I really dont care if its 50$ but if you are seriously gatekeeping lockscreen AND home screen notifications behind a subscription ONLY model i will have no choice but to do everything in my power to NOT recommend anyone use this.
What a toxic strategy with no alternates.
Again i am happy to pay and support devs but these are NOT features worthy of slave subscription BS.
Lol relax. It’s an indie app with a small dev team. They’ve mentioned in the past it’s not a viable strategy for them at this moment in time.
You still have a choice to use the free app without the subscription or not use it at all.
while i can respect the small business thing as i work for a small company myself, 90% of the population is sick of subscriptions. why not let money talk, put some crazy number as a buy it outright thing as an ADDITIONAL option. plenty of companies do this most famously pixelogic with the zbrush project. if the company is worried they wont rrake in enough to continue to exist, how would the extra 100$ or whatever they price it as be a loss vs the 0 dollars ill pay for a subscription as a legacy user who already has allegiance to the product. crippling your product to force subscription for basic usability is the way that lost of companies have died before this. figured i’d share my perspective, and i dont seem to be alone on it. additional revenue streams instead of one really stupid grifty one. you are absolutely correct that i am being dramatic, but to be honest, people need to get this in their heads that subscriptions as the only option alienate a large part of their potential market. and small businesses need every revenue stream they can get. so while they say its not practical its also shooting yourselves in the foot.
while i can respect the small business thing as i work for a small company myself
It’s good that you respect the necessity of earning a living from years of work from a team of several people.
Now try to understand the reasoning behind the subscription model (which you can find in other threads — see directly below) and then respect the decision made even though it’s not the one you would prefer.
It’s a small indie team, that dedicates their time doing this. They have been totally open with us, and showed the odds and the long-term profitability, if they choose not to go subscription based.
Although some prefer have a lifetime subscriptions, sometime it doesn’t make sense.
Remember at the end, they need to have a stable life, with family, just like you and me.
Resect that they have a community that wants to be surprized next year with a 25$ recurring charge.
I as well as many others are hard out on the prospect.
Ive only made the suggestion for ADDITIONAL revenue streams from people they othewise would make 0$ from.
Not really interested in hearing from other customers who are eager to spend recurring fees.
More people have to speak out about subscriptions because its a really crap way to do business and as much as i do sympathize with them as people sympathy is not a business model, and what i am describing seems to be lost on everyone here who is offended that i am speaking out. As if its a personal attack.
People and not just me REALLY hate when subscriptions are the only model. And people like me who have a family to support etc etc just like therest of the whole world will never support subscriptions but would support alternatives.
Not even asking to remove their core idea of what they think will work.
Offer things in addition.
Other companies do this with success.
Everyone here ignores this including the dev team. Well- whoever controls the business plan actually.
Its not modern to do subscription only, its easy and others are doing it. But lots of us are DONE.
Not having other options which can be expensive is taking 100$ from this indie teams family. Maybe more! From one user.
Additionally an inflated one time price makes the really stupid subscription price seem way more attractive to those that may subscribe. Its psychology.
FWIW, I only use the very basic features. The rest, for me, is non-essential window dressing. I paid for the subscription this first year simply to reward the developers who have given me a simple, clear, yes, app for managing grocery and a few other lists. I’ll cancel after the first year and continue to use the free version. Thus I’ll have paid a one time fee that rewards the developers without draining my bank account year after year. Thanks, guys.
There are tools in this online world that make our jobs easier and more productive. The subscription price supports the development and longevity of the tool and supports the developers who have forged an elegant, simple and effective program that makes my job easier. I recently started using the record option to make lists and I can just speak to the phone, amazing.
In the big, the cost is $3.30/month. I have spent way more on coffee, something I also need to do my job. I use Wikipedia for research and pledge $30/year for that tool which has a wealth of knowledge. You may have some tools you would want to pay for as well.
So while subscriptions do require us to pay periodically for something and when money is tight, we may not want to carry the knowing that we will need to pay again, if the tool is worth the expense, we gladly pay for it.
If you want a pay to own model, perhaps pay for the years you plan to use it. I would gladly pay for 10 years in advance when I find myself with an extra $250 in my pocket. Or simply set the money aside where the subscriptions you use are billed from. Clear and simple.
Sorry to be late to this discussion.
It’s honestly a really difficult market. I myself long for the times earlier in the App Store when there was a healthier culture of paying for good apps upfront, and a general interest in trying out new and interesting apps from the mainstream that made simpler models like that feasible.
The reality is that the $1 or $2 that most Clear customers spent over 10 years ago (plus many who got it free via Starbucks promotion) could only possibly sustain if Clear was some kind of a viral app that kept growing forever like a weed, but this is not the case, and is probably not the kind of Clear we all want. Part of this was naivety at the time, we had no idea where the market would head, or that there would be tens of thousands of you using and relying on Clear over a decade later. I’m very grateful for the latter, but it’s also a big responsibility if we’d like to try to keep it going for the next decade or further.
