the same time, with a combined price of $70, everyone here would be freaking out about having to pay to upgrade too. "i already paid for F2, why do i have to pay for F3?"

search your feelings. you know this to be true.

so instead of a new version every couple years, where you have to pay full price....you pay a much smaller ongoing monthly fee for ongoing updates.

let's say $70 gets you F3 for iPhone, iPad and Mac, just like they had them. with only a promise of bug and security updates. and in two years, they release F4, which requires another $70.

meanwhile under this sub model, you've paid $40 a year, so $80 for the same two years. is it worth $10 extra for ongoing development and features?

 

[Ludatyk]

No. Just say "NO" to subscription software. Especially for a freaking calendar app. #shameless. BTW, I've already deleted Fantastical from my phone, Macs and watch.

Well, just making a suggestion... That’s all. And yes! I know... the subscription model is the worst. However, it helps the developer... Sometimes it’s always good to look at it from another angle.

Flexibits should had just kept v2 and released v3 as a standalone, which is what’s causing these complaints among their customers. Because I’m perfectly fine with v2 of Fantatastical.

 

[dhoughal]

Wow! App Store ratings/reviews for Fantastical 3 are disastrous. Average rating in German App Store is down to 2.7, from over 4 (24 h before). And Flexibits is hurrying to tweet links to positive reviews of MacStories, iMore, 9to5Mac etc.

 

[max2]

Wow! App Store ratings/reviews for Fantastical 3 are disastrous. Average rating in German App Store is down to 2.7, from over 4 (24 h before). And Flexibits is hurrying to tweet links to positive reviews of MacStories, iMore, 9to5Mac etc.

Good.

 

[navaira]

yet if they released 3 new apps at the same time, with a combined price of $70, everyone here would be freaking out about having to pay to upgrade too. "i already paid for F2, why do i have to pay for F3?"

Only if it autoupdated and I was welcomed with a screen saying "hello! that will be $70 if you want to see your calendar again". (There is a name for this type of software.) You have no idea how relieved I am that I saw this thread approx. 30 minutes before the update showed up for me – I managed to switch autoupdate off.

search your feelings. you know this to be true.

It isn't. Not everyone wants/needs to have the newest version of everything. As mentioned earlier, it would have been enough to leave F2 as "Classic" version and offer F3 separately. Apart from everything else, I ONLY want the iPhone app. I don't use Fantastical on a Mac and I don't even own an iPad. There really is a very big difference between updating a $5 app and paying even $25 for it ONCE – or having a yearly $40 subscription 2/3 of which is useless for me.

Dutch iOS App Store: average score 3.2 by now.

 

[Dameatball]

Another small software company makes the mistake of thinking they can transition a local desktop application to a SaaS/subscription model. A calendar app is software, it’s not a service. Therefore We as users should buy The software, not rent it.

I’ve been using fantastical for more than 6 years and always happy with it. The original driver was because the OS X and iOS native calendar apps were very lacking, especially when utilized for multiple calendars. Since that time the stock OS calendar apps have improved significantly. The latest OS updates actually made me consider whether I needed fantastical as there are some advantages/features that come with apples native apps.

I ultimately decided against it. I like the little desktop menu icon I can interact with while working.

Until yesterday when I learned I could no longer own the software. We will be parting ways today and I’m pretty sure in a week I won’t remember Fantastical.

I’m more than happy to pay for big releases or major updates. If there were big updates that cost $15 year etc or having to re-purchase the next big release. I totally support that. I’d pay the exact equivalent of the annual sub they’re trying to dupe us into. But I will not pay a subscription for a locally hosted desktop application. It’s completely ridiculous, no one should.

When you pay for updates, releases you know what you’re paying for. Work was done to further the product, those updates are detailed and it cost money. we pay for it. With that said fantastical 2 has largely gone unchanged (from a UI perspective) for years. I know improvements on the back end have been made, bugs fixed etc but it’s largely gone untouched (Which was fine).

The argument on the advertorials like these “we haven’t had to pay them anything for a long time so we shouldn’t be offended by the subscription model” is utter nonsense. If the work they did justified payment since v2, why didnt they ask for it?

Some uncreative Flexibits executive simply couldn’t be bothered to figure out a way to further monetize their existing customer base so we’re getting strong armed into a monthly subscription (Cardhop was a pretty weak release surprisingly).

Peace out fantestical, it was good while it lasted but you’ll be forgotten soon.

 

[dudeslife]

Disabled App Store updates to stick wit the version 2.
Update. Oh no it's too late, it is already updated.

This is why I jailbreak. I updated, checked it out, didn't think it was worth it. downgraded back to 2.

 

[Daikin]

This is much greater way for sub-models: https://agenda.community/t/get-all-features/21

E-mailclient Postbox: From version 7 no longer lifetime, but the same price as before, but this time every year is a sub model. User complaints that much ... lifetime licence went back: https://www.postbox-inc.com/store/pricing

And how about, let's say ... (Windows-alert ) a Total Commander. Still after 25 years no extra payment. Changelogs? https://www.ghisler.com/history950.txt

1-time buy for € 37 (without tax). Imagine that, a powerhorse (even for the die-hards - home-user to sys-engineers) ) with that changelog. 25 years (even longer!)

Hello Flexibits?? V1, V2 on all platforms ...and now. S.T.O.P. Loud and Clear.

 

[mngdew]

It's obvious that Flexibits hasn't done their homework before releasing the subscription plan.
I don't see any positive comments anywhere.