#EDITED TO ADD CONTEXT:
The developer has responded quite a bit in the comments here, and has made adjustments to the free tier feature set based on my and others’ feedback. See more info in this update thread: https://lemm.ee/post/12353243
If you’re reading this post after update 1.0.7 I suggest you skim these comments and that update thread before forming an opinion.
#ORIGINAL POST:
I like this app a lot, I can tell there’s been a ton of love and hard work put into it.
The strategy for monetization leaves a bit of a sour taste though.
For one, nobody wants another subscription - and $30 lifetime for a brand new app is a huge asking price compared to, say, Apollo, which was $5 or so (with a subscription tier for things that actually made sense to buy due to recurring cost).
But this app is paywalling basic stuff like a comment jump button (everyone else has this for free), content filtering, video scrubbing, and various other things that have no recurring cost to the developer.
My recommendation, take it or leave it, if you want my money make it a reasonable one time purchase for things that don’t cost you money (under $10 imo, $5 would’ve been an easy sell).
If you want to justify a subscription model you are gonna need to build features that justify it - push notifications, stuff like that.
From our perspective, dropping $30 on an app is risky because of the number of apps that have come and gone (or stagnated) since the Rexxit of 2023 just four months ago. Memmy, Lemmur, Limbo, and others (even Voyager to an extent) have either stagnated or been discontinued since then. I’ve joined numerous TestFlights during the Rexxit and am still bouncing between apps. I still don’t know which one is going to be the best.
What’s also confusing is the choice to put basic features like the jump button and blocking behind the subscription but theming and icons are free.
Yeah for sure, these things cut both ways. While subscription might suck, they do have less risk on both sides. If a dev stopped working on their app, people would just stop paying for it - no need to pay everything up front.
As for themes and app icons, they are also part of the pro upgrade. Blocking is free, but custom filters are not. My impression was that most people were happy with this setup since I didn’t get much feedback about it during the ~1 month of testing the update went through. I figured multiple account support and things like that was more important for most people.
The risk is that you’ll be out $30. It’s not a huge risk.