App Pricing Part 1
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What's up everybody, welcome to another episode of the Compile Swift Podcast. I'm your host Peter and here's the other host Jeff. How you doing Jeff? Hey, I'm doing pretty good. Awesome. We're doing something a little different this week folks. We are recording live in front of a text audience and we all know how opinionated the internet is so we will see how this goes. But we wanted to bring some folks in because we're going to talk about something that can be a little controversial sometimes, pricing.

And thankfully, neither of us are experts. Let's just put that up front right there. Do not take us for financial advice or any advice for that matter. But we do have opinions. Oh, how lucky you are. Another thing the Internet has plenty of. Yeah, because, you know, we thought two more are needed. Clearly, there are two missing, right?

So we are as correct as everybody else is what we're thinking here. So just to give a little overview here for folks, we're going to cover this from all directions and take questions from the chat room as they come up. Now, we're going to cover pricing in a very general way here because let's be clear, there are no right or wrong answers. There are only the answers that work for you.

And so we're going to base this on some of our own experiences, folks we know, and hopefully some good old common sense.

So let's dive in here and let's start by, you know, how we got here. How did we get here to talk about this? Go for it, Jack. Yeah. So there's a personal aspect to why we're talking about this this week. And there's also a more public aspect as to why we're talking about this this week. Well, actually, last week I released my iOS app Bark, my newest iOS app. It is...

perhaps controversially, a subscription-only app at this time. I posted a video about this on YouTube and had a lot of comments about that very thing. A couple days after I released my app, Bark...

Somebody much more famous and much more popular on YouTube than myself, Mr. MKBHD, released his app, Panels, also a subscription-heavy, although not subscription-only app, and we can get into some of the difference there, and was also very heavily excoriated for the pricing around his app. And so there's blood in the water, as it seems. And so we wanted to maybe spill a little bit more.

To sort of put a little perspective here, right? And I think that it might be healthy to put this at the very beginning so folks know where we're coming from.

I have some free apps in the Apple App Store and I have a paid app in the Apple App Store. So I have it tried both ways. Now, I don't have subscriptions, but thankfully, you know, like you say, you do. So I feel like I at least have a valid opinion since I've got two of the three there. Now, we should start by saying, and I think it's fair to say,

Let's first of all congratulate you because you put a video out there and it went extremely well. I won't use the words that you used. This is a public show, folks, to describe how well it went and your surprise. But yes, it generated a hell of a lot of comments, right? And I know that at one point I think you said to me, like, I just can't keep up with responding. Well, first of all, congratulations, because that's the kind of thing you want, right? I mean...

It's shocking when it happens. But yeah, this is where a lot of this comes from. So I think we should start with you. Let's set a level on how many things you are because you said you have two of the three. I count four because you said free app, paid app, which I think this is where the fourth one is coming. Subscription app, paid up front versus in-app purchase.

Ah, good point. Yes. And I don't know. Is yours paid up front? Mine is paid up front. Okay. So you have. Well, it will be when somebody does. There you go. You have free and paid up front. I have free in-app purchase and subscriptions. I have no paid up front ones. Okay. All right.

Yeah, you caught me. I've been secretly hoarding my millions from the App Store. No, but I think that that's a distinction worth making. Is there a difference between paid up front and...

one-time purchase one-time in-app purchase yes you're quite right because you know arguably some folks would say and and i'm not saying it's right or wrong but you know paid up front to me you know yeah you don't get nothing until you've you've paid for it then you get the app and

hey, if it works out great and if it doesn't work out, well, you know, there is the, you have a recourse there in the app store as opposed to the other method, which I often think of as we don't use the word trial in the app store, right? We have a evaluate it for a little while and then either pay to expand it in some way or perhaps more controversially pay to continue using it

without actually using the word trial, right? Now, so I tell you what, let me talk about my thoughts on that for a second then, right? Because I feel like in some ways, it's Apple that has forced that situation with their policies. And I'm not saying whether I agree or disagree with them. I'm just saying that I think that it's,

You know, it's the only way for people to try out software on an iPhone, on an iPad, on a watch. I guess Vision OS at this point. I don't know. I don't have one. Without having the ability to try it in some other way. Okay, yes, the European App Store is changing that. But let's not bring that in and make it, you know, harder to get through than it is. So because of the way that it works with their policies, right?

