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
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.
I started using sync for reddit a few months ago, I am convinced that this is one of the best android apps ever made.
$20 did seem like a bit of a steep price at first, and took me a little by surprise, but I think the price is a little more than just for removing ads. The dev has spent a lot of time creating this app, and he will continue to work on it and update it in the future. We shouldn’t expect him to do it for free.
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.
I think what makes the $20 is it’s to remove ads that the app itself puts forth. And like you said, $20 is pretty high compared to ad removal in other apps.