Journaling Platform 'Day One' Transitions to a Subscription Service

[Rossatron]

Don't know the app, but I guess it's up to the users to decide whether or not there are enough features to justify a sub.
As for myself, I try to avoid subscription based apps like the plague, I hate being tied up to stuff like that.
I mean, let's say that after a year you don't want to use it anymore. What happens to your past "journals"? Are they closed to you? Is it in some kind of a wierd file that you can't open?

I will, however, admit that I pay a subscription to WoW, but that requires being ONLINE all the time, which is not required with, say a word document.

 

[IscariotJ]

I'm still on the fence with this. I have been looking to see if I could replicate the functionality of DayOne that I actually use ( photos, location, weather, step count ) with something else, a combination of Workflow / Pythonista and Notes looks like it might be viable. The only reservation I have about continuing with DayOne, is I can see v3 being subscription only, and v2 being forgotten.

If anyone's interested, I've a script to parse the JSON backup from DayOne v2, and create a directory ( year/month/day ) per entry with photos ( and a file for location / weather ). Unzip the backup, and run the script from the same directory containing the Journal.json file:

https://github.com/Wintersmith/pyutils/blob/master/parseDayOne.py

It needs Python3, though I can make it work with Py2.7 if needs be.

 

[BigMcGuire]

In Day One's defense, in this one issue, --- it has a nice PDF export. I've always had the habit of exporting last month's daily logs (journal entries) to PDF and backing them up to Google Drive or some other medium (local hard drive). It includes the photos as well --- but you can also just export the text or whatever. So it doesn't lock your data in.

 

[BJMRamage]

i still haven't written in my journal for Day One since the announcement. the desire to continue just isn't there.

I can continue using DayOne on Mobile and not much will change...but I think there is now a limitation for photos and that's a big deal for me. i don't always add a photo, and when i do it is mostly just a single photo but there are times when something happens that is really neat with lots of photos taken and I add a few to that day's post. i guess i could make separate posts for a single day but that seems odd.

it really isn't such a drastic change but it is one where you paid for an app and the functions within, then after a certain point, the app now requires an on-going payment to continue to use features you expected/had since the purchase.

when i asked the DayOne Support about an issue they basically said "pay us and all will be fixed" and that just seems rude.


When Adobe moved to a subscription some said now we get features all the time/any time and not just on yearly releases. I looked at it from a different perspective, instead of Adobe need to create some extraordinary features in yearly releases to get people to upgrade yearly instead of just every so often, they can add mini features and just continue to charge people each month. it makes their budgeting easier knowing they have an on-going influx of money, not just hoping to get upgrades yearly.

 

[drct]

Good decision, every better app should be on a subscription model, $2-3/month is a really not that much.
Everyone wants a free stuff, which is totally disgusting.

Subscription = better product = less time wasted and a better experience for you.
Why you can't understand this.

So please don't cry!
Don't blame.

It's not $2-3 per month, it's more like $4-5 per month. Please don't operate with wrong numbers.

Nevertheless subscriptions suck, because you are forced to pay on and on. A subscription model also gives less incentives to the developers to improve the app, customers are paying (have to pay) anyway. A better alternative is the "free-updates-for-a-defined-period" model, where you get free updates for a defined period, for a year for example, but you are still able to use the last version that was included in your license, even if your license is no longer valid.

 

[IrishVixen]

i still haven't written in my journal for Day One since the announcement. the desire to continue just isn't there.

I can continue using DayOne on Mobile and not much will change...but I think there is now a limitation for photos and that's a big deal for me. i don't always add a photo, and when i do it is mostly just a single photo but there are times when something happens that is really neat with lots of photos taken and I add a few to that day's post. i guess i could make separate posts for a single day but that seems odd.

it really isn't such a drastic change but it is one where you paid for an app and the functions within, then after a certain point, the app now requires an on-going payment to continue to use features you expected/had since the purchase.

