Journaling Platform 'Day One' Transitions to a Subscription Service

I have been using Day One since the beginning. I really like the app and although not a huge fan of subscriptions I did take them on the offer of $24.99/year since I had been using Day One 2. When they switched to their own servers for syncing instead of Dropbox or iCloud things got a lot smoother and faster as well. I am very pleased with the subscription so far and the updates have been good. On a user interface point, I like day one, it's colorful and intuitive.

After reading many of the posts here about Dyrii I was intrigued and downloaded it. I imported my Day One entries to it with no problem. I liked it and I did purchase the annual subscription at $9.99. So far I like it, but will it replace Day One 2 for me, at this point I doubt it. I've only been using Dyrii a few days, compared to several years that I have had Day One. Perhaps I will use Dyrii as a backup, but I will give it a decent chance and there are some features that I like in Dyrii. I do like what I see at this point.

I don't mind subscriptions that much if the app is one that I will use and value. I subscribe to Informant/Pocket Informant and it works great and the developers (Fanatic Software) are very responsive and hard working. I've been using their products since they first appeared on iOS and now they have a great Mac App. Before I got into iOS, when the iPhone 3G was first released I had a Windows Mobile phone and used their Pocket Informant app on that platform as my primary calendar/tasks app. Wonderful app and they have a subscription model if you choose to use their sync service which works far better than the iCloud. You do have a choice to go through their service or iCloud, but their service will sync all the fields available whereas iCloud will not.

I also subscribe to Office365 even though for what I need Apple's programs are more than sufficient. I am just more familiar with Excel than Numbers. In addition on the rare occasions I need to do something work related from home, Word/Excel/PowerPoint are the industry standards so the $100 a year is worth it to me.

Subscriptions, to sum it up, are really a personal preference and should be based on the value you receive out of it. I subscribe to several things and they all have a value to me as the user that I don't think many people griping about the subscription plan really understand. With all of the subscriptions I don't have to worry about the latest updates, I am always on the latest version. I have access to the apps no matter what platform I am on if it is available on that platform (i.e iOS/Mac/Windows/online). I find some of the subscriptions invaluable to ME and therefore don't mind the costs. One or two I could probably do without, but again these apps I've been using a long time and/or have features I appreciate so I keep the subscription and sacrifice a fast food meal a year or so.

Subscriptions I use include
Office 365 - $99.99/year Excel mainly but includes Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, One Drive, One Note, Skype
Day One 2 - $24.99/year Journal Software
Informant - $15.00/year Calendar/Tasks/Notes/Contacts
ToDo Cloud - $19.99/year Task App (The first task app I used since I started on iPhone at 3G launch) also avail w/o subscription I keep it because it has some features that I like others don't
YNAB - $45.00/year (Great finance /budget app)
HP Instant Ink - $4.99/month
Dyrii - $9.99/year Brand new journal app that I am giving a try. Only had a few days so far.
AnyList $7.99/year
MLB.com $2.99/mo.
Apple Music $9.99/mo.
iCloud $2.99/mo.
Netflix $9.99mo.

To me all of these apps/subscriptions hold some value to me as the user and therefore I don't mind the costs. When I feel they are no longer needed I will cancel them. A lot of these apps also have free trial periods and you can use them to try it out to see if it's for you. If it is, then subscribe, if it's not then don't use it. I don't see what the big deal is. I've used some of these apps before they went the subscription route and after and the benefits and performance was far better after the subscription. The biggest complainers, in my opinion, are the ones that have never used the program or service and they think that because the bought a Mac or an iOS device they should get everything for free.

 

Come on folks, you have no problem forking over $5 for a cup of coffee at Starbucks a day, or some impulsive purchase; but you complain about $35 a year. The developers have created software that you enjoy to use. If you want to use it, and it is affordable, then pay for it. Those of you who complain are probably the same people that use pirated software or download pirated movies from all the torrent sites. To me you guys are a bunch of leaches.

 

Excuse me, but I don't pirate software. I pay for it, but only once. I don't do subscriptions as this model is pure greed.

 

Nice strawman argument, is that how you always discuss?

Personally I only use the iOS app, which costed $5. Now they want $4 every single month. And you don't get why people are annoyed? We are paying for the cost of their sync service, which no one asked for (people wanted iCloud), while they failed to add features that a lot of people asked for and that they promised would be added.

 

M

Thumbs up from me was an error.
You, should reflect and subsequently apologise for your unjustified, unsupported and slanderous assumptions. I paid, as did others on this thread. Apologise now.

 

Text Edit!

