• seiryth@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    2 years ago

    Honestly I think we all need to relax. Lemmy is a niche app that’s rising, and it’s one guy. I paid for ultra since it was cheaper than the pay for no ads option.

    $29AUD or whatever it was per year for ultra is literally paying a dev once a year for their work, and to keep it updated and build features.

    The outrage is really ridiculous considering how quickly the app was built, how decent the experience is and the realities of the real world right now.

    Pay the cash, you’re not going to remember it by the time you’re paid next. For the job you did, producing something. Like this guy did.

  • BA834024112@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    2 years ago

    I would pay extra to not have to hear people complain about a choice no one is forcing them to make

    Do what works for you, and let other people do the same

    • Deiv@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      It would be a lot better if it was a true donation, since Lemmy itself doesn’t have ads. The developer also has very minimal fees to cover, so it makes no sense to add ads ontop of a free service and have a steep price to remove it (yes, 20+ dollars for an app toconly remove ads is steep, look around at other app prices). This was not the case for Sync on Reddit, it was a lot cheaper.

      It just seems unnecessarily greedy by the developer

      • Antik 👾@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        2 years ago

        I would like to point out that @ljdawson@lemmy.world has been very forward to the LW team and he has our full support. And while Lemmy itself doesn’t have ads and Lemmy World is running on donations and volunteers that doesn’t mean that every developer should be forced to do charity-work. This is his full-time job and he provided plenty of choices for those who don’t want to pay or who don’t want to pay the full price for Ultra. If that’s not enough, nobody is forcing you to do anything.

      • sheogorath@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        2 years ago

        Hey, man’s gotta eat. And there’s many roads to Rome if you really don’t want to pay the developer to remove the ads.

          • electriccars@startrek.websiteEnglish
            0·
            2 years ago

            Y’all are ridiculous. $20 is less than the median hourly wage in the US for both men and women, even worst case scenario you’re earning $7.25 an hour so almost 3 hours of work to pay for ad free Sync. I challenge you to make a better app in those same 3 hours so you don’t need to pay for it.

            Not only are you paying for the app as it is now, you’re paying for years if not DECADES of updates too. All done by ONE GUY.

            If you don’t like it, don’t use it. Stop character shaming the dev for trying to make an honest living creating an app a LOT of people (including myself) wanted.

      • andreas_retsis@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
        1·
        2 years ago

        people seem to forget that the dev wants to work FULL TIME on the app, you are paying for having great updates quick bug fixes etc.

        • Deiv@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          2 years ago

          Yea I don’t anymore, switched to Voyager since it’s on google play store now

          • Hadriscus@lemm.eeEnglish
            0·
            2 years ago

            how does it compare ? I’ve been using Sync for years but I’ll gladly ditch any service that’s doesn’t align with my values provided I have an alternative

            • Deiv@lemmy.worldEnglish
              0·
              2 years ago

              So far it’s pretty great, it has a few minor bugs in it and some features that could be added but looks like it has an active developer so not really an issue

      • JebKush@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        0·
        2 years ago

        It’s more expensive than the upgrade was for Reddit, but it’s a smaller market and you pay more for a niche product. I don’t have a problem with him getting paid for a good product.

    • Kraivo@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      It doesn’t feels like a choice in the modern world. It is either awful experience with shit ads or normal experience with paying. Is it that hard to understand people?

    • wandering_nomad@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      2 years ago

      To be fair, you paid once 7 years ago but the developer didn’t stop working on the app and didn’t make you pay for the upgrades they implemented if anything they have discovered the original price was too low for long term use.

      I paid a similar price to that over a decade ago and don’t consider this price to be totally unreasonable given they are full time on this now and will need to keep updating the app as lemmy gets updated.

      We also have so many alternatives that it isn’t an issue if people want to use something that is free. We are in the wild west of lemmy apps due to the Reddit fallout, things will quieten down eventually and a preferred few apps will come out on top.

      • kenblu24@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        2 years ago

        I paid the $30 for Lifetime Ultra after 7 years of using Dev/Pro just to support. But this new pricing is simply insane. I get the feeling LJ quit his day job to rush Sync for Lemmy out or something, because historically he never seemed to do this kind of thing.

