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!
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.
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.
Don’t just say it, put it in the app: no adds and no tracking : click here!
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.
Yeah man…I am a dev myself but $20 to remove ads is just too much, especially without regional pricing.
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.
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!
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.
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.
Going to have a stab at regionalising ad free now.
Reply to this with your country and I’ll regionalise the pricing there.
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.
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.
The dev is also in England where the cost of living is skyrocketing. For me $20/yr for a staple app on my phone that’s constantly being updated is totally reasonable.
I’m with you, I just wish pro was a separate app because I hate all the data collection garbage.
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.
My wishlist:
- Downvote counts
- Mod tools
I was floored when I opened the beta and found that almost all existing features survived the transition. In a single month! You’re a monster that makes the rest of us developers look bad 😉
I know that there’s an active ongoing discussion about monetization models and I’m certain that there’s room for improvement… but at the end of the day you can’t make everyone happy. I just wanted you to know that, as a long-time fan, I sincerely appreciate what’s been accomplished here. Cheers! Don’t forget to take some well-deserved you time once things quiet down a little.
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)☞
deleted by creator
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.
$5 for the 8 years I used Sync for Reddit is cheap as fuck looking back. $20 is totally fair if I use this app even half as long.
Seriously. I got absolutely massive return for my money on Reddit sync. As a long time user, I’m absolutely thrilled to pay $30 for such a great experience. Nothing else I’ve paid for even comes close. This is cheap AF! I’m not a big fan of subscriptions but I’d consider getting the Sync subscription just to keep supporting ljdawson.
But weren’t the 5$ ultra? And not the non add option? Just wondering can’t remember the sync for reddit app prices.
$5 was just for the lifetime ad free version. Sync Ultra was more expensive because it had more features, like being able to see deleted comments (there are more but I don’t remember them)
All the backlash comes from the elitists that have been using Lemmy before the reddit API change, and I guarantee everybody will shut up about it in a week or so.
Lemmy users when reddit users transfer over: omg welcome to our humble little boards! Feel free to use it however you desire!
Lemme users when a developer makes an app for it: NO YOU FUCKING WORTHLESS MORON YOU’RE SELLING YOUR SOUL $20 IS MORE THAN I’VE EVER HAD IN MY LIFE AND YOU WANNA THROW IT AWAY??? THIS WEB APP THAT HAS NO ANIMATIONS AND NO FEATURES AND RUNS LIKE SHIT IS THE BEST AND ANYBODY WHO ARGUES WITH ME IS A SHILLLLLLLLLLLLL
I have not read a single comment anywhere on Lemmy on any post about Sync that takes it to the highly exaggerated level you made it out to be. On the contrary, I have seen many many users express appreciation to the dev and acknowledge how well the app is designed, but respectfully voice their surprise at the unusually high cost to remove ads. Just because a person thinks $20 for an app is a bit steep, doesn’t mean they think the dev is a “FUCKING WORTHLESS MORON”.
They’ve mostly stopped but there were a handful of people who were acting like the sync dev shot their children.
I paid $30 for a launcher (Niagara). It was worth it. I’ll give Sync a few days and will probably end up throwing down some cash. Seems solid so far.
Niagara costs like six bucks to buy?
Niagara Pro is $10 per year or $30 one time.
Oh, interesting. Nice to know that, thank you!
