Afternoon everyone,
I wanted to go over a few points related to pricing, stats and the roadmap
Pricing
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Sync for Lemmy is completely free with ads (the same as Sync for Reddit)
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You can remove ads in the account picker or drawer for a one time fee of ~$20
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Sync Ultra also removes ads but it’s not required
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I’ll be working on regional prices over the coming weeks
There are now 24k installed users up from 100 the previous day!
I’m going to be spending the next few days going through all of the comments / messages and fixing any crashes.
As always thanks for the support and hope you’re liking Sync!
Lj
Edit: testing edit
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LJ,
I too am a reddit refugee. I like what you’ve done with this place.
:)
But we have to talk about pricing and privacy.
Pricing: tbh I see not much wrong with the 20 bucks. But I do think that you should take 2 bucks from that and donate one to the lemmy org (this is not reddit, nobody is getting paid, the lemmy devs also need an incentive) and the other one to lemmy.world because that’s the instance you’re dumping us all on. Hosting is not free, lemmy.world costs money and probably a lot of time to run. Being a reddit admin is a payed job, being Ruud at lemmy.world most certainly is not.
In this way “we” are giving back to the Foss community and it should silence a lot of critics. In that way you don’t look like the evil capitalist earning a quick buck over the back of free labour of the foss community. I think that’s 2 bucks well spent.
Edit: same goes for ultra subscriptions of course, a similar percentage should be fed back to the lemmy org and lemmy.world.
Privacy: since you’re using admob and I forgot the other one, privacy is out the window. That’s a big issue for the Foss community we’re all relying on. Maybe it’s wise to point out that once you pay for sync all that tracking that admob and the other one (not you I hope) does is out the window.
Edit edit: maybe you could also add a yearly reminder to donate to the users favourite lemmy instance.
I’ve said quite a few times but the ad library isn’t initialised if you pay to remove ads.
LJ, first thanks for doing this and bringing us here. You’re a big reason for the spike in lemmy traffic recently and it’s very promising.
I just wanted to add my $0.02 that the pricing to remove ads seems prohibitively high. I think you could encourage more lost redditors and former reddit Sync users to try this out ad-free with a very low price point. Give it some sort of marketing hype term like “Founder’s Premium”: a one-time payment of $8 gets you sync for Lemmy with no ads, forever. Available to early adopters until Sept 1st.
Maybe add higher priced tiers for those who have the cash and want to essentially donate / thank the author, and give them bells and whistles like fancy custom name and flair styles to show off.
Lemmy is new and unknown to a lot of folks. Sync feels like coming back to sit in your favorite comfy chair, but in a strange and foreign house. So people are going to be wary. Asking them to either subscribe or pay a huge one time premium is going to discourage folks at a critical time where they should be encouraged instead.
Don’t just say it, put it in the app: no adds and no tracking : click here!
Hi LJ, I’ve been reading quite a few sync posts and concerned about the privacy topic as well. If this is the case that the ad lib is disabled with purchase, it really needs to be laid out more obviously because it had me looking for alternatives.
You just gonna ignore his other points?
$20 is enough of a barrier to keep out new people. I was considering maybe trying it out until then.
I don’t remember what I paid for RiF years ago, but it was a lot less than that. Heh, I looked it up. November 27th, 2013 I paid $1.99 for RiF. January 4th, 2014 I paid $0.99 for Sync for Reddit. I never used it, but apparently I had it.
$5-$8 seems much more reasonable. You’d probably even make more money through volume. $20 is prohibitive.
Edit: Oh God, it’s $20 per year?!? Is that a joke?
Edit: Oh God, it’s $20 per year?!? Is that a joke?
No, it’s a one time payment just to remove ads.
Removing ads is a one-time fee as stated in the OP. There’s a separate subscription for additional features but it’s not required. You’re free to disagree with the pricing but try to understand the facts before complaining.
