That’s just a rule that some customers choose to adopt as a negotiating tactic. Software pricing ultimately is about value to the customer. It’s more valuable to you if the software is complete, but sometimes part of the value is the excitement around or goodwill towards the developer making improvements.
I think the Noteplan developer is just inexperienced at pricing. Greg Pierce and Kourosh Dini also recently made mistakes raising pricing. Sometimes we benefit when something is underpriced. It all evens out. Those who are a close fit for Noteplan are still a good fit at a higher price. (That said, Agenda is $35 and my journal-style-task-note-app tool of choice… )
Experience with subscriptions is that’s not the case though. Many, many companies that offered a discount for existing customers - even “lifetime licenses” - double back on that within a couple years. “Can’t be helped” sort of logic. For an app that’s competing for a central place in your workflow, that’s concerning. It’s also a potential red flag for somebody looking to buy it in the first place.
Respectfully, I think that puts the shoe on the completely wrong foot. I don’t think that “ongoing payments in return for updates to the software” is a rule that customers have chosen to adopt in any way - much less as a negotiating tactic. It’s the whole justification for developer after developer going subscription, and typically charging per year the same cost that they’d normally be making every two or three years as they released new versions.
I don’t begrudge devs some revenue, and the only reason I’m NOT a current NotePlan subscriber is that I was a paid subscriber, but the app was “buggy” (technically not a bug, but a feature implemented so unclearly that it looked like it was working but didn’t - and caused tasks with due dates to get lost). I put my stuff in Obsidian, was looking at coming back to NotePlan at a future date when it was more stable, and now that it’s “stable” it’s twice the price.
I realize I could almost certainly get the discount. But I don’t want to go through the trouble of moving data back and then discover that my “existing customer discount” goes back to $15 / month in a year when the dev decides that $7/month from existing subscribers just isn’t worth it (see my notes above).
I’m subscribed at 60 bucks so I have ten more months to enjoy NotePlan and see if the other shoe has dropped when my renewal date comes up. If @cornchip is right, the pricing issue may have evaporated by then.
You’ll find a variety of reasons developers explain the change. For example, one of Noteplan’s justifications (before the most recent price increase) was:
We could discuss and compare pricing infinitely, there are always apps that are more expensive and apps that are cheaper or even free. Depends on what you look at. No matter what, someone will object. The goal is to make NotePlan a productivity powerhouse for pro users and $2/month wouldn’t cut it and wouldn’t look like a power user tool.
Some others:
Greg Pierce has said it’s to provide sustainably for his family. He has also promised and delivered effort, so many people who hate subscriptions don’t hate Drafts.
Flexibits have said it’s so they can release features faster without waiting for major versions (and later said that the revenue increase let them invest more in their products.)
Omni have said it’s to offer choice in payment method
Dave Teare has said it’s to focus their efforts on the most popular platform: “Given the overwhelming popularity of 1Password memberships and how much more capable 1Password.com is then everything else, our next generation of 1Password apps will focus exclusively on memberships.”
Carrot justified it with recurring expenses: “The subscription is necessary because weather data is very expensive.”
Marco Arment: “I’ve been down this road enough times to know that pay-once revenue curves only go downward. The App Store never made this easy, and the market is only getting more challenging over time.”
This almost sounds like he’s doing it for purely price signaling reasons. “This is good because it’s expensive”. That’s…bizarre.
Regarding the others, Carrot isn’t as relevant a comparison as NotePlan isn’t dealing with expensive third-party costs. And Marco’s app can be used entirely without subscription - the subscription is just for a “support the dev” / ad unlock.
Greg Pierce, Flexibits, and Dave Teare are all explicitly stating that they’re delivering features for the subscription fee. And so is Omni, just not explicitly stated in your example.
So why would NotePlan adding some features - which every other subscription-based app you mentioned does as part of the subscription - justify a 2x price hike?
Testing with a price increase and going back to the original price still leave a trail of bad taste. Many will never even look at NotePlan as they will have this in the back of their mind.
Surprisingly, in some markets, I’ve seen the dynamic at work: A higher price convinces potential subscribers the service is worth more; too low a price suggests it isn’t worth much.
This is mostly for information services, not software tools, in my experience. But it’s very real. I even know one entrepreneur who was told (paraphrase), “You don’t charge enough for me to take your product seriously.”
Yes, I agree that subscription pricing does encourage developers to provide compatibility and security updates. People would unsubscribe otherwise. But…
Quite the contrary, IMO! If anything, subscription pricing tends to encourage developers to become complacent and provide less updates.
I mean, why should they? As long as users have become used to an app/service‘s user interface and handling and are „locked in“ to the (eco)system or associated data silos, they get rather lazy to learn something new and hesitant to switch.
Shelling out the price of a subscription just to prevent things from breaking/stopping to work is one thing. I may not even like or need the new features. Yet the money for the developer keeps flowing
Forking out money on a new feature though is a deliberate decision - I‘ll only pay for the new feature if I consider it worth it.
