this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
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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.
Many of us former Reddit Sync users requested that he make the app for Lemmy, so in a sense we do have a contractor type of relationship with him. Hence why many former Sync users are comfortable paying the amount. I think a lot of people who are complaining about the price are just not the target audience for Sync.
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.
Very good point regarding micro transactions.
This is a fair response, and ultimately it is incumbent on the developer to create the value-add that justifies the cost.
I suppose my comment is directed at the sentiment that the developer is "greedy" or trying to swindle consumers in an immature market.
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 by running a public transport network. All they do is help you to get to and from work. How can they have so much hubris as to believe that's worth anything?!
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.
15 bucks? So the conversion rate to Swedish kronor is messed up then. Because my yearly fee is way more than that. If I earned 42k dollars and continued to live in my house with my family we would be insanely well off.
42k/yr is basically poverty in a US city
This is insane to me. You can live in so many other countries with as high, or higher living standards and live the good life with that money.
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.
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.
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.
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).
I used it for nearly a decade for $2, so I figure it's worth it.
It'd have been nice if lemmy only had upvotes. Maybe I can turn votes off.