As a separate point to the dev, since it’s not just one or two people getting confused, perhaps a link to the one-off ad removal on the Sync Ultra page if it’s not there already?
Yea I immediately uninstalled when I saw the pricing. I paid for sync pro. The other free apps are more than adequate and don’t have ads. I’d donate if a percentage was included but honestly the subscription model for this doesn’t make sense.
Have you not been paying attention? Everything was a lot cheaper a few years ago.
And that apparently justifies literally any price.
Well, I don’t consider Sync to be overpriced. So clearly we aren’t going to agree on this. Not only did I buy Sync Ultra on both Reddit and Lemmy, for a time I further supported Ljdawson on Patreon.
I spend up to an hour a day in Sync. So even amortized over only one year (and I used Sync on Reddit for many years) that’s 27 cents a day. Chump change.
In addition, I view supporting the app devs as a boost to the Lemmy community. Isn’t app availability apps why many of us are here?
Polished apps will grow the fediverse.
I never said sync is overpriced at 20 bucks. I said he should give 2 bucks back to the Foss community.
Sync is not Foss so no, paying for sync does not mean your paying for Foss. You make lemmy more popular, that’s true. And by doing that you’re raising the cost of hosting lemmy.world which is ran solely on gifts from some users. We should do something to alleviate that.
I agree that we as a community need to figure out a sustainable way for the devs and maintainers to see revenue. I’m likely going to sub to the .world Patreon.
Why Lemmy.world, though? There are many instances and all of them cost money.
In this way “we” are giving back to the Foss community and it should silence a lot of critics.
I think you underestimate how negative the Internet can be. :) People will just find a new aspect of the app to complain about.
I just wanted to say I’m sorry for the backslash you’re getting for charging money.
I’m also sorry people expect it to be $1 because the Reddit app was $1 back in 1825. I genuinely believe it’s children complaining, because no functioning adult would complain about a price increase when rent has tripled or quadrupled since the $1 Reddit app. It’s also annoying to see that people think that saying they bought the Reddit app for $1 and enjoyed it for 10 years is an argument. It goes to show it was severely underpriced.
It must be frustrating to have that type of response. Lemmy users seem to be really entitled when it comes to software, and the response you’re getting scares me for the future. I really hope the Boost developer doesn’t cancel his app after seeing how entitled Lemmy users are being right now.
What frustrates me more is the people complaining are continuing to use the free open source apps. Like great, you already have an alternative you prefer. Shut up. Stop bringing others down.
I wish you the best. Thank you for choosing to develop for Lemmy. I have my eyes on Boost, but I’m gladly using your free tier for the time being.
Thanks again!
I paid 5 dollars back in 2016, and I was fully expecting to pay more for this version. 20 dollars for no ads is fine by me. However, I don’t feel like the 100 dollars for lifetime ultra is worth it. Maybe someday when I feel like those extra perks are worthwhile
I think his only mistake was offering lifetime at all. Nobody knows the future of Lemmy; people are seeing $100 and getting a bit of a shock, we could buy two AAA games for that. A couple of dollars a month or annual is easier to justify. Then, if Lemmy does become the next big thing and lasts 20 years, the developer is taking a big hit. Lifetime at that price feels like there will be a loser for either the user or dev.
I think that the possibility for Lemmy being around for the next 20 years is a compelling argument for pricing the lifetime version that high.
The dev needs recurring money to support himself, and having a ton of users not paying at all after a certain amount of time would only hurt him in the future.
I agree that it’d be better to stomach if there was a cheaper recurring monthly/yearly fee for it (in case it doesn’t exist right now).
I paid like 80 bucks about a year ago. And here I am rallying for ljd to keep providing a solid client that works the way I want it to.
I followed like sheep, and baaaah take my money.
What bothers me with this controversy is that it’s not clear for me how one can earn a living in the lemmy ecosystem if everything is FOSS. Also, one should understand that the app is in beta, but there was so much hype around that app.