There's no other way for me to evaluate software beforehand other than some, you know, in air quotes, light version. Unlike, say, Mac, Windows, Linux, where it's like, hey, go, you know, go download it, try it. If you like it, great, go buy it from the App Store, right? And I think at some point something like that does need to happen for, you know, iPhone, iPad, Mac.

But I would imagine that's incredibly complicated to figure out. It's been 16 years. I don't think they're going to change anything. Right. And, you know, I think there's value in Apple saying, well, it's working out great for us. Okay. You know, leave it at that. Now, okay. The way this might change with these third-party app stores, you know, anyone that's got Android would be familiar with the phrase sideloading, right?

It's kind of like that a little bit, I guess. But hey, I'm not in...

The European app stores, I've not looked into it, so I don't want to comment on that. But that's how I see those two different payment mechanisms, right? One, pay it on good faith, and then the other one, try it out to some degree, and then pay to continue using it or expand the features that you want. So that's my take on that. What do you think of those? I think that's correct. Like, you...

The problem with paid upfront is exactly what you say, is that you are asking people to take it on faith, that you are saying, hey, here is my app. I've told you what I can through 3,000 characters or whatever the description is and five screenshots and maybe a 30-second video.

If you are, I was going to say if you're a large company, maybe you can get away with that. But even a lot of the large companies today, you think your Adobe's, your Microsoft's or whatever's, they are also moving towards the subscription status. And I think that that is very much part of why they are doing this is that even they cannot trade entirely on their brand name anymore, that they have to say like,

There have been enough companies, themselves included, who have said, hey, we've got this software. We think you're really going to like it. You're going to have to pay for it up front. And it turns out the software is garbage. And I think that, unfortunately, it is a reality that

You have to give people a chance to try before they buy. Hey, folks, if you like what you're hearing in this podcast and you want to help this podcast to continue going forward and having great guests and great conversations, I invite you to become a Patreon supporter. You can go to patreon.com forward slash compile swift, where you will get ad free versions of the podcast along with other content.

There's a certain amount where you say, I'll just pay that. We'll see what happens. Right. And it's acceptable is what I'm going to call it. And then there are pricing structures and breakpoints where you say to pay that. I expect a certain level of I hate to use the word professional software, but hopefully everyone knows what I mean. Right. There's a certain expectancy and price.

You know, I'm glad that we see that now because...

That first category, what I call sort of the 99 cent thing, right? If you pay that, it's throwaway in many ways, right? Especially if you equate it to like everyone does a cup of coffee, something like that, right? You don't buy a cup of coffee and then expect to have another one given to you free because you paid for that one, right? So for 99 cents, hey, I get what I get. And if it's terrible...

Okay, I'm going to be cautious next time on that developer, right? But then there, you know, and I want to say for me, it was things like when OmniFocus and that came to the iPhone, there was this next tier of what I call the, oh, we are finally reaching desktop quality quality.

software with the appropriate price, right? Because, you know, some apps, whatever you want to, you know, I'm using OmniFocus because that was the first one I remember paying over, I was going to say over the odds, appropriate pricing for. But I knew that I was getting an app of that quality, right, based on history. Now, that's how I see it. Other folks may disagree. And, you know, let's be clear, right? If something's free, right,

I think you absolutely get what you get. And it's, you know, it's one of those that it's like, hey, you're walking into this. It's of no cost to you. If it sucks, it sucks. If it's great, it's great. By all means, give it a review. But you're not, I'm going to use the word entitled in any way because you haven't paid for anything. Does that make sense?

That makes sense. I would not agree that people feel that way, but that makes sense. Well, I'm not saying they do. I'm just saying that I think from a perspective, you know, it's, hey, you get something for free. You don't have to take it, right? But if you're paying something, you are choosing to take it for some cost at that point. Nobody's made you do it, I guess is what I'm saying. Yeah, correct.

Yeah, I think that there is an expectation of a higher deliverable if you are asking for money for something. That if you have asked people to fork over the bucks, as it were, they are expecting a return on that investment. And I think that that does ultimately get into where we start seeing the split between

one-time payments, whether upfront or in-app purchase and subscriptions, because what is the level of what people expect over time and what they expected for that money? And this is where we get into where my feelings have been a little bit mixed recently. So

Historically, my apps have always been either free or one-time purchases. I've had a couple apps that have been completely free for a long time, and I've had my main two apps, Black Highlighter and Kineo, that are one-time permanent unlock features. And...

