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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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.
The userbase is also like 100x smaller yet it takes the same amount of upkeep as a developer. Of course he is going to charge more and that is fair enough imo.
Ultimately if you don’t like it, don’t pay it.
I sure as hell like the app, but the issue of lemmy user base being smaller goes both ways unfortunately. I mean it makes sense for him to ask for more money to make up for it, but also at the same time it’s less worth it because Lemmy’s communities aren’t nearly as active as their reddit counterparts. I’ll probably use the app for a couple months and then pay to remove ads if I end up using it enough for the ads to annoy me.
“don’t like it, don’t pay for it” is fine, too many folks seem to have a “don’t like it, don’t bitch about it” attitude and that fucken sucks.
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.
they bought the Reddit app for $1 and enjoyed it for 10 years is an argument
Can you share a link for the $1 comment. I am not aware of reddit sync being $1.
Not full price but it was on sale at times for that cost.
Yep. I stand corrected. $1.01. Just check my payment history in Nov 2012.
edit: and this was full price during the early days, I think.
Damn…I paid $1.99 in 2013.
Someone pointed out the difference in active user counts, too. 2012 Reddit had ~43 million active users. Lemmy has an active user count somewhere around 60-90 thousand.
Point is, if you’re a dev looking to recoup some target cost, you’d be looking at a way smaller and riskier user base than the one that Sync saw on Reddit.
Plus it’s a more mature product at this point. Sure the back end changed, but a lot of features carried over from Reddit.
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.
People aren’t allowed to have opinions unless they’re positive?
You should learn the difference between an opinion and attacking/bullying.
You’re allowed to have an opinion.
And he’s also allowed to share his opinion about people who have negative opinions
Nah, bootlickers are the ones allowed around here.
👆
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.
Yeah man…I am a dev myself but $20 to remove ads is just too much, especially without regional pricing.
$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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Depends on your country, really.
Yes, in Switzerland you’re also told gross income - yet that’s not the ‘real gross income’. There’s lots of other stuff your employer pays for you when you get hired somewhere. For example, in Switzerland, we have mandatory retirement contributions (not like social security, we also have a pension fund seperately from this), that has to be matched by an employer, 1:1.
It really depends on your country, but say in Switzerland, you have to earn a good 30-40% more money when self employed compared to being employed at a company to have the same net amount of money available at the end of the day.
Nope. Yearly. But I used the pricing for me, in Sweden. Seems the conversion rate is a bit off. Because my price is 19 dollars per year and the price for Lifetime is at 117 dollars.
No app is worth that, sorry.
deleted by creator
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.
I used it for nearly a decade for $2, so I figure it’s worth it.
Whether the pricing is appropriate is purely subjective. I paid the 20 bucks, thank you for your work. Looking forward to see this app thrive, it already works super smooth!
Hope you do not take the inevitably rude comments to heart.
Initially, I didn’t have a problem with it, but I read some good points in other threads that it is far too expensive for those in undeveloped countries, and that there should be a sliding scale instead of a straight-up currency conversion.
Regional pricing is coming soon, hopefully that will help!
I just want to say thank you for getting Sync up and running on Lemmy. Please don’t let the toxic comments sour your day. I for one is really grateful for what you do.
༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ
Going to have a stab at regionalising ad free now.
Reply to this with your country and I’ll regionalise the pricing there.
Canada Eh! 🍁
Malaysia, because that’s 2 weeks of my lunch money.
Australia
Sweden. And please double check the regional Ultra prices when you have the time, they seem way off to me.
turkey. Also while im at it could you maybe add some more font sizes? I want smth between extra large and huge. If we could select a specific number that would be even better. Props for the well designed app and can’t wait for the future (งツ)ว
Vietnam…thank u for the app :)
India please…
Mexico
Poland. It’s within EU but it’s not even remotely comparable to western Europe in terms of wages.
Nominally we pretty much make in PLN what Western Europeans make in EUR, except PLN is worth like 4 times less, so it’s 4 times more expensive in terms of wages and costs of living to us :c
It’s down to 35 zł btw
México :D
Netherlands!
Philippines, thank you!
Portugal
Brazil.
Are you also localising Ultra prices?
Vietnam
I paid already but please regionalize for my Canadian friends.
