If you read my previous post, or read the article, and you'll see that's not going to be case for long
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Pixelmator Photo Switches to Subscription Pricing, Launching on Mac by Next Year
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I just feel a little guilty getting good stuff for free
Guess I’m just a little weird
Fantastical a mess. Users purchase apps not functionalities. Someone who's purchased F2 expects to see zero upsells, zero gated features. F3 takes away the absence of those nuisances.
Flexibits should have been required to release F3 under a new SKU. Flexibits didn't do this because the new app (F3) wouldn't have started off with the Editors' Choice nonsense designation. And, for sure, the new app never would have received Editors' Choice -- because it (F3) is mediocre, certainly not high in calibre!
My copy of F2 works just fine. Even now -- 2.5 years after the release of F3. So this nonsense that Flexibits spins--about how their keeping the same SKU serves to 'take care' of F2 users (by making it easy for Flexibits to provide bug fixes)--is ridiculous. Main idea: When the developer goes from paid-upfront to sub-only, the developer ought to be required to use a new SKU.
For the price of one year's subscription users can buy--users can BUY not rent--several apps much better than Fantastical. I wonder how much it costs Flexibits to employ ham-n-eggers who write responses to every App Store user review, saying either 'we give you the F2 features that you paid for' or 'contact us for further support' or 'we understand subscription is not for everyone'.
Oh and also posters here who scrutinize Flexibits updates are totally correct. Most updates serve to address bugs and/or to add support for no-name 'officeworker' Zoom alternatives. It's my guess that Flexibits assumes that most users who subscribe won't unsubscribe -- and so Flexibits makes no effort to enhance the app for existing users. I for one would never pay Flexibits to focus on integrating services that I (and the vast majority of calendar users) will not use.
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The scenarios are not similar. Perpetual fallback (e.g., Agenda, KeePassium) is similar to buying each new version. Subscription is not.
The op I replied to suggested they would never ever have a subscription but would rebuy the app each year. I was merely suggesting that in this case it’s a similar thing.
Not weird
Perhaps ask yourself if you feel guilty because you should feel guilty (due to exterior values) or because Deep in you that's how you truly feel
To ease your mind ,if they gave it for free it was just a marketing tactic ,you came at the right moment that's all
Well, this sucks. Apple is partly to blame for developers going the subscription model, because they don't allow paid upgrades to new versions of apps (in-app-purchases work very limited as a substitute for this).
Apple probably figured that they earn even more from their share on regular subscriptions vs. the apps having more and more satisfied users only paying once in a while. As the overhead of managing subscriptions makes apps more expensive in the long run, apple's revenue because of those higher sales number also increases - without them having to spend more on ressources.
Apple probably figured that they earn even more from their share on regular subscriptions vs. the apps having more and more satisfied users only paying once in a while. As the overhead of managing subscriptions makes apps more expensive in the long run, apple's revenue because of those higher sales number also increases - without them having to spend more on ressources.
The developer CAN release a new version, whole new app on the app store and the user can buy that in the same way software worked in the “olden” days. You can keep the version you have, the new version will have features the old one doesn’t have.
Apple doesn’t allow developers to pick and choose with the upgrade pricing. They can’t say “If you’ve bought my app previously, I’m going to ask for less money from you. If you’ve never bought my app before, well you pay full price.” That’s always been clearly antagonistic towards new customers which, really, any company SHOULD have methods in place to increase new customer acquisition. Because, no matter how much a fan a current customer is, they eventually won’t be a customer anymore (something JCPenny understands). And, if one is not working continuously to drive NEW customers… well one will end up in dire straits like JCPenny.
That’s a 7x price increase with a single update. I’ve seen gradual price increases but never something like this. I get that if $7.99 stopped being enough to support the development, yes, it’s necessary to raise the price. But this, this is a special kind of nasty.
It’s also giving other iOS devs some ideas, already saw the Apollo dev left a comment on Reddit saying he approves of this 7x price increase…
I actually think the big picture is… “Let’s see if we can flip our userbase from folks who don’t like subscriptions to folks that do or don’t mind them.” Because, there are a lot of apps that started as subscription only that are seeing the level of success that they’d need to break even.
You're ignoring that the 7.99 was not a lifetime license. It did not entitle you to future upgrades (new features).
You're right, that's a good catch and something to keep in mind. I've no idea what the frequency of major updates was for this app or how $7.99 for every major update compares to the subscription as I don't personally use it. Maybe someone else can provide an accurate comparison.
I wonder what would happen if companies would announce a start of a subscription and offer perpetual until a certain date. I think the blindsiding into subscriptions is what leaves a bad taste for a lot of people. Although FOMO could be exploited with an announcement to boost sales, and then the company can bait and switch with "we received feedback about subscriptions and decided to keep our one-time fee" or something, but sub definitely makes more money so who knows.
What's "blindsiding" about the announcement? Anyone that already purchased the app gets a lifetime license. New customers are the only one's affected and are clearly informed.
I meant as a generality. There's been several software companies that switch away from perpetual and offer no alternative for existing users, re 1Password. I wouldn't say 1P specifically blindsided but it's disappointing nevertheless. In pixelmator's case they only blindside people who may have been saving up to buy but that's an infinitesimal amount of users, and being charitable.
This is only true if the developer was motivated to continue supporting the product without any additional payment. My purchase queue is full of apps that have been abandoned and no longer work. (Of course, they still work on my iPod touch gen2.
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Hey, MR, can you confirm this? I don’t see it referenced anywhere in the blog post and their response in the comments seems noncommittal…
It's on the App Store. The lifetime purchase is $54.99 in the US.
Here's what likely happened: they overestimated the market segment of people interested in the app. So now they're course-correcting:
- switching to a subscription model gives them recurring revenue (duh). If enough new customers had kept coming in, this wouldn't be necessary. But they don't, so now you're in the unfortunate situation where you have ongoing costs to maintain the app and add new features, without ongoing revenues.
- but, fewer people are interested in a subscription. So you also have to raise the price to make up for that.
- but also, on top of that, they realized very few people total are interested. So they're raising the price even further.
Similar if your only view is your credit card statement. But it can be quite different in what developer and user expect in exchange for that transaction.
I'm also happy to continue paying for incremental upgrades of a quality app, but will do everything in my power to avoid subscriptions precisely because of those expectations.
In terms of incentivizing they are not. Paid updates incentivize the developer to make enough changes that users want to update. This way, users have the power to make the decision regarding if it's worthwhile or not.
Subscriptions are meant to strip users of that power by design. Even if a user isn't satisfied with the updates the developer is making (or there are no updates at all), the user must continue paying or completely lose access to the app.
This is why subscription models have faced so much backlash from users but tend to be loved by developers, e.g. the Apollo developer applauding this change on Reddit.
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Of course, the incentive to build meaningful new features still exists because of plenty of competition in the photo editing market.
I wouldn’t say fewer, more like a different group of people. There are plenty of businesses that started out as subscriptions, attracted those friendly towards the subscription model and they’re able to maintain that income as they’re working on the next things (or the bugs from the last thing). There are a lot of folks that have grown up in a time where “subscription for a thing you want” is normal and expected. Those are the folks they need as their new customers.