Kineo, it's been in the App Store for, depending on how you count, 16 or 5, 6, 7 years. I would actually double check that. And has gotten consistent free updates over that time. You know, heck, I released an entirely brand new rewritten version of it for Vision Pro. Black Highlighter has also been on the App Store for 7 years and has had a single price that entire time. And...

You know, has also continued to get decent updates every couple months for those seven years. And the problem, I think, comes when people continue to expect that your app continues to work, continues to have new features, continues to get bug fixes, all of that.

And they may have paid for it once in seven years. And as a developer, that stops becoming sustainable over time. There is only so much that I can continue to provide having gotten two, three dollars from you one time in seven years.

And I think that there's a level at which you saturate your market, for example. And you say, I've reached probably as many people as I can with Black Highlighter without going into being able to spend money on Apple search ads or anything like that. Where I have my market. I have my market of people who do really like this app. But...

supported it once in a long time. And I feel like I'm trying to walk this thin line here where like, yeah, I absolutely love that people have supported it as they have. And I don't want to sound ungrateful for that support. But at the same time, I know that I have people who do respond to me to email me a number of times. And I go like, man, I...

There's a level at which the amount of time that I am putting into Black Highlighter is not being made up for the amount of work that is being seen from it. And sometimes that's things that you never knew. I mean, that was Kineo with Vision Pro. That was absolutely a waste of my time. The other side of it is an app like Black Highlighter where people are continuing to enjoy this over time and...

Continue to request updates, continue to request new features, that kind of thing. And it's just the time that I spend into it versus the amount that I get back is out of whack.

And so that's why with Bark, I went the subscription route where I was saying, you know what? I know that some of my apps get these quote unquote thousand true fans and they get to a point where there are people who continue to use this app for years and years and years and

And what I want to do is I want to try and better align what I get out of that with what they get out of that. And that was my goal with moving to a subscription model was saying one-time payment doesn't work for me, has not worked for me for apps that I sustained for multiple years in both cases. I think in both cases, each of those apps has had over seven years of

done on them. And for some of my other apps, it's been a case where I've had to drop that app because it is just no longer financially viable for me to spend time on it. And to say like, I am continuing to work on this app because I'm

I know what this is, is getting me. You know, I, I, the, the problem that I see is that like the, the ultimate inciting event here is like Kineo is getting to that point where Kineo is not worth the amount of time that I put into it. And I don't want to drop Kineo. I don't want to stop making Kineo. I don't want to stop continuing to build Kineo, but I spent six months making that vision OS happen. It went nowhere. I I've had the iPad app for years and I know that people love that iPad app.

But it's not very – it's not something that I can continue to work on for the amount of people and the amount of value that I see back out of that. So I think I can help you out here. I think I can spin this so that I end up sounding like the bad guy. How does that help, right? Yeah.

Let me start with, I hope that consumers somehow decide to listen to this episode because I'm going to use a couple of analogies here, right? I feel like it's only recently over the past few years with smartphones and everything,

that consumers have started to understand software has value and requires maintenance and a certain level of expectation from the consumer. For many of them, this is kind of an unusual concept, right? Those that never grew up perhaps heavily using computers in the conventional sense, right?

So they've never really had to pay for software, right? Like we used to, you know, box off the shelf kind of thing, right? And now that everyone's got one in their pocket, or most people have one in their pocket, they're starting to realize that, hey, guess what? There are running expenses to that $1,000 device you just bought. And by that, you know, to give you an example here, kind of an equivalent, right?

