Afternoon everyone,

I wanted to go over a few points related to pricing, stats and the roadmap

Pricing

  1. Sync for Lemmy is completely free with ads (the same as Sync for Reddit)

  2. You can remove ads in the account picker or drawer for a one time fee of ~$20

  3. Sync Ultra also removes ads but it’s not required

  4. 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

  • Polar@lemmy.caEnglish
    201·
    1 year ago

    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!

    • Taako_Tuesday@lemmy.caEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      I paid 5 dollars back in 2016, and I was fully expecting to pay more for this version. 20 dollars for no ads is fine by me. However, I don’t feel like the 100 dollars for lifetime ultra is worth it. Maybe someday when I feel like those extra perks are worthwhile

      • keefshape@lemmy.caEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        I paid like 80 bucks about a year ago. And here I am rallying for ljd to keep providing a solid client that works the way I want it to.

        I followed like sheep, and baaaah take my money.

    • momoitin@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      The people complaining about the price are the people that truly have no understanding how much love and care goes into creating good software. 20 dollars to remove ads for however many hours sync is going to save me with searching for each instance is well worth the cost for supporting development in the future.

    • Lemmington Bunnie@aussie.zoneEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Under AUD$2 to AUD$34 is quite the leap, and more than double what I anticipated.

      I was very happy to drop AUD$10-15, and I’m aware that what I paid in 20 dickity 13 was a steal.

      Quadrupled app costs would have been a bargain in my eyes.

    • Aasikki@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      I’m fine with a price increase, but 4 times the price is quite the increase. Haven’t made up my mind if it’s worth it for me yet, if it was 5€ or maybe 10€ I would have immediately bought it.

  • thoomfish@lemmy.worldEnglish
    9·
    1 year ago

    I don’t know if this is already the case or not, or how hard it would be to implement, but since Ultra is a superset of ad-free, it would be swell if there was upgrade pricing so you could pay $80 to go from ad-free to Ultra. I definitely want ad-free but I’m not sure about Ultra and so I’m not getting either until I can make that decision to avoid throwing $20 down a hole.

  • Tudou@feddit.ukEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • BigBase@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Yeah I stumbled upon this cause relay is kinda meh, sign up was like ah crap what’s all this server nonsense but the app does a great job of streamlining it I was surprised! Quiter so far but has some of the communities I like in the other place without thousands of comments

  • flip@lemmy.nbsp.oneEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    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.

  • redcalcium@lemmy.instituteEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    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.

  • jmeel@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    Hey. Great work putting the app up so soon. There seems to be an issue every once in a while with loading content regardless of the origin Lemmy server. I’m guessing something on the API end. Is the API host specific instances (i.e. is the host of the sync API currently just the Lemmy.world instance)?

    • godless@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      Every instance is hosting the API for their own users, and unfortunately lemmy.world has plenty of outages recently.

      The way Lemmy works is that when you have an account with lemmy.world and subscribe to a community hosted on lemm.ee (for example), the lemm.ee server copies the content over to lemmy.world, and you see it all “locally”. Hence a lemmy.world server outage reflects what you see with your lemmy.world account. Local communities will always be shown “as local” of course, so a server outage then means it’s completely offline for the time being.

      A quick fix would be to sign up with a smaller instance and subscribe to the communities from there (including the ones on lemmy.world), in that case even if lemmy.world is offline, you would be able to see and interact with their cached copies on the target instance. I’ve made an account with infosec.pub for that purpose.

      • jmeel@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        1 year ago

        Ah, I figured there’s that kind of problem. I was wondering if the alternative was that the server running the API were a different process or potentially machine from the one running the web front.

  • trifulau@feddit.itEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    I’m probably dumb, but I can’t find how to change the size of the font of the post. I also noticed that is the same size of the one I am using typing this message.

  • 1984@lemmy.todayEnglish
    31·
    1 year ago

    It’s the best app but the pricing is insane. I mean, maybe you have experience from your other apps and you know this is the optimal price, but otherwise, consider changing it. People are surprised by the high price right now.

    If it was me, I would price it like this:

    • Remove ads - $10 lifetime.

    • Ultra - $3 per month, $20 per year, $50 lifetime.

    Those sums are realistic and people are likely to find them acceptable. You would get more users instead of less users paying more.

    But this is just me and I speak only as someone who never had an app in a appstore. Maybe you know better. But that’s what I would do.

  • gothicdecadence@lemm.eeEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    Hey! Loving the app. One thing I’d appreciate is if it showed what instance you’re on under or above the “Everything”, “Local”, and “Subscribed” text. It can be hard to tell the difference between accounts if I have them themed to look the same! For example,

    Or something like that

  • chaorace@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • mintiefresh@lemmy.caEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      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!

      • WhatASave@aussie.zoneEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        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

    • Polar@lemmy.caEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      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.

      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.

  • pascal@lemm.eeEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I used sync for years and bought the pro version, what’s the roadmap for former buyers of the the pro version for Reddit? Will we be able to get a discount for the ad free version?