 

*leeches. FTFY. Sorry if I don't take someone seriously who doesn't know the difference. Leaching is draining of a soluble chemical.

I love how whenever this type of person makes an argument for subscriptions, or for any stupid, cheap purchase, they use Starbucks as an example. For this and the other shills justifying it, not everyone is a mindless consumer. I don't ever spend $5 at Starbucks. I paid over $1k for a dual boiler espresso machine and grinder and make my own with Stumptown or CC coffee for $0.75/8 oz latte. There were many far more expensive machines that offered incremental features, but I care about value. If I go to Starbucks, it's expensed while traveling for work. I don't mind a subscription for something where it makes sense, like Netflix, where you might only watch things for a few months when you're less busy and they have new releases. But it doesn't make sense for a journaling app.

I would have supported paid upgrades, as devs should be able to make $ for their continued (major) work. But Tim Cook is a greedy SOB and decided to go for subscriptions instead, so now these types of issues will arise.

I decided to go with Bear. It's way cheaper, and it does about the same with a nicer interface and less greedy overhead. Plus I can use it as a MD-capable Notes replacement. Still, if another dev comes out with something about the same that I can outright buy, I'll switch. I almost went with iaWriter, but I liked the Bear themes, and they're working on a web app. A subscription will make sense for a web app. I used to pay for Todoist for that reason.

I no longer use Todoist though since I use the 2Do apps. They're about $80 for Mac and iOS, plus IAPs for a big feature addition. That dev shows it's possible to make continuing income work without subscriptions. But subs are the most obvious way for devs now, so I'd urge everyone to buy the IAPs/Premium for apps you use while you still can, so you're grandfathered.

That's what I did for Strong ($8?) last month, and just a few weeks later they announced a new yearly subscription. I've contacted their support before, and if anyone deserves continuing income, it's those guys. But I'm still dismayed to see others will be faced with having to pay for a subscription vs. getting the option to pay initially, and then only for valuable upgrades.

 

$35? That's their introductory price. Then it hops up to $49.99 a year. And as anyone who was stupid enough to support Adobe Creative Cloud knows by now that price is gonna start creeping up from there. DO you really want to pay north of $50 a year to write in your journal? On their insecure servers?

All of this begs the question: Where does anyone think this subscription model for apps is going? Because it seems clear to me that down the road I'll just end up buying into less applications and supporting less developers. For the simple reason that I have only so much income. And between every damn streaming service, television channel, and movie studio wanting their own streaming service and every insignificant application NEEDING a monthly subscription fee, I really don't have that much bread to spread around. Not if I want to have a life.

So, that's my reasoning. Yours I would call in to question for the obvious reasons that you signed up yesterday to post a single comment on this ancient thread... while your profile shows your location as Miami, Florida. Shouldn't you be evacuating instead? Wait, you're going to reply that you're in Miami, Oklahoma. Got it.

On the bright side, I'm pretty impressed with myself for getting through this response and not using the phrase, "morons like you," even once.

 

Nice post above and the one above that one! ^

As I posted earlier in this thread, I spent a lot more on apps when it wasn't subscription. Now? I feel FORCED to use an app if it is subscription based. These things feel like life draining apps so I have to decide which ones I will subscribe to and which ones I won't. Sure, cloud storage cost money... so let us use our own cloud services that we already pay for! I pay Google $20/year for 100GB of which I'm only using 38GB.

I pay OneDrive $99/year for 1TB and Office 365 (for the wife and I).
I pay Day One $24.99/year for their journaling app which I really like.
I pay Google $14.99/mo for Youtube Red and Google Music. $20/year for 100GB Google Drive Storage.

I pay Apple $44/mo for my iPhone and $44/mo for my wife's iPhone on the Apple Upgrade Plan.
Don't ask me to list all the other monthly payments I have (car, rental, etc...).

Day One uses Amazon S3 servers so they're pretty secure but it's still on servers that they "rent/own" --- they do offer the encryption with a key they generate randomly. I feel much better about this than the way it was before, before the encryption.

Still, definitely not a fan of subscription models. I'd much rather pay for an app and use it when I need it.


The fact that I can do Google Docs, Apple Notes, Pages for free with virtually unlimited storage makes paying $50/year something I wouldn't do (I have a hard enough time paying $24.99/year being a previous Day One user). $25/year for 5 years is $125. $50/year for 5 years is $250. That's a lot more money than I'd like to pay for an app with 5 years of usage.

Probably going to save up and just buy something like: http://marinersoftware.com/products/macjournal/ eventually.

 

Precisely this. I spend more readily when it is one time, and I have paid for DayOne twice, once version 1 and then upgrade to v2 the day it became available because I loved the app. This new update? They lost my future business. Subscription commitments, that, too, this high, do not make sense for this app.