Regarding the bit in bold: there is NO change yet to photos. If you have Day One Classic, you can add one per post, the same as when they stopped making it available for purchase in the app store. If you have Day One 2.0, the limit has been 10 photos per post since it was released and remains the same. (As well, you've been limited to 10 journals, which also isn't changed.)

The difference is, if you move to subscription, you get unlimited photos and journals. I'm annoyed by the whole thing too, but they did not remove that particular feature for previous owners with this change.

-----

I do think I may have figured out what comp they used to decide their pricing: the journaling app Penzu. Penzu brags about their encryption as their most prominent feature, and they have three tiers of pricing currently. Basic gets you limited access for free, Pro is $19.99 with stronger encryption and a few other features, Pro+ is $49.99. I suspect DO is comparing themselves currently to Pro, with the intent that they end up in the Pro+ segment.

The catch...Penzu is cross platform already, has what appears at a glance to be stronger security, and has more features already than DO has on their frequently mentioned "roadmap". Which makes DO a harder sell.

 

[newellj]

Good theory. I just looked at Bear. It's very nice and does all I use DO for, but it's $15/year. Of course, that's less than 1/3 of what DO wants.

 

[LDNA]

I contacted the Day One help team and apparently you can still buy Day One for macOS separately for $49.99 USD (via their PayPal account...)

I assume this is a standalone version, as it was a week ago.

 

[teerexx52]

I have been trying Journaling by Kubuki Vision. Nice app. Syncs well with Drop Box. No MAC app however.

 

[MachCrit]

This might not be the most popular post on the forum, but has it occurred to anyone that in order to develop and grow an application, you need a real company with real people? These people might happen to eat lunch, might want an apartment of their own, and they might even want a family and their own retirement one day. Imagine that. Every app might not just be some garage hobby.

It's not just the 401(k) "take the paved path" variety who enjoy an air of stability.

Developing, designing, and maintaining an application is arduous. And there are people who stay up in the middle of the night working on this just to make their user base happy. The App Store was a concept that allows people to focus on their own ideas and a core group of users. So many go in, try, fail, and flop.

Yes, I understand that it's annoying that everyone charges as much as Netflix does, but these companies—very often small and relatively lean—contribute a lot to the greater technology economy. Buying an app isn't just paying for the app; it's paying for the entire environment around and keeping the progress of our own user experiences moving forward. It's humans investing their labor into their own virtual experience. You can't be a crappy app in the App Store these days to survive, which means you need people who have talent to produce things.

Even a one or two person development team might have a really hard time stretching out a huge wave of single-app sales. You might make a million bucks, but chances are, when you do, you're likely starting to think about how you're going to use that money to immediately reinvest in your product and its future versions. These people aren't immediately striking gold as much as it seems. The payout needs to be WORTH THE RISK.

I think a cool model would be where we pay for usage (e.g. per pack of notes or journal entries) would tie more closely into the actual worth of the product. The monthly model has become trite, and I find much more value in the in-app purchase model.

Either way, people need to stop griping about paying regularly for apps. The app can't exist without the people who take the chance and who make it happen. Some apps suck; some apps are worth WAY more than they charge, and they depend on mass market sales. When an app only has a small core user base, they're incited to instead do a subscription model so they can experience some vague notion of revenue stability and predictability over time.

Agree to some extent, but it is up to the market to decide if there is value in the pricing model.

A lot of pilots used to use a program called LogTen Pro. It sold for around $60, synced between iOS, and Mac, if you spent another $40 for the Mac app. When Apple updated the OS, the vendor required an upgrade of another $40-50 to fix syncing issues. This happenee several times, with customers investing a couple hundred bucks to keep their data available. Then he went to a $60 per annum for a single OS, resulting in over a hundred dollars per annum for iOS and Mac synced apps. This resulted in opportunity costs of over $5000 per a career for data that is already kept by individual pilot's companies, or by hand in a spreadsheet or paper logbook.