Ukraine
greece
America. (A lot of us here are barely scraping by)
Singapore
France please ! And thank you so much for your work.
Turkey please please 1$=27₺
Chile
Malaysia
South Korea
USA ;)
Removed by mod
I’d say for Estonia it’s too expensive. I got it for 15 though.
Italy
Disclaimer: I am not in Turkey, and my salary is in Euro.
1 Euro is 30 TRY. Minimum salary is around 250 euros, and so many people live with minimum wages.
Puerto Rico
Spain
France
The Netherlands please, although I’m more interested in regionalised pricing for the Ultra subscriptions.
Philippines. Pls pls pls thank u.
India
I’m all on board with FOSS, but I used sync for reddit for years, ljdawson has my support on Lemmy too. I don’t mind supporting a good dev. Do I prefer things be FOSS? Yeah, but I have no issues using a closed source product if it works. And sync has always been top notch. Responsive dev, all around good product.
Check out number 10.
I’m seriously impressed with how functional this app is from the start. Like lots of others have said, it felt like coming home given how long I’d used Sync for. Didn’t hesitate to pay for the ad free version once that option was added.
The backlash has surprised me a bit. I agree the price is a bit steep but considering the userbase is only a fraction of what Reddit has, it’s understandable that the price would be higher.
I just didn’t expect such negative reactions to either the ad component or the price. A lot have mentioned that it could become a form of gatekeeping for newcomers. I just hope it won’t turn out that way.
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
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
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.
Hopping on to the “I feel at home” train! One thing that really bugged me about the alternatives was that they weren’t as smooth and fluid. Like I scroll down and it jumps, I scroll up, it jitters etc.
Sync is the UI and the UX I’ve missed!
I guess a sensible question would be: What is the typical per-user income that the dev gets from ads – say in a year? Take that, multiply by 5 or 10, and it seems like that would be a reasonable one-time payment.
Maybe that’s $20. I don’t know.
But to me, twenty bucks seems high, compared to nearly any other mobile app. And there aren’t even servers to maintain, or API fees to pay. It’s just removing ads.
I paid for ad free because I want to help support this app and the developer.
However, I feel it’s going to be very hard for me to convince others to use Sync. I am a long time user and so I have loyalty and I understand the benefit and so the money is worth it to me. It’s also a nice way for me to give back after a decade of Sync for Reddit.
But I’m not sure I can convince newer folks with this price point.
That said, the app is great and I love it. Keep it up!
It’s still amazing as a free app? You don’t have to convince people to pay $20 unless they want to support the dev
I try Sync since it got released, so for the past 48 h, on and off without paying any money. I haven’t had a single ad since then. I don’t use any VPN or ad blocker on my phone. Don’t know why that’s the case. Maybe because I have the appearance set to list?
Anyway, I really like the app! It really feels the most polished app by a mile to me. Yet, Voyager (as of now “only” a web app) feels also pretty polished, it just has a lot less things in the settings I can tweak.
As a former RIF user (and I really never used anything else on my phone for Reddit) it still feels a bit weird to hop apps but at the end of the day that’s the beauty of the Fediverse: there is just so much choice and if you like Sync enough you have plenty of ways to give money to the dev, just as there are ways to donate to devs of the other apps you like!
Sorry for the tangent!
True. The free version was fine. I tried it for a few hours. And when using list/compact view, I noticed I didn’t even see any ads lol.
But figured I would pay anyways because I wanted to support.
Once the ads are back up & running, the fact that many of them are video ads (at least they were before they disappeared) could be problematic for people on low-cost data plans.
What is the typical per-user income that the dev gets from ads – say in a year? Take that, multiply by 5 or 10, and it seems like that would be a reasonable one-time payment.
Pennies. People think you’re making a ton because some YouTubers make millions, but the reality is you get paid $0.006 per ad click.
I’m sure that’s true.
I mean, pricing at $20 right now for ad-free was probably 100% the right thing to do for the dev. There are clearly longtime hardcore fans who are happily running to pay much that for the app.
But at some point, those fans will all have paid their money. And that leaves people like me who’d gladly pay $5-10… but $20 just seems a bit too steep on principle. Until the price is slightly less steep, the dev only gets my pennies, instead of years-to-decades worth of my pennies all in one shot.
