I’ll be very constructive:
(1)
My big concern is that subscription model will pressure you into constantly adding features to justify the subscription price. That will inevitably lead to bloatware, feature creep, reduce performance, make UX worse, introduce bugs…
Clear is amazing because it’s simple, beautiful and does one thing amazingly well.
If you keep adding features to Photoshop or Word year after year, it probably won’t matter much. They have thousands of features and a few more don’t change things noticeably.
But simplicity is EVERYTHING for Clear!
I’m not sure there is a good way around this. Most services either have material costs that justify subscription (e.g. Dropbox), keep adding features and innovating, for better or for worse (think Adobe) or have huge expenses just for operating (like journalists).
(2)
Some say the price is okay, for some it’s too much. In some countries that is a reasonable amount of money, in some countries (like mine) it’s way too much as our standard is significantly lower.
But even without taking any of that into account, this subscription needs to be looked at in context – and the context is that it’s yet ANOTHER subscription thrown on the pile of existing ones.
Many of us are noticing that more and more of our paychecks is going to various subscriptions and the trend is worrying. Hearing that something is switching to subscription without a very good and clear reason makes me instantly feel repulsion and rebellion. I cancel if I can… And I’m not the only one.
At the very least, make the subscription price below the psychological limit of 1$, e.g. 0.99$/mo.
I know it may seem little, but that’s the point!
Most of users wouldn’t bat an eyelid on that price, but it still makes sense for you economically because you develop the software once and sell it many times.
You want the maximum number of users going for the subscription. It won’t incur any additional cost to you (as far as I can tell), so maximizing sales makes sense. The relationship is not linear and would take some experimentation to determine, but it’s very much possible that reducing the price 3x would increase number of users more than 3x, thereby making more profit for you.
(3)
Most of people here are fans of Clear and we fully recognize and support the need for you to be compensated for your hard work.
I’m also a huge fan. I switched from Android just to be able to use Clear years ago! I don’t know why, but I’m just inexplicably drawn to it.
I want to support you, and I wanted to support you even in the Clear 1.x era.
But it may be possible that it just isn’t realistic that you can fully support yourself (or the team) for years with money earned from Clear without destroying the app experience (and therefore the app) by the pressure to constantly develop it. The problem is that this is difficult to know in advance.
I think this is crucial to recognize because bloating the app would destroy it and stop you from doing what you wanted – living off it! We would all be worse off in the end.
(4)
Is there a way around it? Possibly.
Option 1: Clear could (should) cost money to buy. One user wrote “when I need a hammer, I want to buy a hammer”. This would be buying the hammer.
I would happily pay 20, or 30, or even 50$ one time to use it.
This model wouldn’t force you to keep adding features. You could develop it to a reasonable point and then just fix when necessary, like iOS changes.
When big changes are needed in the farther future, you could publish 3.x and charge again. Apps like Halide use this approach.
Option 2: In-app purchases which unlock feature packs, sync, themes, whatever. Many apps use this model.
Option 3: Allow us to easily donate any amount to you, the developer, at any time. I value some apps and services so much that I regularly donate to them, amounts which I can afford. Other people donate different amounts.
When people aren’t pressured into it, they can be surprisingly generous. In my case, it’s services like Signal and software like FreeFileSync.
These options aren’t mutually exclusive and could all be used together.
It’s impossible to predict how much you’d earn. It’s possible you’d need another project to earn enough. But I think it’s preferable than the huge risk of going to the subscription model which would lead to bloatware and/or be hard to justify to the users.
(5)
As a final thought, no matter which path you end up choosing, even if it’s subscription – please don’t keep adding features (or AI, god forbid!) just for the sake of appearances!
A lot of good software has been made less useful or even destroyed by feature creep. (Think Evernote.)
We love you and hope that Clear will have a long and successful future! 
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