I’m fine with a price increase, but 4 times the price is quite the increase. Haven’t made up my mind if it’s worth it for me yet, if it was 5€ or maybe 10€ I would have immediately bought it.
Agreed, $10 would’ve been an insta buy.
At $20 I guess maybe I’ll get it once v1.0 comes out, we’ll see.¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Under AUD$2 to AUD$34 is quite the leap, and more than double what I anticipated.
I was very happy to drop AUD$10-15, and I’m aware that what I paid in 20 dickity 13 was a steal.
Quadrupled app costs would have been a bargain in my eyes.
Don’t worry, it’s a yearly subscription, not a one time purchase.
The people complaining about the price are the people that truly have no understanding how much love and care goes into creating good software. 20 dollars to remove ads for however many hours sync is going to save me with searching for each instance is well worth the cost for supporting development in the future.
👆
Whether the pricing is appropriate is purely subjective. I paid the 20 bucks, thank you for your work. Looking forward to see this app thrive, it already works super smooth!
Hope you do not take the inevitably rude comments to heart.
Initially, I didn’t have a problem with it, but I read some good points in other threads that it is far too expensive for those in undeveloped countries, and that there should be a sliding scale instead of a straight-up currency conversion.
Yup as mentioned I’ll be setting these by region over time. But it involves me individually tailoring the price to each country usually comparing it to some metric like the cost of a take away.
You could use the Big Mac Index. Yeah, that’s a thing.
That or purchasing power parity would be a great basis for the pricing tbh
Steam has recommended regional pricing for Steam games, maybe that could be used as a guide?
Yeah man…I am a dev myself but $20 to remove ads is just too much, especially without regional pricing.
I’ll be working on this full time and plan to make this the best Lemmy app possible.
I think the pricing is fine if the quality matches it. Considering how much time we spend on our phones it could be great value for money.
I’m very curious to see how the advertising option works out for you, as currently I’m not aware of any lemmy sites with sustainable finance models.
I wouldn’t call it financially sustainable. It pays for the servers, not for the labor.
No offense to beehaw, they’re doing great work.
Most of FOSS doesn’t pay for labor, its volunteers.
I bought Reddit Sync Pro way back when you gave out coupon codes for a discount when you first created it. (just found my receipt… November 2013 for ONE DOLLAR!!!) Used it for what was probably a decade for that low initial price and watched it just get better and better over time.
I assume that I’m going to be using Sync for Lemmy for a decade, and I have zero issue with the upfront ad free cost.
Aside from regional pricing issues, I think some of these potential customers just don’t realize how much they’re going to be getting from you for this price.
Ultra Lifetime is really tempting…
Will you be supporting kbin in the future?
$20 once, for an app you’re going to use daily for the foreseeable future mind you, is not the unreasonable take that people on here seem to think it is.
You get what you pay for, and Sync has proven it’s track record with the Reddit app already. This isn’t just some random app dev asking for money on his bejeweled clone.
It’s $100 once. The $20 option is a yearly subscription.
Edit: Some misunderstanding. It’s $20 to remove ads, and $100 to get all features. Maybe the $20 subscription is for full features and removing ads?
You have completely misread the app. The “Sync Ultra” is not the same as the one-time “Remove Ads” option.
If you want “Sync Ultra” for a lifetime, it’s $100 or w/e it’s listed as, that comes with all the extra features listed in the app. If you just want to remove ads and use the app without the Ultra features, you only have to pay $20 once.
Re: your edit
Yes, the subscription option has a monthly/yearly/lifetime structure set at $2/$17/$100 respectively. Each of those unlocks all the Ultra features (which includes removing ads).
Which is separate from the one time payment of the $20 to only remove ads.
Fresh college graduate dev, long-time power internet user here:
Price not important, pricing method and value is important.
A one time $20 is fine. I’m currently poor, but a one time payment for an ACTIVELY developed app that will probably end up being a great app that I use every day for years?