      • Phuntis@lemmy.fmhy.netEnglish
        1·
        2 years ago

        that’s us inflation maybe but LJ lives in the UK and I can tell you it’s a lot worse than that for us the bank of england says a certain inflation rate that isn’t that high like 30% over the last year but that’s a lie it feels like the cost of everything including food has at least tripled over the last year or two maybe more sync at its end was a fiver and hadn’t gone up in a few years so if you triple that you get 15 which yeah is below 20 by a quarter but S4R lasted 10 years before it died only cause of reddit I don’t think that’s a bad price to pay for a lifetime of adless sync sync is ljs job so it’s only natural the price is gonna go up with food going up this much 20 quid for 10 years or more of updates for an app I use constantly isn’t a bad deal

          • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.deEnglish
            0·
            2 years ago

            I think they are using shitty speech-to-text software that does not do punctuation.

            FTFY:

            That’s US inflation, maybe – but LJ lives in the UK and I can tell you: it’s a lot worse than that for us. The Bank of England says a certain inflation rate that isn’t that high (like 30% over the last year) but that’s a lie. It feels like the cost of everything, including food, has at least tripled over the last year or two, maybe more. Sync at its end was £5 and hadn’t gone up in a few years, so if you triple that you get £15 – which, yeah, is below £20 by a quarter – but Sync4Reddit lasted 10 years before it died only ‘cause of Reddit. I don’t think that’s a bad price to pay for a lifetime of adless Sync. Sync is LJ’s job so it’s only natural the price is gonna go up with food going up this much. £20 for 10 years or more of updates for an app I use constantly isn’t a bad deal.

          • redcalcium@lemmy.instituteEnglish
            0·
            2 years ago

            The real reason is the development cost stay the same, but the pool of potential buyers is 100x less for Sync for Lemmy compared to Sync for Reddit. With only about 100,000 monthly active users on Lemmy, even if 1% of them bought the app at $20, the dev would only net about $14,000 (after 30% play store fee). The dev himself even said he’ll lower the price as the number of active Lemmy users grow.

            • UndoLips@lemmy.worldEnglish
              0·
              2 years ago

              I think a lot of the outrage is the people that used to use the app on Reddit but have been priced out by this strategy. It’s very disappointing and, if my time on Reddit has tought me anything, people are very quick to vent the frustrations by posting.

              The healthy thing is to just find an option in the right price bracket, that’s how I found Voyager.

    • Voyajer@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      And that included a few features that are now ultra only like tagging users. (and maybe more, that was the one I used and noticed is missing from pro now)

    • stealth_cookies@lemmy.caEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      And this is exactly why I bought the app without thinking. I paid $1.99 for Reddit Sync in 2012 and have been using it since then. I consider buying the new app payment for all the value I’ve gotten out of the app and the developers work over the past 11 years.

  • redcalcium@lemmy.instituteEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    The price is very reasonable if you realize the economy of scale is not there yet. There is only about 100,000 monthly active Lemmy users right now. Even if 1% of those users bought the app at $20, the dev only net ~$14,000 for working on his app full time. The calculus will surely different if Lemmy have 10x more active users which will allow the dev to lower the app pricing while still sustaining himself.

    • 99nights@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      So you’re basically saying wait until the lemmy user base grows and see if the dev drops the price. That would lead to a lot of the OG buyers getting angry.

      • redcalcium@lemmy.instituteEnglish
        0·
        2 years ago

        They shouldn’t get mad if what they say about gladly supporting the sync developer is true. I meant, isn’t it weird to get mad when something you bought actually got lower price a few years in the future? Like buying a game for $60 at launch and then some patient gamers bought them for $10 a few years later. Why angry at that?

      • Pika@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        2 years ago

        I feel like ads in lemmy would be a hard to implement thing, it would need to be done on the instance level… and people would just jump ship to another instance that didn’t have ads. it’s possible that it could post ads as posts that get federated but it sounds like an amazing way to potentially get your instance defederated in concern that it’s going to devolve to constant spam.

        • CaptPretentious@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          2 years ago

          I mean, right now, yeah. But these instances use resources, which means they’re not free. Someone needs to cover the bill. I remember when YouTubers were put on blast when they started running ads and now it’s normal.

          Or there might be instances that are specific paid and that’s known. Like an OnlyLemmy or something.

