Hey everyone 👋
I’ll be submitting Bean to the App Store today and have finalised the pricing for Bean Pro launch.
Bean Pro is completely optional and gives you access to the following:
- Multiple accounts
- Push notifications
- Grouped communities
- Premium themes
- Accent colour options
- Comment themes
- Custom app icons
- More font options
Pricing will be as follows:
- $1.99 / month
- $14.99 / year
- $49.99 / lifetime with a discount to $29.99 for the first week
I know pricing is difficult and subscription fatigue is a real thing but hopefully I’ve got a good balance of pricing and features with much more planned including mod tools, widgets, and more customisation options.
Thank you to everyone who has helped test Bean and get it to where it is. I couldn’t have done with without you! ❤️
If I’m being honest, the pricing might be a bit too high for an unproven platform like Lemmy. Obviously, I’m not against monetization and you should be rewarded for your work, but I do wonder how many people are gonna be willing to pay for Pro if (for example) Lifetime costs more than the first release of Apollo Ultra.
I for one think it’s very reasonable pricing and I‘m also convinced that a high quality app like Bean is going to be the key to making Lemmy a successful platform.
I mean, that’s fine and all but a lot of people can’t justify dropping $50 (or $30 for now) on a platform that, I’m sorry to say, just isn’t quite there yet; especially on an app that isn’t quite as proven as Apollo was (which, again, started out substantially cheaper).
Lemmy is unproven, but i think apps like Bean will go a long way towards making it viable long-term. I’m willing to take that gamble to help support the platform. Thats how I’m thinking about the pricing.
Yes, the subscription supports the app developer, but its also an investment in something I desperately want to succeed at the platform level.
I guess that remains to be seen. Even with Apollo, a far more feature-complete app for a far more robust platform with a more certain future (at the time), Ultra had been a hard sell for many.
It seems that I’m in the minority but, I find it a bit to early for prices when the app is still in (early) development.
I wish you the best though.
Thank you! And I appreciate the feedback.
I would say I’m past the “early development” phase now. I’m happy with the feature set that’s included for 1.0 and Pro is a totally optional subscription or one-time purchase that unlocks premium features and customisation options.
I hope you’ll check Bean out when it hits the store anyway. I’m really proud of it and look forward to continuing to work on it.
Personally, I’d like to see multiple accounts remain a free feature. While I’m sure there are counter examples, this feels like a standard feature in most apps.
I think that’s perfectly fine being a paid feature as it’s something the Dev has spent time on developing to be convenient for the user. Nothing stopping you from logging out and logging into another account.
Someone doesn’t want to pay for their porn. 😜
@steve228uk That seems very reasonable pricing.
I’ll take advantage of the first week discounted pricing.
I wish there was regional pricing. Apollo Ultra costed ₹29 per month. Bean costs ₹199. There’s no way I could justify paying that much for a lemmy client. That’s more money than YouTube Premium or Amazon Prime.
I let Apple set the pricing based on USD but you’re absolutely right, there needs to be some better regional pricing if that’s the case.
afaik Apple has regional pricing for the lowest tier, ie $1. There’s no regional pricing for other tiers, which is rather unfortunate.
Ah that’s really crummy! I’ll see if I can make manual adjustments if I can find a good pricing matrix that shows competitive rates per region.
I found the automated regional pricing sometimes did strange things, making e.g. an annual product more expensive per month than the monthly price when it should be discounted. I ended up downloading all the prices as a csv and checking this, then manually adjusting
Thank you! Once Apple approves 1.0 I’ll export and see what I can do.
I don’t typically do subscripts and opt for lifetime when available.
That said, while I appreciate all your time and effort, $30 is too high for me personally, especially given other apps are free and function as well and in some cases have more features.
That said, if lifetime was $10 or maybe even $15 I would buy it even if it wasn’t (right now) my primary lemmy app - at that price point it becomes a “buy now and see what happens with development” and I’d go so far as to say it’s cheap enough to be an impulse buy.
At $15 early bird intro pricing and $30 regular pricing you’d get all the impulse buyers and FOMO folks like me, lol. Food for thought maybe? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Following up on my comment from yesterday*
$14.99 for a year “feels” a lot better than $17.99. I like that a lot.
$29.99 for early adopters feels like a great motivator and should get you a nice chunk of raving fans and ambassadors!
Thank you, and thank you for the initial feedback! 😊
Will be picking up that lifetime unlock just to keep my precious Tutti Frutti icon. 🤣
Congrats on the impending launch! I’m hoping you plan on a tip jar option as well, 'cause if you keep up this level of development, i’m going to feel guilty about the generous discount in a year.
That’s one of my favourites! 😁
I may add a Tip Jar further down the road. I have more things to develop first 🙈
Will sharing subscriptions with family be enabled?
Yep!
Great, thank you!
Forever?
Forever is a long time, and I don’t want to make any promises I can’t keep in the future but right now, I have no plans to turn off family sharing.
Thank you for the honesty, it was mostly a jab at Netflix.
Will there be an option to show the community instance throughout the app like in Memmy? This is what’s stopping me from using the app. I would happily pay for the subscription if you include that:
Exxample :
There’s a setting to show it on the Communities tab at the moment but I plan to expand this to more places in an upcoming update.
Woohoo, thank you for that addition in the latest app. Bean is now my default Lemmy app :)
No problem 😊
How about tree fiddy?
I ain’t giving you no tree fiddy you damn Loch Ness monster.
I have never been a fan of lifetime because I want an app I like to stick around. The developer is far more likely to stay with the project if he has an recurring revenue stream. I think a reasonable monthly and an atractivo yearly is usually the best option for the developer and the user. My $0.02.
I am being honest here also, I need to change the color as the pink is really getting hard to deal with but I am not subscribing just to not have to deal with that one issue. I am testing several apps and will be switching to one that isn’t going this route.
Reminds me of a sheriff in Arizona who made jail work crews wear pink outfits. Just a laugh in the dark.
I love pink! I totally get that it’s not everyone’s cup of tea though.
Hopefully I can convince you to come check Bean out again in the future with the continued development I have planned 😊
Oberall: Nicely done in a short timespan!
I am willing to head for the one-time purchase. Are the prices in test flight build already discounted?
Yep, prices in TestFlight should be accurate. While in the test environment no payment will be taken
Odd, you already said, that you let Apple adjust the prices, but it’s 35€ which would still be about 38.55$. But never mind: full price would also be justified, by the look of the App. I’ll patiently wait for the App Store release.
Worth noting that US pricing doesn’t include sales tax (that gets added at checkout as it varies state to state), so when added it probably comes out around the same.
🥴
Anyhow. Consider yourself bought 😏