At $49 I would like to consider what more could I get by paying $49 per year. If I do it for just 3 apps, I can literally go for Adobe Lightroom CC subscription instead since I am into hobbyist photography but don't subscribe due to it being a hobby and not seeing myself as one to pay $145 per year subscription fees, but makes a lot more sense considering I get a desktop as well as a mobile app and definite increase in my photographic productivity.

At $25 for current customers, this is again an upgrade pricing that we can definitely shovel out of our wallets. But, this is per year. We cannot stop paying or we lose features. What happens when today I pay for a year, and next year I do not want to give out $25 or I am broke or something and I am managing the essentials? Will I keep the "more than 10 journals" that I created while I paid for it? Or will they go away? Those things are not entirely properly addressed, I believe.

Hence, it just looks like forced.

Look at Todoist. Sure, they have a web wrapper app in the name of macOS app, but they have a solid iOS app and an equally wonderful web site app. They support more systems than DayOne can imagine to and have apps for each of that system. Yet, they charge $29 per year and everything becomes unlimited instantly. You stop paying and your premium features are cancelled but you retain what you did while premium. I did not gather DayOne mentioning this to me that what happens if I decide to stop paying.

Is DayOne thinking they are doing some more complex stuff than Todoist? I would balk if they answered yes to it. It is a journaling app in essence. It is however, priced like a manage-a-hundred-things app ecosystem. Even Adobe gives more than these guys do, and charges less. I get Photoshop and Lightroom - complementary apps but standalone different purposes as well - for $12 a month.

Microsoft gives a whole ecosystem of Office 365 which constantly evolves and offers more and more to businesses and enterprises as well as individuals including small teams and excellently managed 100GB inbox (50+50) as well as 1TB space for $100 or so per year.

Bear is one subscription that goes for $15 per year and is a very competitive price for what it does. These guys just went high on their success and recognition, is all. I have to say it, they have just gone greedy with it. Many, many companies I know and have bought software from, usually increase prices with next version upgrades, and even then, marginally. They try to run a tight ship and do not just fly out into the sky, addled in their minds with the lust of capturing the entire sky for themselves. They remain focused on the core - take Omni group for example. Ooze quality, ooze productivity, and priced what? They can go years between payments. See Scrivener. Why do they go years between payments?

Apple went free route because it wanted to add value to their hardware offerings. If they continued to keep charging, they could do it - it would still have been far cheaper than any MS Windows offering. But, they had their focus on users first - money second.

 

That's a pretty big assumption and a wrong one at that.

 

Are you enjoying MacRumors? Should MacRumors charge you $4 a month to visit them and post in the forums otherwise you can't access the site? Should every other site you visit also charge you a subscription because you use their site for information? Should your refrigerator company start charging you a monthly fee for using their "refrigeration services" ?

Do not make blanket statements without understanding what people are talking about here. Nobody here said they do not want to pay for software. These are Mac users here, and in general, we are more inclined to payment than Windows users. What we are being against here is the route to subscription. Period.

The issue here is that software is being seen by developers as a service, and we have to make them understand by saying "No, thank you." Because there are some software that can be called a service, but not everything can be called a service. These are apps, and there are services. $49 per year to use DO's own sync service is flabbergasting, but these guys are taking it up a notch and saying that the way forward for a new user is only subscription.

Again, Todoist. There is free sync, there is a completely functional task manager on every platform imaginable and they do not charge you for it. They charge you by need, that if you need reminders and all that, you can pay. And hey, it is $29 per year. That $29 also unlocks business features such as shared inbox should you wish to.

DayOne is not providing any value to the users at $49. At half that for current users, it might make sense, but even then, for a journal app, a subscription route is hilarious. Even Omni Group and Affinity do not do subscriptions. Would DayOne say that is because their apps are not as complex as DayOne and engineering effort was greater?

It is just pure greed on DayOne's part.

 

EDIT : I might be wrong on this. The Dropbox version was an old one that might have not been encrypted. Will check again to be sure.

 

This was unbelievable. Outright lies to paying customers? Wow. Lost all my respect today, business the day of subscription. Just wow. Didn't expect this.

 

I just edited my post. The Dropbox file might be an old one before the new encrypted version ( which I moved to iCloud). I'll do a test on the Dropbox again to make sure.

 

I agree. Even if I would go for any subscription, what Day One is charging is beyond comprehension. Greed, indeed.