If you go buy a car, you've got the initial outlay for the car. Regardless of whether you're paying for it over time or whatever, the car costs X amount of money. Now, when you buy that car for X amount of money, you don't expect...

to get lifelong maintenance for free, right? You don't expect to get free wheels, free brakes, free services, and all these kind of things. You go into that knowing there's going to be some costs for me at some point down the road, right? You just don't get all that for free. And I think people need to think about software in that way now that they are using it

every day for whatever reason, right? Just because it's not a physical thing that you can point at or pick up or something like that, it doesn't mean that

the value of it is any different, right? Am I making sense? Right? There's a, you know, you're getting something, an initial cost, and along the way, it's going to cost you something, right? You buy the phone, for that matter. You're still going to pay a monthly phone bill to have a phone line, right? You know, and those, well, okay, I'm sure there are some exceptions, but for the most part, right? All these kind of things, you know, you have cable, you get, you got whatever, electricity going to your house. And,

We are now moving into the kind of world where software is the same thing, right? You know, software as a service, right? I mean, it is something that has an ongoing cost. And so to then turn around as a consumer and say,

I don't agree with these ongoing costs. Well, why is it perfectly okay to do that for your house, your car, your gas, your electricity, your phone? Why is it acceptable for all of those things, yet not acceptable for others, right? And that's kind of how I look at the services and subscriptions over time.

I've never had a problem with companies that charge subscriptions. You know, think, you know, if you look back, okay, Adobe was the first...

arguably very well-known one if you step outside of huge professional software houses for whatever, TV industry, whatever, who have been doing this for a very long time. If you stop and you think about it, right? Let's take Adobe here for a second, right? Not going to go on a sidetrack here or anything, but

We started off every year we go out, we would buy the Creative Suite upgrade for whatever, $150, something like that. $600. It was way more than $150. Well, okay. For the initial purchase, yes. But the upgrade every year was like $150 for me. So I don't know. You know, my point is I was paying it out in one lump sum. That could just as easily have been spread over 12 months.

And ultimately, you know, I'm not saying it is the same, but you're really talking about the same kind of figures, right? And I think that just because people see it as an ongoing cost, as opposed to a huge outlay at some point, they perceive that as being different in some way. So, you know, just kind of putting that aside.

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Perspective there.

uh, that they see fewer complaints about subscriptions if there's an obvious ongoing server cost. And I, I,

I see that and I agree with that. I do see that there are people who are saying that, you know, hey, they're looking at my app, for example, and saying, well, there's no obvious ongoing cost to me. And they're wanting to see where kind of this money is going. And they don't really see where this money is going in the sense of ongoing maintenance. So that's point one.

Point two is I agree with the idea of, and I've seen a lot of people say the same sort of thing as well, of, you know, why don't you just bundle up an update and then, you know, there'll be a big update and you release this big update and people will buy that. A, that is not really a thing that Apple allows. And this is a case where Apple's, their stranglehold over the App Store is, you

Kind of cutting off certain business models. And that is one of them where they are saying that, you know, you can't really do paid upgrades very well in the app store. But B, and this is where I'm coming with this argument from a consumer perspective, is it's

If I am making an app that I need to have a major update that you really want to go and buy, what does that mean? That means I've built features, I've made bug fixes, I've done whatever, and I'm telling you, no, you can't have it for 12 months because I need to hold this back for a big update that is going to get a bunch of news and that people will see and they'll go, oh, it's worth it for me to put

put that bucks out again and pull out my wallet again. And that is not really beneficial to you as a consumer. It's not even really beneficial to me as a developer where I'm saying, you know, I'm going to,

tick everybody off for 12 months because I'm just saying, you know, here, I don't want to release this app because I'm holding this back for my own greed to say, here's a big update later. I would rather be shipping improvements constantly. C, oh, sorry, three, I guess. No, this is going back up a bullet. Three, I think we as developers have to realize that no matter what,

what these arguments we want to make to consumers and say like, Oh, consumers have to think of this this way. They're not. And, and,

We kind of have to react to that regardless of do we wish that consumers would really see this our way and that we really think that they should be understanding these arguments that we're making. And the fact of the matter is like, no, people have their own reasons for doing what they want. They have their own understandings of the value that they are being provided and

Et cetera, et cetera. And, you know, while we might wish that consumers understood this maintenance burden that we have, they don't. And we can't expect them to. And so what are we doing now?

in response to that and how are we going to react to that is really the question that I feel like I am struggling with on my own. The right answers for each of us are the ones that each of us feel comfortable with, right? And I want to touch on that point there in a second, but I also want to respond to a couple of things here in...

the chat before they go too far because i think i think they're they deserve answers so in the chat room here and i'm just going to quote this one quickly following the car ownership analogy wouldn't this indicate that customers are more likely to understand the cost of software is if significant app updates cost money and my answer to that is yes and you do see right i

I can't think of one to name offhand, but there are apps where they essentially give you the point updates for free.