We really tried to avoid subscription with Clear’s relaunch with the more experimental and opt-in cosmetics shop, but unfortunately it turned out to be a little too experimental and I think niche in convincing enough of the app’s base (those who get real ongoing value from Clear day to day especially).
I also consulted with many indie friends in the space about other options like lifetime unlocks and paid upgrades, and in the end, their advice was to give subscription a shot as the most straightforward and working solution in today’s market. I’m not exaggerating when I say of the indies who are still in surviving or thriving in the App Store at all, probably over 90% of them are still standing because they did embrace a subscription model sooner than later.
We will be trying to iterate and make the subscription more worthwhile over time. I do think there is a case to be made for some current features to perhaps eventually shuffle out of the Pro offerings in favor of other features that are more valuable and make more sense for power users.
There was some real pressure to make the starting list more than a few features, and also pressure to start somewhere, sooner than later. It might’ve gone a little too far, and we will be evaluating this as we go. (For example, our original plan was to introduce the subscription once we had cloud and syncing working, but this project has been a bit of a monster for us as a small team, and we were starting to go a little crazy working so long without being able to address the somewhat failed experiment of a business model the app was built with before.)
Obviously with your username it’s probably a stretch that we will eventually be able to convince you to happily become a member but… I hope this can convince you at least a little that we are trying to make the best of a not so great situation or ecosystem, and will do our best to steer our subscription towards a place of some integrity.
And of course, even if we ‘disagree’ on subscriptions I do appreciate your feedback and the others in this thread who have weighed in so far. You clearly do value Clear (to the tune of $100 fee you would be willing to pay one-time) and I do appreciate that and wish we could meet you and enough other Clear users there, but it is… very challenging in this world where the vast majority are used to subsidized ‘free’ experiences from big companies and such, and I wish it weren’t so.
I really do appreciate the response here. And i dont want to diminish the effort you put in. I just would like to know specifically why cannot a large fee and a subscription fit side by side in your eyes. Yes obviously a 1-2$ fee of yesteryears past is impractical just as acquiring investment is not often the best for an indie team, im personally against that 9/10 times.
There are examples of software companies offering both. Which users like myself are willing to pay for. It may be difficult to figure out the raw number, but maybe even just having a buy option for everything except maintainable services like cloud backup and sync is viable.
It just seems like its subscription model is pushed on users as the only way to do it because everyone else is. Which to me just wont work its not this one subscription its the aggregate of everything in society being a subscription. I dont like this world, where all indie devs are forced into.
To your last point the only way to make change is to provide some path out to at least test and see if there is another way. I still think theres room for clear on my devices in the future if a bridge is made.
My best suggestion is to have an inflated price buy offline only features on a devices which only require occasional major os level updates to function, and you can subsidize os level updates to the core app because you side by side are still developing actively for the bulk of exepected as you maintain for subscription users.
I know to people who already subscribe or believe thats an acceptable proposition i come off as a petulent child demanding special attention for my principles but im just trying to open minds to an additional revenue stream that otherwise wont exist.
Will try to be concise here, I do have a tendency to ramble on a bit.
The fear I have with offering a lifetime fee would be the following scenario: some percentage of Clear customers pay it, producing a large immediate revenue spike, but this runs out of steam over time and years later, we are in a place where we’re not able to continue the ongoing development and maintenance/support costs to keep Clear for you all longterm, understanding that the past 10+ years has proven many of you are hoping it has that extreme (for a mobile app) longevity.
And then we would be stuck in a place where we have ‘lifetime customers’ but we are unable to fulfill what they bought and expect.
I am not going to 100% rule out that we could experiment with this in the future, and it could actually be good for our indie sustaining business, it’s a possibility. But this made me pull back and start with the single subscription option for our pivot. I am really averse to writing checks that may not be able to back and the current options kind of limits the absolute worst case scenario where we have to throw the towel, to this year-long option and timespan of rolling commitment.
Edit: will just add one more note – I imagine most apps that offer the lifetime option have a solid foundation of subscription already going, and feel more confident about that longer term outlook. We are honestly still trying to establish that foothold, and would probably feel more ready to experiment with it once we hopefully, eventually cross that threshold.
Thank You again for the meaningful response.
I yearn for a day with a highly priced mid tier offline only non sync clear and will always keep you in earshot for if the subscription base gets large enough to have more options. i just cant support subscriptions only. Hopefully my lack of contribution wont hurt your bottom line , its just a personal decision.
I do understand the runway isnt there, but my advice is to use this time to do a proper critical analysis over the coming years as you hopefully continue to survive. See how many users stay after a year. Two , more. And if you find those numbers diminishing relying on new subscriptions to fit the bill, maybe theres a life-raft for us non sub users that can be reconsidered.
Until then good luck to all!
Thank you too. I appreciate the follow through on this discussion.
We will try to navigate the near/medium term future with clear eyes as much as we can and feedback and discussions like this helps remind us to continue evaluating things as we go.