Yeah, I’m aware of that dynamic in other markets. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen it in software though.
Agree. To me an app in this category - “throw all of your notes in it and use it to manage your info / calendar / schedule” needs a dev that exudes stability.
If it’s actually true that it’s just a two-month test, and that the dev is basically dismissing complaints from users that think it’s too high during that time, that’s a huge, huge red flag for me. And NOTE - it wouldn’t be a red flag that he’s not listening to some users. It would be a red flag if he’s made the blanket decision to not listen to any complaints without figuring out whether those users are in his target market.
The one app that I think I heard wasn’t “doing right by their users” was TextExpander - at least prior to the current funding round.
But this circles back to the big question that I was driving at initially - how many of those apps that have been routinely adding features have had a 2x price increase because they’ve added more features while the app was subscription-only?
I mean…can you imagine getting an email like:
“Hey community! Greg from Drafts here. The Mac app is now feature-complete, and I’ve decided that the Mac app I’ve been developing works so well, and is such a pro-grade app, Drafts Pro is now going to be $40 per year!”
I’ve seen that too, and with software. However, it tends to work in highly specialist markets where there is also some implied justification for the high price. NotePlan (to me at least) doesn’t seem particularly specialised.
Roam research was seen as an expensive, specialist tool at the same $15 price point but, anecdotally, its customer base has been eroded by similar, free or less expensive alternatives. NotePlan is already there.
This is the reason I’m really reticent about subscriptions. I’m with @webwalrus on this one. The subscription covers the new features. Increasing the price outside of this is simply a statement that people are now reliant on the app and so lets increase costs or we’re now well known so we can make a status increase.
If people are willing to pay the increase all well and good, but at such a high increase subscribers can’t help but wonder what is down the line. I felt the jump from v2 to v3 was way too high and I’m glad I dropped it then, as this price increase is just what I feared would happen back then.
I started testing NotePlan on Friday, so I’m a very very new user, and it’s part of my never-ending quest to find a task manager that works for me. I didn’t know about the recent price hike until I was playing with the software and rummaging about on Reddit learning how to do things. The price is high, but as someone who seems to be testing every option at the moment, I didn’t wince much because I’ve come across similar pricing in other apps recently. Also to be honest at this point in my quest I just want to slay the dragon and be done already.
I really really like NotePlan, because what is missing for me is a way to store tasks with my task notes and just have it all magically in the right place. As someone who also ended up with several hundred things in Todoist and never did weekly reviews, I really appreciate the daily and weekly task lists in NotePlan. I like that the app is forcing me to do my tasks and consider what is unfinished.
The day before I stumbled across NotePlan, I’d set up Obsidian the way MacSparky showed in the 2022 task manager thread. I made a dedicated vault just for task management, where I set up folders for my current projects I’m actioning for work (and by current I mean this week, since I’m switching task managers almost weekly at the moment and cannot be bothered to migrate fully every time!). It was near the end of this couple of hours tinkering that I remembered that someone had spoken of an app that worked in a similar manner, and I remembered about NotePlan.
My concern with my set-up in Obsidian is that it’s dependent on a plug-in provided by hobbyists (the tasks plug-in), and also on me implementing it correctly. Using NotePlan basically pays someone else to be responsible for that, but of course that a) carries a cost, and b) for a one man show carries a risk that they might move on to something else. But, the fact it integrates with my calendar, offers time blocking, AND saves all my notes in plain text is very desirable.
I don’t know if I will commit (though I’m reaching the end of my patience in trying to find a task manager I like), but it’s a very tempting app.
Noteplan is a great deal … if you use it often enough.
i just checked out the price and it’s $NZ20 a month here in New Zealand.
There are 20 working days a month, so that’s $1 a day.
I spend twice that amount on coffee, each day, BEFORE breakfast.
One dollar a day is a bargain,
unless you pay for it but don’t use it,
in which case it’s a waste of money.
I actually really dislike subscriptions, as I’ve commented elsewhere in this forum. I think at this point I’m willing to pay a lot for a task management app just to not have to think about finding a new app any more
Heh, you wrote that at the same time as my second comment, and I agree. I’m happy to pay £1 a day to have a task manager I like, because I have wasted a lot of hours trying task managers I did not like, and life is short!
I honestly think it’s expensive for what it is. Though when I’m looking at their “What Noteplan users say” customer testimonials… Enterprise Strategists, CEOs & founders, Technical Solutions Architects and Agile and Devops Entrepreneurs …
Yeah, seems they aren’t really targeting “normal” people anymore - but rather 6-figure earning “business leaders” with low elasticity of demand. With what’s increasingly becoming a “boutique” luxury product.
It’s certainly a product that I’d be very interested in. At a one-time price. With their current pricing (and subscription pricing in general) though, they’ve totally priced themselves out of my consideration. I’d rather use a paper notebook/planner and enjoy my coffee or a piece of good chocolate instead.
)
and see if the other shoe has dropped when my renewal date comes up. If 