Meaning that you've paid for the original one and you get those. And then they say, okay, and they spin up a new, well, I guess it would be app ID, right? For the next major version that you then pay for and you can choose to get that new version or you can stay with the old one and they make it clear, okay, we're not going to do any more point updates on this. And so eventually, logically, it'll stop working once again.

whatever OS version stops supporting something in that app. Again, I don't think that's the fault of the developer, that's an inherent risk of, hey, time goes by. You can do that, but also as they note here in the chat room, yeah, it's not easy to do either. It does get complicated because users think, wait a minute,

got version one. Now you want me to pay for version two and so on. But I think if you're honest and upfront and explain it as best as you can to the customer, I think that's perfectly acceptable. And I think it's a good way to try and, and deal with that. But I do agree with the comments in the chat room that, you know, the current model of the app store does not make that easy from a publisher's perspective, not at all. Right. Um,

You know, so there is that. But I also wanted to comment on, I think you were saying about, you know, some of the risk involved with me as the developer. I put my time in this. I released the initial version, which is always the hardest part, arguably. Right. And then now I'm into the maintenance period of this.

Even if I don't intend to put any new features in anytime soon, I've still got to ship bug fixes. That takes time. Potentially could be costs involved, right? I mean, for example, like you said, the consumer doesn't see the cost, but yet they're like, well, I didn't get anything. Well, nobody...

Still got to pay $99 every year to put it in the App Store. I'm not making a user pay for that. That's my expense. I choose to do that. Those costs that the user never sees,

Arguably, I would say as a consumer, they should never bother themselves with in many ways, right? You don't go to a store and think to yourself, boy, I wonder how much it costs this store to run the electricity every day. It's not something that enters your head, right? The store just swallows that cost and maybe they offset it in the value of the product. But what I want to do here is, you know, let's sort of, like you say, we could go on, you know, so let's sort of reel it in a little bit

And let's talk about some of those feelings that you have when someone... Because I've never entertained the idea of a subscription. So it's not even entered my head to have an opinion on it from a maker's perspective. But as someone that's now done that, inevitably kind of suffered the pros and cons...

Where does that leave you now as far as thinking about it? Because I'm sure, right, every time you read someone says, subscription, what the? It hurts, right? You're like, why are you focusing on this instead of, hey, I made this app for you. I didn't make you use it, but you chose to. So many. Yeah.

And there's the answer, folks. No, I don't want to put you in a corner, but I want to give you an opportunity to. No, no, no. I mean, yes, it is a bummer. But at the same time, like I see it, there is a reason why historically I have not done subscriptions. Yes, I agree. Subscriptions suck.

And there's another response in the chat that like, yeah, subscriptions are feeling like you're being asked to make a long-term commitment to the app. The problem is I'm also kind of feeling like it's also the opposite. And that's the problem. It's like these two things are so much in conflict of, yes, being a subscription is like this big commitment. But at the same time, is it less of a commitment than just the one-time purchase? That's basically a lifetime commitment. But...

I get why customers feel like, oh, I don't want to make the subscription. And then like I end up having to cut it off and now I don't have access to the app anymore and this doesn't work for me. And yeah, like that is the problems that I'm feeling is –

I kind of understand the arguments from the consumer side and I understand the arguments from the developer side and I understand the arguments from both pros and cons on either side of those things. It's like there are pros and cons to the developer. There are pros and cons to the customer. And,

I don't really know how to square this circle is really the problem that I'm running into and the reason why it comes up. And yeah, it does suck to see somebody say, you know, hey, I'm not going to use this app. I'm not even going to entertain the idea of even beginning to use this app because it's a subscription app and I refuse to use it. There are people who have called me criminal for charging a subscription and I'm just like,

This is ridiculous. And yeah, it's a bummer. And I do feel like there is an impact to that. And I think that that's why in a lot of cases you see developers get defensive. And that's really what I'm trying to avoid doing on this podcast. I don't know if I'm doing a good job of doing it on this podcast. But...

