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Comment by eps | Hacker News Reader

Please add an one-time fee (non-subscription) option.

I’m probably going to add a “use for free” button instead as an affordability option, and will make more and more features free tier (the flashcards being paid is only temporary until 3.1 or 3.2) because I have near zero marginal cost per user besides my own labor. I won’t do a one time option.

Your choice obviously, but paying a recurrent fee for an existing function as opposed to new content comes across as unjustified and inherently unfair.

You prefer schemes then where you have to pay for new functions, and pay once again for new features added later on, and so on?

I am also producing content and will have more. It sounds like you’d want that content to be paid for instead of just free to make sense of the subscription options. That’s a good idea.

Perhaps adopt a hybrid model where you keep the features added before and up until the end of your subscription term? Then if you want features added after that, you have to renew your subscription.

Yes, I much prefer that and I'm probably not in the minority.

This arrangement lands itself especially well on educational apps - you would buy a "module", master it, progress, buy next one, rinse and repeat. If you stall, that's your problem, the $ waste is limited and you can always backtrack and re-learn without paying again. Just like with textbooks.

I realized that maybe the best is to have some schedule of premium features becoming free for all later on as I develop more. Which is my plan - expand my differentiating moats at the edge so that I can give everything the competition charges for for free.

"apps these days" aren't like older software, where basically all the code and functionality was written and baked into each new release by the author/team releasing it

almost every piece of new software you use (certainly everything with a subscription) is actually calling another third-party paid API (sometimes multitudes) and using your subscription money to pay for the cost of the app leveraging that API

this approach made it much easier to release a product, but now the product depends on a third-party being paid for every request

I have near zero marginal operating cost thanks to offline-first architecture

But now I see this "offline first" upgrade is seen as a downgrade in terms of value for the premium offering, so I have to figure that out

For what it's worth "offline first" is a big win in my opinion and would sway me to switch to Manabi. I tried it previously, and the changes you mentioned are something I'm interested in.

Thank you! I also stripped all analytics (will introduce something more privacy friendly later). Please let me know if you have any feedback

Yes, for sure. I don’t mind paying for stuff, but I simply can’t add a subscription for every last random app. It’s not sustainable, and I refuse. Even the student pricing, because it’s as much a principal thing as it is a money thing.

I’ll give you a “pay nothing” affordability option. Lmk if you’d like a promo code meanwhile in lieu of that existing yet.

No, I subscribed for a year at full price, and immediately cancelled the recurring payment. I’m learning Japanese, and this looks neat, and like I said, I don’t mind paying for things. I also don’t expect unlimited feature development either, but I just feel like for offline apps like this, subscription models are terrible, and I just really hate that they have become so prevalent. In my ideal world, a one time payment unlocks all new features and bug fixes for the next year, and then if there are new features I find exciting enough, I can pay for an upgrade to get all the new features for the next year, and if not, I can still keep all the existing features anyways. This accomplishes your goal of sustainable development, while also accepting that at some point, if you run out of ideas for new features, people get to keep the existing features, and you don’t have to feel bad about stopping development and moving on to other things.

BTW - You'll be set back to free tier for doing it that way (edit: ah I misunderstood, thanks for the support)

There is still a server component with continuous server operations (the app is offline-first, not entirely offline), as well as for community functionality with flashcards, it sounds like you'd like these operational costs to be more obvious to you? If the usage necessitates an operational cost, you're satisfied with recurring payment?

I appreciate your viewpoint but will first offer a 'free subscriber' affordability option for this concern before I consider adding tiers of gating to feature rollouts or versioned paid upgrade tiers for functionality. I will also add more data exports for portability.

Yes, I understand that. In a year, if I am still using the app, and you’ve implemented it, I won’t feel guilty about switching to the free plan.

Yes, operational costs are completely understandable to charge subscriptions for. But the core functionality of the reader and dictionary lookups is the most valuable part to me, which should be offline only.

Best of luck to you on this endeavor!

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