Hey everyone! For more than a month now I’ve been working hard on the biggest update to Avelon so far. Today I’m really excited to announce that it’s finally out on the App Store! The update includes a whole bunch of cool new features for people who want that little extra and QOL improvements all-around.
Some of the highlights of this update include:
- Community groups
- App themes
- Right-edge swipe-to-go-forward gesture
- Custom app icons
- GIF/video scrubbing
- Advanced filtering tools, including keywords & instances
- Fixes to a bunch of iOS 17 related issues
- New markdown editor tools
- Smart comment jump button
- Ability to manage and clear app cache
- Support for Lemmy 0.19RC
- Lots of bug fixes & improvements all around
I really appreciate everyone who has helped with beta testing during the 1.0.6 cycle, you guys are honestly great!! It’s super motivating to hear so many people enjoying the app, and as always I’m open to suggestions and feedback. I hope you find the Pro-model I’ve landed on a fair/decent way to run the app. I’ve tried my best to consider all factors like affordability, development, as well as the quality & quantity of what Pro offers - and I hope I’ve found a good middle ground.
As for the future: for 1.0.7 I’m thinking I’m gonna focus primarily on performance, stability & bug fixes, but I’ll probably throw in some more QOL features as well. Just let me know if you’re missing anything or if you find any pesky bugs or nuisances. Hope you enjoy the update!
Edit: Seems to be a slight issue with upgrading to pro, working on it 😅
Edit: Fixed!
just saw the price tag, 30 bucks for lifetime pro access is a big no no for me. I’m sorry and I maybe tip you a little amount for the app in its current state, but that price for this app and the locked features is way too high.
And just to put it into perspective, Apollo’s Pro unlock (the state of the art app for reddit on ios!) was 5 bucks, so you maybe want to overthink that price tag again…
I agree. I bought Apollo instantly because the value was there. At $30 I’m going to hang back and see how the app fleshes out, but if I’m not getting features like GIF scrubbing in the meantime, I’m probably going to find an alternative. At $10 I would have hit the buy button immediately.
Oh, and I hate subscriptions. I’m never going to subscribe to an app. Just tell me what it costs and I’ll buy it if it’s worth it.
Same for me. 10 bucks would have been an instant buy
Apollo’s lifetime ultra is more comparable.
not really. nearly everything which is included in Avelons Pro upgrade for 30 bucks was in Apollos Pro Upgrade for just 5 bucks (or pay as you want)…
compare it yourself: https://apolloapp.io/pro-ultra/
Did Apollo build in one day?
What’s the size of the user base comparing lemmy and Reddit?
If we take these into account, I’d think the dev needs this pricing to just keep developing the app.
I don’t get your points, sorry.
Good thing is that I don’t care for the Pro features so far and as long as it’s stay this way I will continue to use this app. But as soon as I’m missing something and it is locked behind that unreasonable (imho!) price, I just switch to another app.
Apollo took many years in testing and more years before releasing their subscription. Its developer could afford to do it because 1. he was a student and it’s his hobby project; 2. Reddit has a HUGE user base so the sales volume is much higher.
But for Avelon, we don’t have the same privileges. The developer could never hope to sell as many copies due to the user base discrepancy. He has to charge higher prices for a niche product to just keep surviving.
Of course this is a competitive market and everyone is free to vote with their wallet.
and I will
Yeah, the size of the user base is basically the #1 reason. I was surprised too when I saw the pricing for other apps, but I’ve realised they were more reasonable than I expected. Unfortunately there’s just not nearly the same number of people using an app like Avelon compared to just about any reddit app.
As much as people might dislike subscriptions they are a very good way to mitigate the risk for devs. I really wanted to provide a one-time purchase too though, and I landed on what I feel is pretty fair if you compare it to other players (Sync is 99$ I believe, Bean is 50$, Avelon 30$). And of course the free version remains just like before - pretty solid imo with more features out of the box than most other iOS apps.
I respectfully disagree, the key point is whether the user thinks the price is fair value. When you put basic safety features like content filtering behind such a big paywall I think this fails the fair value test.
My other point is that just because other apps have set high price points doesn’t mean that many (or enough) people have paid those prices.
Edit: I’ve noticed that other safety features like indicating bot accounts are behind the paywall. But traditional Pro features, like extra app icons or themes, are in basic. Please could you consider a rethink. We all want Avelon to succeed but this seems a mid-step.
Sure thing in the end it’s your app. I don’t know where these prices a coming from, but I sure won’t pay anything in that range for any app.
Neither will I.