I hope that positioning works for them - targeting people who reallllllllly value their product and find it a no-brainer to pay them.
There’s so much competition that they’ll go broke if they try to compete with all the free or cheap products that are similar.
(I don’t use noteplan btw because it’s not worth it to me.)
Except that’s not what the dev seems to be doing. It’s $15, unless you don’t want to pay $15, in which case just email the dev and he’ll give you the old rate. That’s not exactly a signal that the dev believes in the current pricing of their product.
Correct me if I’m wrong… I’m sure they can give out voucher codes or something for promotional purposes. But that’s not actually an app pricing model that Apple allows sustainedly, is it?
If I think about it… I actually don’t use most app purchases daily. Far from it.
(The ones I use daily are all provided by my employer)
I don’t know how it all works on the back end. I know it’s possible for different people to be subscribed to different tiers through Apple, so the dev might have a way to re-activate an old tier in the app and allow the subscription.
Just look at his record with pricing. Always making excuses to charge more. How can anyone trust developers like that?
I trust him.
I trust him.
I trust him.
It’s also weird to me that it’s doubling a year and a half after it switched to subscription. v2 was about $45 for the Mac and iOS apps combined. When it went subscription that $45 went to $60 (33% hike) with the annual subscription, or $84 (86% hike calculated annually) if paid monthly. So for somebody paying monthly, the app has essentially doubled in price twice in the past 2 years.
Wait till the existing users face the hike. For now, he’s using the excuse that he’s grandfathered all previous users. But that won’t be for long (same pattern as when he went from v2 to v3, everyone was forced to pay more).
Me too, though I’d change your comment (just a little) to say, “I honestly think it’s expensive for me, for what I personally get out of it”.
There’s no correct price and we all value things differently.
I love that prices can vary - especially the black Friday level of variation where prices temporarily go down so much.
On the other hand, I’d hate to be a small software developer who tries to earn an income by selling a product. It must be sooooooo stressful at times.
I can’t put myself in the noteplan dev’s shoes exactly, but I sell books and they make me about 5-10% of my income. I found (much to my shock) that I make more when they’re priced high on amazon than when they’re priced low. I also suspect that the people who pay more for the books (say $9 v.s. $0.99) are more likely to read them and get more value out of them.
I hope the noteplan dev finds the same thing. I know from reading stuff he’s written and from chatting with him on twitter that he is a very hard work, dedicated fella. I hope he can make a good living out of his product because he deserves to.
do you think, maybe, that’s it just not worth it to you?
Are you looking at alternatives? There are plenty. Some free. Some cheap. Some not so cheap!
NP is notoriou$ for high price$, relieve dumped v2 when he introduced $ubscription. Knew he will increa$e $ again and he proved me right, matter of time before he incre$e again + introduce a higher level $ubscription.
Fair enough. It looks like I’m making you grumpy so I won’t write any more.
I found one guy on Twitter!
I did some reading in his Twitter and Discord and I think that he’s evaluating the success of the change based on number of paid signups week-to-week in response to his marketing and feature releases. If I read correctly, he has had at least a few dozen signups at the new price in the last week, but I couldn’t tell how that compares and of course we don’t know anything about his churn rate. He is watching and taking into account negative feedback as well.
He seems serious about building Noteplan into a real business by making it a peerless app at what it does, so it can’t easily be substituted if it’s really useful for someone.
Ah, right. Yes, those must’ve been about the new feature for existing trials, and not the new price. And agreed. As someone who likes the app but doesn’t use it, and generally likes indie developers and doesn’t mind if they outgrow my dabbler’s patronage, I’m appreciating that we get to watch this play out with some public musing and advice-seeking from the developer.
I certainly feel the rush when I can snap up an app at discounted pricing. But from a more levelheaded point of view, I don’t like it.
I’m not saying sales are only done on cheaply made stuff that isn’t worth sticker price. But 50% or higher discounts aren’t usually a sign of quality products. Not in the hardware space. And honestly it makes me feel I‘ve paid too much, when I‘ve bought at full price.
Also cheap / for-sale apps, I (too) often find out I don’t use them very much afterwards. I tend to e much happier with ones bought at full price - cause I really, really needed or wanted them. And I always try to do my due diligence to not buy crap at inflated prices.
I’ve done it and considered Noteplan just days ago, and it seemed like the premier contender to become my own new agenda app. Not with subscription pricing though, and certainly not with these price hikes.
Yes - but ultimately it’s a text-based agenda/note-taker.
Not rocket science.
The new pricing makes a setapp sub pretty much a no brained (mentioned earlier above). This makes me wonder how long the app will still be available on setapp.
Or how long before SetApp also has a rethink on its monthly…
The note taking/making space is evolving rapidly. I think next year’s landscape may be very different compared to what we see today.
I agree, I too wish him the best. I have corresponded with him many times and he has been responsive and gone the extra mile in answering my questions. I do not begrudge him his price increase or success. It is just that as much as I’m intrigued by NotePlan, I can’t justify $120 per year when I have other options that will adequately, if not perfectly, meet my needs. That, of course, is the free market.