Lifetime license
D
Danny Thys
There are many people, like me, who prefer not to be on a monthly / annual subscription, but pay once for life. So a kind of lifetime license for pro versions.
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All
Mr. Mussabekov, if you choose to offer lifetime pricing, I would suggest creating an intermediate tier between Free and Pro (perhaps Plus?).
The Plus tier would be offered at both lifetime pricing and better regional pricing at $2/mo or $18/yr as Dancing_Rain excellently suggested below.
The Plus tier would include as many Pro features as possible while "capping" additional server cost over free tier to 50%. By having a tier that provides a lot of extra value but only modestly increases ongoing server cost, the additional recurring revenue from the Plus tier (including cannibalized from the Pro tier) could be enough to help pay for the additional long-term server cost of the Plus tier usage.
This allows you to offer low-cost, high-value premium features to more users — while still being able to offer the highest-cost premium features at higher (recurring) prices.
Over time, you could try to move more Pro functionality into Plus by serving it at lower cost with more client-side caching and local processing.
New, high-cost, cutting-edge features could conversely initially launch solely at the Pro tier. It's worth noting that your remaining Pro tier subscribers would likely be more price-elastic, allowing you to raise rates for Pro faster than for Plus.
I have a second suggestion: you could separate long-term, warm, and hot-tier storage costs from network/compute by offering a modest offline version storage limit (in GB) for the Plus tier.
You can do the same thing for compute costs by limiting offline crawl rate for Plus users.
Overall, this is good for users. They won't get the most server-intensive Pro features but they will get a lot more than free and they'll get the Pro features that become more affordable over time.
Note: Other than offline mode / full-text search, I don't concretely know what the difference is between Free and Pro because I have been paying annually since day one to support your excellent app and for full-text search.
Rustem Mussabekov
All: What exact Pro features you need?
Do you know any other alternative service costing $3 or less?
Do you know any other service with more generous Free plan?
Why $2, maybe $0.1?
As I mentioned earlier selling cheaper than $3 equals to giving it for free due to high fees for small transactions.
All
Rustem Mussabekov good point: I wonder
what pro features are needed by the users asking for lower prices?
I know your question is for everyone, so just my brief opinion: I think your current rate is quite reasonable at $3 per month (compare to: 1Password $4, Spark $8).
Overpriced examples:
Telegram Premium at $5 and Pocket, which no longer exists, at $5.You could probably charge $3.50 per month ($32 annual) and I'd still pay for it. But I live in the US in a high cost of living city (a haircut costs $50), so my perspective is on one end of the curve.
jonathanlima
Rustem Mussabekov I'd be completely fine having a reduced version of the current premium plan, especially with limited storage.
It's a trade-off - I get it LTD - but I must agree with certain limitations.
In my case,
- I wouldn't need the 10GB per month to store and upload stuff, I'd be okay with 4~5GB. (or any other term)
- Permanent Library: I'd be okay if I had a limit of items I could save permanently each month.
Another type of idea for LTD: TIERS
- Tier 1: <describe available features and limits>
- Tier 2: ...
Also, you may consider Limited openings (open for X days in a schedule you define)
--
just writing down some of my thoughts based on a few other apps I've seen out there.
For example:
- One Huge product that offers LTD: Proton Pass
- CanaryMail offers LTD
- MyMemo, Save.day offered LTD for a limited time using tiers through AppSumo.
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Adding to the last comment regarding currency:
In other countries the USD needs to be converted - in Brazil for example it is almost 6 BRL to make 1 USD. This elevates the cost for those places as well.