What I don't want to do is I don't want to double down and be like, these people are stupid. These people don't understand. These people don't know how hard it is to be a developer. What I want to get across is that, yes, I understand how much that this is a bummer. But I also understand that if I don't do something with how I'm doing my app's business, those apps aren't going to continue to exist. And...

I know that there are people out there who do really enjoy these apps and who are in constant communication with me and say like, you know, I really love this app. I really like what it does. I use this app every day and I've got to do something in order to continue to provide that to that user. Like I'm doing something that the user enjoys and I want to be able to continue to do this thing that the user enjoys. And I,

I just have to reach a balance of like, I don't want to shut down this app, but I need to be getting some sort of value out of it as opposed to continuing to work on it, continuing to improve it, continuing to build it and not really seeing anything for my time as well. I think my perspective on a lot of this is that there's not actually any problem with subscription or paid upfront payments

And it is purely a perception issue. And I say that because, you know, like someone says in the chat room, and we've all been there, right? You look one day and you're like, wow, how many subscriptions do I have? Right? And then suddenly you get the sticker shock of it. But at the same time, if you was to ask yourself,

Okay, let's say these weren't subscriptions and I chose to have them anyway and I pay it up front. It's the same thing, right? And what I mean by that is, let's assume for a second that the cost, you know, the pricing is relative, right? So it's $120 up front or $10 per month for a year. Ultimately, at the end of the day, it's the same thing.

But the perception of paying overtime for the year and seeing that hit your credit card every month gives you this false economy in your head that somehow you're paying more.

Because you're continuing to pay over time. But in reality, it's the same thing, right? And on top of that too, right? You know, people happily pay the rising cost every month. I wouldn't say happily. For streaming service X, Y, and Z. And sure, yeah, yeah. And sure, they grumble about it, but they keep doing it, right? And that's what I was saying earlier about, you know, the...

consumers getting used to the fact that, hey, software is basically going that way and it's the same thing. It's only because you're having to adapt to thinking about it that way that somehow you think it's an evil thing. Now, let me preface that by saying I can think of plenty subscription-based apps that have no business being subscription-based whatsoever and very much feel like a money grab. I'm not going to name any of them.

But it doesn't take but five minutes to look in the store and see that kind of thing when it's clear that it's not with good intention. All right. But I also want to address very quickly one other thing before the chat room scrolls by too quickly. And let me let me find it here. So, yeah, in the chat room, someone mentions about at least giving them the ability to read only data or not.

a lifetime license. Now, I like a lifetime license, and I've done that on a couple of things. Some of them I still use, some of them I don't, right? But I did it because I thought I might want to use this over time, and inevitably the price will go up and so on. But here's my concern about a lifetime subscription or lifetime payment, whatever you want to call it. That also has a risk,

Because six months from now, if you stop supporting that app, someone's going to say, look, I got a lifetime license here. You need to keep supporting this because I paid for a lifetime license. Right?

Any thoughts? Yeah, yeah. No, no, no, no. I do, I do. Say no if you want. My thoughts on that are Lifetime Unlocked isn't going to have that... It's going to have the same problem there as an in-app purchase, a one-time payment thing, whether it's paid up front or an in-app purchase. It is... I do see that there's not much difference between those. Like, you know, a Lifetime Unlocked, it's just the subscription thing. The other thing that this chatter says is...

that cost is going to be three to five times your annual subscription cost, which is going to be a bit of a sticker shock. And I've had people balk at the price of Bark as it is. It's $5 a year. And they've said that like, oh, you know, I wouldn't pay more than $3 for this ever. Is it going to just invite more people

arguments, more negative comments to say, okay, well, you can pay $5 a year or you can pay $20 once and they're going to go

Oh my God, it's $20. You're committing highway robbery for charging $20 for this app. It does feel like a no-win situation for that. To your earlier point that you mentioned of, you know, what do you do with this subscription as well is...

what do you do when the subscription is done and having a read-only thing. And that is also, again, something that I've tried to communicate with my app is, yeah, you know, you, the subscription is only to add things to this app. Once you have them in the app,

You get to keep them. In your subscription, you're done. You get to have every other remaining feature of this app as, you know, for the rest of the app running. But yeah, it's very hard to communicate that. And a lot of people see subscription and they just shut down. Like there's no more explaining anything to that. And that's another problem of like you also have to get across here's –

what the value is. And here is how this ends up when you don't pay this prescription. Like what, what, what is the end game of that subscription? And yeah, getting all of that across in a quick and easy way that people are going to read in just a couple of seconds is,

It's difficult to have that kind of pitch. You know, there is another business model here that I just I forgot about as you was as you was talking there. It reminded me of it, which is this idea of the subscription. You get the new features and then when you stop paying the subscription, you're cut off at that point and you get everything up to $10.