Not a big deal, at all. I think the vast majority of people on Fediverse want web 3.0. like going from [waterfall and hierarchy] to [agile and scrum], people want more control over good-faith interactions. And one time payment to an app that WON’T TRACK US OR COLLECT OR SELL OUR INFORMATION (I’m looking at you, Sync dev!), or even small reoccurring payments are absolutely the way to go.
It’s all about following the energy and purpose of the moment. And right now, on here, most people can’t pay much a year since we’re already getting absolutely squeezed by every direction. But, we do want to support the devs and platforms, and are willing to pay.
There’s a lot of mouths to feed over time, but, I think as long as everybody involved in all those steps followed the philosophies of original copyright purpose, and aren’t using this to get ultra rich, and were just using it to make a comfortable and honest living, everybody here could and would get behind that.
For example, if the dev of Sync needed to buy a house, a car, and save for retirement, and was willing to work 30-40hrs on this app for the next 15-20 years (the app probably doesn’t need that much time), then it wouldn’t be that much trouble to have a formula driven sliding scale for the app subscription for all it’s users.
If it was a variable amount per month in the range of $0.50USD to $1.00USD per 6 months for ALL users unless you’re under 18, and the amount and sub (treating the app as premium only) were always opt-in and like crowd source where users set a max they’re willing to pay and say “I’m in” or “I’m out” (maybe even tiers) and if the need of the dev isn’t met, then pricing model for the next series of months changes from those tiers… I think something like that could work.
That’s basically the dream for users AND devs. Users don’t want to or can’t pay much, but want to support somebody’s needs if they’re actually working, and, like Wikipedia has been saying for years, if everybody pitched in a dollar, everybody would only need to pitch in a dollar. And, devs want to be able to focus on their apps without worry for income, knowing they have the stability and capital backing.
I know it seems kind of like a pipe dream, but I’d love to see (and would love to be a part of) a sort of “low cost, high volume, bundled services” subscription offering for stuff like this. I don’t know if you could make it user-variable, because that threatens the high volume aspect. I also am aware there’s a huge amount of trust that goes into all parties involved for something like this to work…
But, times change and so must business innovation.
Am I just completely out of touch here? Partially? Am I just a dreamer? A modern hippie?
Nobody likes ads, but that’s because most ad-based models have positive feedback loop mechanics where: nobody pays, the ads increase, and when the ads increase, so do ad blockers, and when ad blockers increase, so do the ads, repeating until (surprise) a payment model is found or the platform pulls a Reddit.
And nobody wants that. The only way out is basically public services and price control (almost anybody else has any good ideas).
You have to strike a balance between innovation, no greed, good will, and value. Developing and supporting an app is a job, and we the users have to pay the worker(s) or an investor will come in looking for even more money somehow. Nothing is free. Not for the workers, not for the investors, not for the users, not for the infrastructure.
We have to do this together, all of us, or it’ll crumble to more enshittification. And I’m tired of that.
Agreed. $5 MAYBE, $20 is out to lunch. And a subscription model for full features? Nah get outta here with that, that MIGHT be worth $20. The direction app development has gone over the last few years is a huge disappointment
$5 as a one-time payment is not enough for a single developer to sustain his livelihood on.
And ultimately, “worth” is based on what the market decides.
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You make valid points, however, I’d like to point out that most games on the play store don’t cost a lot because the real costly transactions are in-app purchases. It’s common, in my experience, for the popular free apps to have IAPs upwards of $100 for in-game currency.
There’s also that matter of the no-cost version of the app. It seems perfectly usable, making the ad-removal an optional purchase.
Considering the smaller user-base and the finite economic value of life-time purchases I’d say $20 is fair. But that’s my stated opinion and I have yet to put my money where my mouth is.