  • SanguinePar@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    Just to check, when it was 15, was that possibly the annual cost for Ultra? Whereas this is the lifetime cost for removing ads only.

    • cerothem@lemmy.caEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      So I just took a look because I paid 19cad for the remove ads option which was distinct from “sync ultra”.

      I think part of what’s confusing is there was never previously a sync ultra lifetime price it was always just monthly or yearly. And sync pro was the lifetime price which was also out before ultra was a thing.

      If you open the menu, above sync ultra is there a “remove ads” button with a more reasonable (lifetime/onetime) price?

  • OtakuAltair@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    The price seems to vary quite a bit depending on the location. Probably something on google play’s end?

    • rookeh@geddit.socialEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      It should be in the profile menu on the top left. Perhaps LJ is rolling it out selectively.

      I bought it last night and it was half the price in OP’s screenshot. Either it has gone up, or again perhaps there is some A/B testing going on at different price points.

  • TempleSquare@lemmy.mlEnglish
    11·
    2 years ago

    As much fun as Sync is (and while I appreciate creators want to get paid)…

    We’re talking like $15-30(!). That’s steep for a phone app. All this money stuff is pushing me back to Connect and Jerboa.

    I wish Sync well. But I think I’m done with it already.

    • delirium@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      I think that asking to be paid for your work is totally fine (albeit I myself made my lemmy app completely free and opensource, simply because its just my hobby project), but its a rather different story when you provide app for open source, nonprofit venture-free platform and start to inject ads and trackers into it. Its goes against the entire idea of free decentralised platform and makes it closer to profit-focused app like reddit/threads/etc imo

    • Haggunenons@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      Voyager is fantastic IMO. wefwef.app , it is a web app, it will even put am icon for itself on your phone so it feels just like a regular app. Works really great, and is really fast.

    • GeekFTW@kbin.social
      11·
      2 years ago

      Ditto. I used to be a big Sync fan and used it for years as my primary mobile client for Reddit until 8-10 months or so ago when the dev did a ‘fuck off and be unable to be contacted while something in the app breaks’ break, which led to a bunch of ads appearing despite paying for no ads (and according to people on the subreddit at the time it was not a one time occurrence lol). I switched that day to Boost and didn’t go back, but I was looking forward to trying out Sync for Lemmy when it released.

      All the privacy and pricing concerns the last 24 hours have brought forth does not make me wanna even touch the app lol. I’m not paying that much money to fucking browse a glorified forum on my phone (specially when there’s many other options).

    • EssentialCoffeeEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      Given how much time I spent on Sync with Reddit, I imagine the ultra one-time price ($99) will end up being a dollar per hour in a few months and just go down from there.

      A dollar per hour for entertainment is generally a good deal to me.

      • Klystron@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        0·
        2 years ago

        While liftoff was the only third party I liked, I still think it was pretty unimpressive. It ran ok and that’s about it. Features were lacking, aesthetics are bad, some glitches. For me the $20 or whatever it is for sync is worth it. I’ve used reddit since 2012 and browsed exclusively on my phone, swapping between relay and sync. If you average that cost out, even considering the $5 or whatever it was to get rid of ads on Reddit, it’s basically nothing. The usage tracking is pretty shitty though.

        EDIT: Ok I just saw the lifetime price for ultra, damn wtf lol. Again, averaging that cost over the ten years I’ve used the app means it’s still a good deal but fuck upfront that’s a lot lmao

      • haych@lemmy.oneEnglish
        0·
        2 years ago

        They are okay and did the job until Sync came out. But are no way near as polished as Sync, which has years of updates and development.

        • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.deEnglish
          0·
          2 years ago

          I’ll just wait, they are usable enough. If you want the Lemmy experience to improve, donate $5 or $20 for Lemmy (in-browser) UI development, which is still default for most devices and it very much sucks. (Part of it is lack of support for anything like cross-domain cookies in browser technology that would store what your home instance is so that you would be always redirected to browse from home but even without it there are problems.)

        • bluejay@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          0·
          2 years ago

          Yeah I’ve been using a lot of the available apps and while I had my favorites (Summit and Liftoff) there has always been little quirks that I’ve just been dealing with. The moment Sync hit my device it’s like I’m back to my reddit experience for the last decade. I’ll still keep an eye on the other apps, because I very much prefer and try to support open source developers. But I just can’t force a subpar experience on myself.