The problem is that this demonstrates a form of desperation, where a vendor can make your data unaccessible other than in a basic format, which will result in a mess should the vendor become uninterested and pull the plug some time during your forty year career.

Not matter how good the app (and it isn't earth shattering), it isn't worth the risk. The value just isn't there, and despite guerilla marketing tactics, customers left.

Here the salient point- The few who stayed provide a source of revenue that exceeds the previous stand alone sales. So the vendor's business model brings in more revenue from a tiny fraction of the original user base. It makes more sense to service a few clients than a wider base that isn't willing to risk being shut out.

That's the market at work, and it isn't pretty.

 

[nathan.prather]

Good decision, every better app should be on a subscription model, $2-3/month is a really not that much.
Everyone wants a free stuff, which is totally disgusting.

Subscription = better product = less time wasted and a better experience for you.
Why you can't understand this.

So please don't cry!
Don't blame.

I understand, I'd love to have all my software for free, but as a software developer I understand the tremendous amount of work and time involved in creating software and deserve to be paid for it just like anyone else.
[doublepost=1499198290][/doublepost]

App subscriptions in general are bad most of the time. Especially in cases like this when features you expect are only available in subscription. No journal encryption unless you pay? WTF?

Perhaps write your own journaling app with encryption. It's obviously very easy for you to do that, much easier than spending $3 per month...

 

[MachCrit]

I understand, I'd love to have all my software for free, but as a software developer I understand the tremendous amount of work and time involved in creating software and deserve to be paid for it just like anyone else.
[doublepost=1499198290][/doublepost]

Perhaps write your own journaling app with encryption. It's obviously very easy for you to do that, much easier than spending $3 per month...

A journaling app seems a bit superfluous, considering that a person can organize and write endlessly about ones life using the apps included on every Mac and iOS device. Again, the subscription model probably won’t work.

No one is going to read any of these journals anyway.

 

[nathan.prather]

Could be superfluous but that's why we all have the choice of paying for software.

Nothing is "really" free. Facebook for example, collects all my personal information every time I use it so that they can sell my preferences to advertisers.

OR app/software developers with more malicious motives will give away "Free" software that contains hidden spyware and viruses.

It's a WIN WIN when we pay developers.

 

[MachCrit]

Agree, but not $120 plus for a logbook.

I happily pay for Adobe’s photography bundle, but there is a thing called unsustainable pricing on both ends.

 

[LDNA]

Could be superfluous but that's why we all have the choice of paying for software.

...

OR app/software developers with more malicious motives will give away "Free" software that contains hidden spyware and viruses.

It's a WIN WIN when we pay developers.

Okay...
https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/17/14956540/microsoft-windows-10-ads-taskbar-file-explorer
(Windows 10 ads affect paid upgrades/purchases, too)

You can leave this thread with your hyperventilating, uninformed opinions tbh.

 

[wilsonthomasjoseph]

I'm still on the fence with this. I have been looking to see if I could replicate the functionality of DayOne that I actually use ( photos, location, weather, step count ) with something else, a combination of Workflow / Pythonista and Notes looks like it might be viable. The only reservation I have about continuing with DayOne, is I can see v3 being subscription only, and v2 being forgotten.

If anyone's interested, I've a script to parse the JSON backup from DayOne v2, and create a directory ( year/month/day ) per entry with photos ( and a file for location / weather ). Unzip the backup, and run the script from the same directory containing the Journal.json file:

https://github.com/Wintersmith/pyutils/blob/master/parseDayOne.py

It needs Python3, though I can make it work with Py2.7 if needs be.

This is awesome. Thanks. But just to report back, I tried this out, and it worked for some entries and not for others. Couldn't really find a pattern. Sorry I can't be much help after that!

 

[IscariotJ]

This is awesome. Thanks. But just to report back, I tried this out, and it worked for some entries and not for others. Couldn't really find a pattern. Sorry I can't be much help after that!

Thanks for letting me know, I'll take a look at it!

