I'm a heavy DayOne user who has been using the app since the days of Day One Classic. I loved using my own cloud service back then. When they switched to their own cloud service for Day One 2..... I KNEW it would go subscription based at any minute... Why? Day One 2 allowed you to put 10 photos per journal entry amongst some nice feature updates (the ability to see previous entries on X day, etc...).
Being a Day One 2 owner, I signed up for the $24.99/year (it's permanent, shows renewal a year from now at $24.99). I'll be 100% honest - $24.99 is high. Would I pay $50/year? Maybe. But just because of who I am. I write ... a lot. I've always written a lot. When I was a kid I'd hand write 1-2 pages of paper journals a day. I write books for fun. It isn't uncommon for me to have 25-30 pages of a Google Doc for my journal entries per month. It's a way for me to get my thoughts out of my head, de-stress, and relax. I never share them as it's a hobby of mine for my own benefit. Going back and reading entries years ago is a lot of fun - especially now with photos.
I like Day One's ability to sync to my iPhone, show me entries in the past years on this day, show all the locations where I've done a journal entry, it inputs my steps + weather for the day automatically, location, and it allows for backups to be done on all my devices.
So I'll pay for it. I'd MUCH rather use my own cloud service because I already pay for Google Drive. I HATE, LOATHE, DISLIKE subscription services. I just cancelled my Office 365 subscription because my wife's college includes it as part of her tuition. Hate subscriptions. But I understand them... Using their own cloud service with people like me uploading 10 photos a day with a journal entry. How can they sustain that with X number of users?
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Bought the original DayOne (Classic) and DayOne 2 for both Mac and iPad. I love the app.
$50/yr for a journaling app? They can keep it. I'll go back to using Word.
Yeah, if I had to pay $50 a year, I'd probably go back to Google Docs. I don't like having my data on someone else's server. Now with end to end encryption and a few more features, I'm using it for now because I use it almost daily. Is it really worth $24.99/year for me? I don't know. I like having access to all my journal entries with location, date - all in one place with reminders for past entries on today's date... I also export each month (when it is over) to PDF to "back it up" on Google Drive.
It is unlikely that you even have this app, or do any meaningful writing outside of forum posts, so your prescription of them needing to go "**** themselves" is not as clever or biting as you might hope.
I also wonder how many people bashing this app are actual users of the app. Those of us that do use the app are only going to pay $24.99/year. That much for an app I use every day ... I don't see that as something so bad.