          The Summit dev has been extremely responsive and has added in a few features I requested on a quick turnaround. They also happen to be out of town on a work trip this week so the timing probably sucks for them. And as I’m typing this I’m remembering that ones not even open source 🤦‍♂️.

          • Plswrk@lemm.eeEnglish
            0·
            2 years ago

            It’s not open source, but it’s also not spyware or adware.

      • anonymous_bot@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        2 years ago

        Not the person you replied to but I don’t evaluate app prices in a vacuum. First I think of what paying actually gets me (e.g. no ads), then I consider how it compares to alternatives both free and paid. A paid app has to provide some value over a free app and an expensive app has to provide some value over cheaper apps. Furthermore if an app is priced such that I can buy 3-4 other apps while also being more expensive than any individual apps I’ve previously purchased then it gives me some pause.

    • Myro@lemm.eeEnglish
      01·
      2 years ago

      I agree. While $20 could still be seen as reasonable - even though making it one of the more expensive apps, thigh I’m willing to go for it if Sync continues development -, the asking price of $100 for the lifetime ultra is insane. I’m not aware of any other app that is this expensive. Of course, you could argue there’s subscription apps out there that don’t even have a lifetime model - e.g. Adobe, Microsoft Office -, But these provide considerably more value as well and are huge corporations.

      My feeling is - and I don’t have facts to prove it - that the developers of the large reddit apps (esp. Apollo) simply became used to the money making machine and want to squeeze as much as possible out of it.

      While in the end it is entirely up to them, as there’s open source and free alternatives out there, I’m not too fond of this behavior.

    • circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      01·
      2 years ago

      Yes.

      There are a lot of other apps for Lemmy. Some are not as polished as Sync – but some are. And none (that I know of, on Android) are ad supported. Most are open source and 100% free.

      This is a money grab. People were so excited for Sync that they don’t want to call it a money grab. But that’s what it is.

      • Dark Arc@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        2 years ago

        🙄 it’s a small dev, who got shut out of the previous customer base they’d built up, and now has to rebuild with fewer customers (and fewer potential customers at least short term).

        If your job lost 70% of its customers, I bet you’d be begging your boss to raise prices to avoid a 70% pay cut.

        It’s not a money grab. It drives me crazy how much stuff people say is a “money grab”, “theft”, “a scam”, “predatory”, etc. Asking for money isn’t malicious, neither is asking for more money than you personally think is reasonable/makes sense for your finances, and neither is offering a freemium ad supported app (which is better than nothing if you’re not willing to pay with money).

        Edit: and sorry if that sounds overly aggressive, but you definitely struck a nerve/peeve as of late. It just seems like everyone wants to be as dramatic as possible lately.

        • delirium@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          2 years ago

          If your job lost 70% of its customers, I bet you’d be begging your boss to raise prices to avoid a 70% pay cut.

          doing so will result in losing the remaining 30%

          • Dark Arc@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            2 years ago

            That’s a farce; it happens all the time, revenue stops increasing from growing the customer base, so the prices are raised on the existing customer base to cover costs and keep things operational. Why do you think Netflix still isn’t $8.99, and password sharing is no longer permitted?

            If you definitely know you can’t make enough money on 30% of 1,000,000 people, but you can make enough money charging 10% of 1,000,000 people a higher rate, you’re going to do that … because it’s your only option. There are diminishing returns to picking up new customers with lower prices.

        • TempleSquare@lemmy.mlEnglish
          0·
          2 years ago

          I see your point. And you don’t deserve to be down voted, as it’s reasonable.

          I do think he’s pricing it a bit steep for what the market can bear. Maybe not. I hope he gets as much as possible. I just know that I am priced out and will continue to use Connect.

          • Dark Arc@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            2 years ago

            I’m sorry to hear that you’re priced out, and I think it’s fine to give pricing feedback like that. I just am sick of everything being “outrage” where someone “dares” to try to make some money in exchange for their effort.

            I both wish you a better financial situation and that a shorter term compromise arrives where you can afford the app, or that you continue to be satisfied with Connect. One of the beauties of the fediverse is that it’s not an all or nothing thing, there are other clients and other ways to support folks and the community (even just being a friendly person, so props there).