This is by far the best app for Lemmy. By a mile. It’s a lot faster and nicer looking. That said, pricing feels a little steep. Imagine being able to sustain your livelihood on making an app for Lemmy, an otherwise free service providing no additional content. It’s not like we are paying the persons who invest in all the infrastructure for the servers running the Lemmy instances. They provide for the actual service. If a part of the money went to instance servers it would feel way better. Because if they go down, so will Sync.
Not taking anything away from the massive work Lj is putting into this, but pricing do feel a tad off. If 1500 people subscribe he has a yearly income equal to a decent job. If he gets 5000 subs he will earn almost 100 000 dollars a year. Which in Sweden equals to about 2.5 times of a well paid job. That’s excluding ad revenue from everyone who don’t subscribe or pay for removing ads. Pricing can be fairer without compromising the livelihood of said dev. That’s all.
That’s like saying imagine someone wanting to sustain themselves or running a public transport network. All they do is help you get to and from work. How can they have so much hubris as to believe that’s worth anything?!
Exactly. Doing anything, if it requires work and provides value to you, has a value, and thus could be expected to be charged for. Ad-supported software has kinda ruined a lot of people’s perception of money and value, expecting everything to be free.
Wha? A yearly ultra sub is 15 bucks. 1500x15 is 22500. 5000 times is 75000.
And that’s not ‘the same as a full time job’, not by a long shot. Google takes its cut - what, 20%? Then you have income tax, insurances etc, another 20-30% at least, and so on. So, for 5000 subscriptions, he’s left with around 42k at the end of the day.
I’m pretty sure his calculations were based on the monthly price, as for me monthly shows up as 2.99 per month. I’ll also say that including income tax in your calculation is crazy. We all have to pay income tax, but the income told us when we get a job or see a job posting is gross income.
Other than that, if you want Sync for lemmy and willing to pay for it, that’s fair. I paid 3 bucks for Nova Prime years ago and I have used it everyday. It came with me to every new phone I owned. I also redesign my layout quite often using it. It doesn’t seem reasonable to me to pay that amount monthly when Nova Prime was a one time payment.
The fair pricing is what the market will tolerate. I’m not saying it’s 100% “justified”; even the dev understands that he needs to tweak it for other regions. But the value add is from the superiority of the app experience, which right now is much better than anything else available (for me; of course this is all subjective). In the future, perhaps other apps will achieve parity with Sync, at which time market forces will cause the developer to course correct on pricing.
I’ll also add that I purchased Sync for Reddit (Pro) for USD$2 nine years ago. If I get nine years out of Sync for Lemmy that’s a bargain at even 10 times the price (which is the current offering).
If he gets 5000 subs he will earn almost 100 000 dollars a year. Which in Sweden equals to about 2.5 times of a well paid job.
If that is the case, well then in some of the larger coastal areas in the U.S. such a salary is far below what a decent software developer can expect. Cost of living is very high in those areas.
Talking about prices and costs is very difficult in a global ecosystem, because even different regions of the same country can have significant differences in market that change the value of money, even setting aside currency exchange.
He’s in the UK, I thought.
Check out number 10.
6th for me
That’s pretty impressive. I would be thrilled if Sync wound up helping lemmy grow after the hard core foss peeps have lost all their bananas about Sync.
Beta 26 is already a MASSIVE improvement over Jerboa or the web client. Thanks for making this happen so fast!
As for the pricing, I was a paid Sync for Reddit user for YEARS. $20 is nothing for the countless hours of scrolling I got out of it.
A part from the comments on the images, I think there is a bug with alignment because the first comment has 3 lines instead of one as you can see from this image
Working on a fix for this.
I suspect it’s sometimes because a mod removes the comment, I may be wrong.
It was actually an issue with how I processed comments.
All fixed now though!
Great to know, thanks!
(☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞
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Took me a while to figure out how to sign in with my lemdro.id account.
Maybe it’s embarrassing to admit but I must have scanned through that long list of servers five times before realizing I could just type in my own server. Could be helpful to add a line inviting users to type in their own server.