That point, which to me as a developer sounds incredibly hard to maintain. I don't even can't even begin to imagine how you code or something like that. Right. And, but, but I, I appreciate that people are trying it. I've seen it work with, with some apps. It is one of those things works way better outside of the app store because for example, sketch, it's a big vector editing app and,

They have that sort of model, but the way that their model works is you get version updates until you stop paying the subscription. And at that point, you just no longer get updates. That's not something that we can do in the App Store. We can't really say, oh, you're just never getting another software update again.

I've seen apps do it in the app store. There's agenda. It's a note taking app that they do something similar where there's like, okay, here is your new feature and you don't get that feature. Yep. And I think it would be difficult to build that. But I think that if that is what it takes to make this a, a,

sustainable business practice, I think that's worth it. However, I think it gets back to the point that we made a while ago, which is that you then are really trying to push these new features as this is why you need to update. And you get back into the situation of you need to have the big update. And so am I holding back features so that it's something that people have to continue to subscribe to get the update to? Yeah.

It gets right back into that same problem of what is providing an ongoing amount of value to the user and being able to balance that with providing value to the developer.

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Whether you are charging for an update or charging for a subscription, you definitely have taken on a commitment that you have to honor to provide more value over time. And by that, I don't mean like, oh, I added a new color theme, right? Something like that should be an in-app purchase in my opinion. I'm talking about honest-to-goodness products.

incremental features now you know on that subject because you you mentioned it i do have a problem if developers choose to hold back features for some future paid update you know or you know subscription to get them into that now i get it that's not clear-cut

And, and certainly something almost impossible to prove unless the developer says, oh yeah, I'm holding this back for, you know, then I start to take issue with it a bit, but that's really in my mind, because I'm now taking issue with the ethical stance of the developer or studio in question, as opposed to their paying model. Right. Right.

Um, because if you're going to do that, that just, but, but I, I want to step in because I feel like that is kind of the point of that model is you are saying that this is what you're paying for. And if you're not holding it back, then you have to be, you're basically releasing an update and you're saying, please give me more money because I'm not, because I provided you something last week. Like give me money now because I gave you something already. And it's like,

But you already gave me that. Why should I give you the money? So in a case where you're paying for software updates, like you have to have something in that software update to encourage people to pay for that software update. I don't see that as an ethical problem per se as just what that business model is.

encourages you know if if you are not holding back features then people are going to go well what am i paying you for well so i'm going to give you okay this is a bad example in many ways but in some ways the perfect example of what i'm talking about i forget someone chat room keep me honest was it bmw heated seats charged an extra fee yes

That's what I mean by intentionally holding something back to grab a few extra dollars. And by the way, at this point, I'm never going to get sponsored by them. I think that's a case where they're charging for something that they already produced. That's not what I mean by the encouragement of the system. This is...

I'm producing something in the future and I'm not releasing it until you have that purchase. That's what I meant was that. Oh, no. I get what you mean. Yeah. It's like this thing does not exist yet. I want it to exist one day, but it doesn't exist yet.

To me, intentionally holding something back is something that is ready to ship, right? Is done. And you say, oh, this is so good. I'm going to hold it back for the next major release. And I guess it's a gray area. It is a gray area. I get that. What we knew going into this discussion, this was going to be a tough one because we knew we'd come out at the other end with, there is no right answer here. It's simple as that, right? And it's all opinions.

But I think like with so many episodes I've done in the past, by putting opinions out there, it brings it up for discussion. And I think that that's what it needs, right? In our developer communities, we've got to discuss these things, right? Because these inevitably are something, especially folks new to the industry, it always inevitably is going to come up, right? It is very much like the SwiftUI or UIKit, right?