 

[Michaelgtrusa]

It keeps going on and on. Here is one more Dev doing it. dyrii

 

[newellj]

Well, they're going the other way:

What's New
Version 1.04:

• We are dropping our subscription prices in an effort to make Dyrii more affordable to users around the world. Check out our new prices under Settings/Dyrii Premium
• We are also introducing a new One-time Purchase option for those who prefer a non-subscription based pricing option

 

[macjunk(ie)]

It keeps going on and on. Here is one more Dev doing it. dyrii

Actually this looks quite nice. Reasonable pricing as well. I will try this app out. Never heard of this before so not sure if it is a legit app

 

[BigMcGuire]

Actually this looks quite nice. Reasonable pricing as well. I will try this app out. Never heard of this before so not sure if it is a legit app

One review on the App store is a little whacked for an app with so many features. Interesting tho. I'm a little questionable on the app too. I miss the "About Us" page --- love it when companies do that .

 

[AppleInLVX]

Actually this looks quite nice. Reasonable pricing as well. I will try this app out. Never heard of this before so not sure if it is a legit app

Agreed. Looks too good to be true. SOMEthing must be wrong.

Edited to add:

I downloaded it and played for a very short while. It honestly looks nice. The vast majority of the functions are hidden behind the subscription, but it's a reasonable subscription at $12.99 CAD per year, and there's a lifetime option for $34.99, which is a little confusing, as it does NOT include free upgrades to major new revisions of the application. I guess i sorta understand that model, and I think I agree. It's kinda like a level up of the traditional paradigm. You still pay for major revisions, but in the meantime, the subscription gets you all the updates, making it sustainable for the developer. Major revisions happen every 1-3 years, and that's about what I'd expect to pay in that time frame if I was buying the thing outright. It's not a bad system, as long as the subscription pricing remains nice and low.

All that said, the thing is pretty unstable. I used the macOS version for all of 7 minutes and it crashed once, and hung on exit. The iOS version crashed within 2 minutes of opening it for the first time. All the features are lovely and it looks pretty nice--certainly embarrasses Day One for features, but if the thing pitches a fit and crashes all the time, you can't USE those features.

Now, that was my experience on extremely limited use, and if the dev keeps on making things more stable, it could be pretty awesome. It is the first time I have ever thought that just maybe I could jump ship from Day One and be happy, so that's something.

If nothing else, this is a far more sane pricing paradigm than Day One's model. They should take note.

 

[ignatius345]

I can see why Day One has moved to this especially when they went to their own cloud service - but this has been said before so moving on...

Given that most of us are already paying for one or more cloud services, it's hard to understand why they wouldn't just use one of those. Why not keep using iCloud or Dropbox and call it a day? Unless they're doing it as a profit center and a way to justify making people pay for a subscription.

Omni Group (OmniFocus, etc) uses their own proprietary sync service, but they've been doing it forever, and it's been free the whole time to the users of their paid apps. I think they do it so they have more control on the back end, but I hardly think a journalling app has the same sync urgency as a productivity or project management app.
[doublepost=1499534326][/doublepost]

Could be superfluous but that's why we all have the choice of paying for software.

Nothing is "really" free. Facebook for example, collects all my personal information every time I use it so that they can sell my preferences to advertisers.

OR app/software developers with more malicious motives will give away "Free" software that contains hidden spyware and viruses.

It's a WIN WIN when we pay developers.

Nobody (I don't think) is arguing that software has to be "free" -- but buying something outright is often a better deal than paying monthly in perpetuity as the subscription model would have one do.

 

[SammyNad]

Agreed. Looks too good to be true. SOMEthing must be wrong.

All that said, the thing is pretty unstable. I used the macOS version for all of 7 minutes and it crashed once,

Crashed on me as well.

 

[BigMcGuire]

Noticing how Day One is coming out with more updates more frequently. Kinda cool. They are fixing a lot of stuff that bothered me. I'm a happy customer. For $25 I'm cool with it.