#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.
How can you justify putting an safety feature like content filtering behind a paywall. Content filtering and blocking is an important part of the fediverse.
However, non basic features like theming and app icons are free?
Some safety features I’ve already implemented are measures against NSFW content by default and support for tools like reporting and blocking. When I added filtering I didn’t really consider the safety aspect of it until someone pointed it out a couple days ago. I thought of it more as a way for power users to tweak their feed, Apollo for instance also had filtering as a paid feature. Themes and app icons are part of the pro upgrade.
So will you take a second look at what is behind a paywall? Lemmy is a different place and people are used to being able to mute and filter. Because frankly, Lemmy doesn’t have the moderation and reporting tools that Reddit did.
Re: how much the subscription and lifetime are. Put very simply Lemmy and Avelon are not in a condition where they are worth that much.
I’m open to suggestions. What would be a better free/pro setup in your opinion?
I think I’ve already suggested that. You put extra themes and app icons or anything that requires ongoing support eg notifications, translations, enhancements (eg some apps allow comments to be unrolled) behind a paywall or subscription.
Any content moderation or safety tools are in the base.