Well, you know, because inevitably the question of how do you do your pricing? And the answer is you do what feels right to you or you do it and it's wrong and you do it again. And there is no correct answer, I think. There is just try. And if it works for you and you're comfortable with it, but more importantly, your customers are comfortable with it.

then go with that. And if somewhere along the way, the two sides are not meeting, try something different, right? There's nothing that says the one you go with has to be the one forever. But I do want to address something that came up in the chat because the chat has been suggesting different business models that, hey, maybe Apple could do this or if they did that. I think that would actually make the situation worse, right?

Because I think that very much like my viewpoint on a lot of the Apple hardware lines, right? The more options you give, the more complicated it gets, the more pissed off your purchaser gets because I didn't want to have to make all these decisions. I just wanted to get this thing, right? So I don't think more business models is the answer. I think having a simple whatever two or three approaches is

And those in the app store is what works, maybe, as opposed to 500 variations. I think we will see some of this already where there are so many hard to understand pricing structures on app. And I've seen ones where they list the same description for each level. And I can't tell what the difference is between the one that cost me $1.99, $5.99 and $10.99 because they all say the same thing. Yeah.

It's a very definite line between I want to try and cater for as many users as I can with many different options, but the more options I give them and the more confused they get, the less likely, you know, they're more likely to just walk away from all of them

Because they start to feel like, wait, you're trying to capture me in some way. You're trying to trick me, which is not the intention at all. If you confuse the consumer, you start to lose them and you're going to lose them quickly. Whereas if you can communicate with them, as someone said in the chat room, in a way that they understand and you give them simple options.

Yeah, and I think that this paradox of choice is the question there. It's like, yeah, you have the confusing thing, but you also have the ability to get exactly what you want. Well, I mean, yeah, that is the discussion in there. And like with the pricing discussion overall, is there a right answer? Like I say, for me, it comes down on you as the developer, figure out what you would like it to be, try it,

See if the customer agrees with you. If you're all happy, fantastic. If you're not, try and figure out what it is the customer actually wants. Now, that said, though, like in your case, to go full circle back to the beginning here, you know, we also have to recognize the percentage of possible purchases, users, customers,

that you have to ignore because whatever you do will always be wrong for them. For example, there'll always be that one that says it should absolutely everything should be free. You know, you just have to dismiss that group as good luck. Go find yourself another planet because it ain't going to be this one. And so you have to go in and saying to yourself as a developer, distributor of software, there's going to be a certain percentage I'm never going to win over. And I have to accept that.

Otherwise, I'm chasing a moving target and I'm still never going to win. I was going to say, I want to throw a question to the chat room, the folks in the chat room who have paid apps. What is... And you don't have to answer this question, but I think it will offer a lot of insight. What, when you released an app, what...

Did the payment model you wanted to use end up being the one that was successful or you had to go a different route? All right, so we've got one that says it was successful first time. Now that it failed and succeeded with payment strategies, all right. Okay, and it came down to not understanding the customer. All right.

which is something you can learn over time. All right, Peter. So I think we've been going for quite a while. So we might want to go ahead and wrap this up here. But I feel like we opened this up saying that this is going to be a podcast about pricing. And while we've spent the entire time talking about pricing models, we haven't really gotten into talking about pricing value. What is it that you're actually going to charge?

If you've chosen to do a subscription, if you've chosen to do a paid upfront, if you've chosen to do an in-app purchase, what do you actually end up charging? And I think that that's also been a lot of what's been discussed lately in public. And so I think maybe we need to come back next week and have this discussion some more. All right. So we hope that this episode has given you some food for thought as to the complexity involved.

with pricing and how you should think about this and take into account some of these models as you, the developer, the distributor, whatever role you may play in that process.

And I agree with you, Jeff. Let's bring them back next week where we can dive in and talk numbers. Please understand, folks, again, these are our opinions. You should all charge what you feel is appropriate. And if it works for you, great. If it doesn't work, if we don't tell you the number, you can't blame us. All right.

So, Jeff, tell folks where they can find you between now and next week when we come back with more worldly advice. As always, you can find everything that I do at Cocotype.com. I'm Cocotype on all the socials, YouTube, Twitch, wherever you find me these days. All right. And you can find me, of course, at CompileSweep.com with the podcast or all my personal stuff at PeterWoodham.com. Folks, come back next week for part two. See you later.