I did this exact same thing! I kept scrolling up and down thinking I must have missed it somewhere on the list considering lemdro.id is in the Play Store screenshots 😅.
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A nice feature for us new people would be a way to subscribe to a community from the everything feed as opposed to having to click through to the community page.
This is one nice UX thing I noticed that Threads did and made it much easier to follow people from the main feed.
Twitter appears to have copied it too.
It’s the best app but the pricing is insane. I mean, maybe you have experience from your other apps and you know this is the optimal price, but otherwise, consider changing it. People are surprised by the high price right now.
If it was me, I would price it like this:
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Remove ads - $10 lifetime.
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Ultra - $3 per month, $20 per year, $50 lifetime.
Those sums are realistic and people are likely to find them acceptable. You would get more users instead of less users paying more.
But this is just me and I speak only as someone who never had an app in a appstore. Maybe you know better. But that’s what I would do.
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I’ll repeat what I said in some other thread:
I loved the old app, I still love the new app, it’s a pleasure to use compared to the alternatives I’ve tried, and I find the ultra subscription rate both reasonable and worthwhile to support a product I truly enjoy.
Sync is good for me. There’s plenty of other options if it’s not good for you.
Please keep up the good work!
(シ_ _)シ
I can’t afford the lifetime right now, but I will upgrade when I can. I hope this works out for you financially, Sync for Reddit was my most used all.
Have you got a roadmap for Ultra benefits?
(Fuck spez)
My wishlist:
- Downvote counts
- Mod tools
https://github.com/laurencedawson/sync-for-lemmy/issues/128
https://github.com/laurencedawson/sync-for-lemmy/issues/137
I thought there was a catch all for moderator tools, but I can’t find it.
I believe adding mod tools was mentioned in the Discord. They are also planned to be free without anything being locked behind an IAP
Yup, first round of them went live today.
Yep mod tools for everyone.
Today’s update added mod tools
A few things I want to say:
- Congrats for the successful launch! I hope this project continues to improve.
- The ads aren’t very intrusive, they’re just banners in-between some posts and I’m fine with that.
- This app makes using Lemmy more attractive than using Reddit, which means that the goal of moving me far away from Reddit has been accomplished!
Amazing job so far. Here’s to the future of decentralized social media!
Just voicing my support for the work you’ve done so far and am happy to pay the $20. Honestly I was a little taken aback at first sight but thinking about how many years of service I got with the reddit app I’m happy to support the developer. I’ll reiterate what I saw another commenter say and it would be nice if a small portion of the fee was used towards to the support of Lemmy as a whole as well. I want to see this continue and flourish. Thanks again to the developer for one smooth app.
I was taken a back by the prices at first too and I’ve made many comments how I still feel it’s expensive, but bought it anyways because I am a long time user of Sync. I was mostly concerned about being able to convince others to buy it.
But the more I think about it, I feel it’s deserved and I won’t really complain about it anymore. It’s such a great app and has earned it over the years. I still can’t believe it’s here on Lemmy. My brain really feels at home again. It’s the good ol’ days again.
Yeah, have to admit that despite my initial shock at the price of ad-free, if I think of it as a back payment for over a decade of Sync Pro, even though I bought it a few times to support LJ’s fantastic work.
But I also agree that if LJ is bumping it up by a thousand percent, I’d be happier if some of it was going to Lemmy World.
I’m sold, buying ad free now
For those who are a bit skint, just install NextDNS, it’s free and blocks the ads
Hey mate,
Yeah I’m another one who followed you over from reddit.
I think I maybe need to play with Lemmy a bit more - it’s a bit confusing. Is there a map? A general guide or explanation for the ignorant?
Also, cheers mate - you must have put in a shit load of effort in a very short time to put this together. Fast development since the reddit API bullshit. Respect. An I paid ultra cos I like your work