 

Ok here's some preliminary founding. It's both reassuring and worrying.
I think I know what just happened. I owned DayOne Classic before DayOne 2, and I used Dropbox to sync it to iOS.
When I started using encryption on the new version, I also moved the sync to iCloud ( and this seems to use iCloudKit and not iCloudDrive ). I also started using encryption.

What the app doesn't say, is that your Dropbox file stops being used, but still remains there, on your Dropbox. It doesn't automatically delete it. And it stays completely un-encrypted. In the new subscription-only version, I think both iCloud and Dropbox are removed as options.
So a lot of users might get fooled by thinking that since they started using encryption on the new version, it's all good, and forget that there is still an old version of their journal that is still sitting there in their local Mac files ( if they didn't use Dropbox or iCloud to sync) or Dropbox folder, totally un-encrypted, unless you delete that file.

It would be interesting if other users of pre-encryption and pre-subscription version could verify this. If you were using Dropbox to sync and moved to iCloud ( or DayOne own service ) with encryption, you might still have the old version of your journal there unprotected. And that is still worrying, because a lot of older users might be unaware of that.

 

The day I got the news of the subscription route, I created copies of my data and never opened the app again. The only reason I have the app on my laptop and iPhone is because I paid for it. I never use it and nor do I intend to use it again.

 

Being in the audiovisual field, I have some software that cost me several THOUSANDS of dollars, not several dollars. Most of my AU/VST audio plugins cost several HUNDREDS of dollars a piece, and I own quite a bunch of them. And in fact , I'm about to embark myself into developing a small iOS app , for which I do intend to charge a modest sum, not a subscription. So, you can bet that paying , even a lot, for software is not a philosophical issue for me.

And yet I'm one of the complainers. And I will keep complaining. Here's what you ( and others) keep missing :
Once you stop paying a subscription, or the developer goes down or abandons its software ( and therefore no more subscription pay), you are LOCKED OUT OF YOUR DATA. That's it. You will not be able to access it anymore. You cannot launch an older version of the app and access your data. There is nothing to be done.
Unless you made a backup of it before and it's the kind of file format that can be opened by another software.

And believe me, because I've been burned many times before, many companies, even big ones, don't warn you several months before they cease operations, telling you to quickly export your data so that you can hopefully re-import it in Application Z ( that is, if that data can be re-imported into another app ). No, you just wake up one morning and poof... the company/developper is gone. My old backup HDs are filled with abandonware.

So yes, if the app you're looking into is subscription based, and you're aware of the fact that you'll be locked off your data if you stop paying, you might be able to avoid it completely to begin with. But if the app started as a perpetual license, you bought it and then it suddenly switched to subscription, then you're trapped.

 

A hundred percent right. When I "own" the app, I know that I can use it so long as I keep it in the last compatible/ supported environment, indefinitely. I have a hard disk with 10.8 and software that I had at that time - it is a cloned disk from Carbon Copy Cloner, and there, I can open all the apps I have paid for that may not be supported today in 10.13. But, when I go subscription route, it does not matter if I have the app, it is just useless as it will stop functioning the moment I stop paying. This is the travesty that concerns most of us.

 

Goal: Development team wants to earn a living solely from adding features to and doing maintenance code for Day One.

Problem: After the spike of sales from initial release, the amount of money made from license purchases from new customers isn't enough the achieve their goal. There just isn't a need to keep adding features to journaling app after a point there are no wiz-bang features that will drive sales.

Solution: Increase library of software offerings, some that have features that customers will be willing to pay for regularly. Email hosting, Web hosting, backups, or some ongoing service that people are willing to pay for on a subscription basis. Don't try to shoehorn this model onto Journal software, it won't work!

Another solution, get a day job and work on Day One part time. Let iCloud and dropbox servers handle synchronization so that you don't have to. Collect list of feature requests and release them together as a new version / upgrade version when you need more money.

 

Yes. Omni is a great example of this. A library of apps. These guys just have one product they want to milk while they can. They know it is not going to work in the long term.

 

This x 1,000.

Ford doesn't make one model of car. Microsoft doesn't just make Windows. Apple doesn't just sell Macs.

 

A few people in this thread have mentioned MacJournal. I went to their Web site and checked their pricing. I'm confused as to what the contents of these "packs" are. Does anyone know if a pack is multiple licenses of the same app? Or is it a bundle that includes the Mac, iPhone, IPad ( and Other? ) version of the app.


Nm, I found the answer, its 5 licenses to allow you to install it on 5 different computers. https://marinersoftware.deskpro.com/kb/articles/what-s-a-5-pack-what-a-5-pack-upgrade

 

I think packs are just multiple versions? My guess.

Edit: Oops, saw you had posted more text below the pic