Rustem Mussabekov
jonathanlima Can you show me a similar app with cheaper price? Who reduce the price when it already a lowest on the market?
jonathanlima
Rustem Mussabekov
Similar cheaper (does not save copies of the pages)
- start.me (I've been using it as my homepage for a couple of years now) - I've got the lifetime deal. The subscription plans: Pro $24/yr (2/mo) or Team $30/yr ($2.5/mo)
- Bookmer - $30/yr
Similar - same price
- linkwarden.app $3/mo ← OpenSource
Similar - more expensive but with more powerful features:
- Fabric (Basic) ← Multiple AI tools, 50GB, etc - $4.67
- save.day ← $3.97
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One Time Purchase - to save backups of your pages
- GoodLinks iOS - $9.99
- Couch - Read Later iOS - $8.99
- AnyBox (someone already mentioned it below) - $39.99
Subscription Based:
- Sofa - Downtime Organizer - $30/yr
ismailsevik
The cheapest "read later" app on the market right now.
ismailsevik
I think the current price is quite reasonable and appropriate. Technically, it is not possible to give a lifetime license. This might make sense if it were an offline application, but it's not very useful for a service that is online and requires constant updates and has hosting fees.
mdaverde
ismailsevik It would be useful to bring in relatively large revenues in now rather than later. Revenues now can be invested into new features that increase the amount of monthly/annual paying customers later.
Dancing_Rain
I think instead of lifetime subs, cheaper subscription will be better. At least don't increase it for the time being.
Rustem Mussabekov
Dancing_Rain cheaper than $3/m?
Dancing_Rain
Rustem Mussabekov I read the thread and many people were suggesting lower pricing. So I thought that will be more viable than lifetime subs. I think people should understand that Lifetime subs are "fake" promises. They never hold in the long run and I don't believe them in this age and time. Around 2000s or 2010s they could be believed but now... Not a chance. Most of the times it feels like a pull out scheme. Where the dev will just gather as much as they can and leave. I am happy (and grateful) paying for a service one time if the service doesn't deal with cloud services but when storage and bandwidth comes into equation then lifetime is not "trustworthy".
I have seen many services, which did this. Like a certain music player, a vpn app, a password manager and many more like them. All of them have been very very famous. And they all ended up going back on their "life time plan" promises. Some sold the company to make it someone else's headache (new owner obviously removed the plan), some ended the plan after 3 months and didn't even refund the users who bought the plan. Some just stopped making the software and created a new version of the same software (legal reasons) which they sold as a subscription service. So you can use the lifetime version, that isn't being updated anymore, for 1000000000000 years. But if you want updates and more features then pay for their new app version through subs. (BTW they promised future updates with the lifetime plan but they revoked it later.)
So, I thought if it has to be something then price could be altered for certain events like discounts on different occasions. Or maybe better regional pricing.
Rustem Mussabekov
Dancing_Rain Yes lifetime plan is a lie. Price cheaper than $3/m will not work for us, because you probably know that we also need to pay taxes, fees, etc? Your $3 become $1 for us. Making price cheaper actually means giving it for free.
Dancing_Rain
Rustem Mussabekov Fair enough. Great product. One of the cleanest and most feature rich manager. I am happy paying the price if it means there are a lot of new exciting features to play with 😁. Keep up the good work.
w
wayneallison
Rustem Mussabekov
60% overhead? That’s a LOT of overhead for SaaS …
All
wayneallison 60% sounds reasonable to me.
I worked at Microsoft for many years. If you look at our earnings, Azure's overhead is around 65%.
While we can't compare apples to oranges, I think few Fortune 10 companies could achieve better margin than Microsoft, given its strong vertical integration, incumbency, economy of scale, and reasonable mitigation of diminishing returns.
v
vicasso
I'm in if the LTD is coming.
I like anybox pricing model!
Rustem Mussabekov
vicasso do not expect $39.99 lifetime pricing
v
vicasso
Rustem Mussabekov Absolutely not! You may know your expenses better.
imquangdang
Rustem Mussabekov right here waiting for you
RainS0rm
Agree and ready to day for one time license. Free user now
jonathanlima
Up! I’d not even hesitate to buy it! Looking forward to have a lifetime plan!
Rustem Mussabekov
open
Rustem Mussabekov
Merged in a post:
In app purchases, other than the subscription.
iAmRenzo
I am using the free version. I have something against subscriptions. And in this case there are just 2 or 3 things I would use from the subscription features, so I am not even considering it.
But why not make some features as a one time purchase? Like nested collections? Or permanent library?
Rustem Mussabekov
Merged in a post:
One-time payment
A
A
A one-time payment option for Pro features would be great. I personally hate having bunch of services billing monthly/yearly. I would gladly double the yearly amount to have permanent access the the Pro features.
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