Wow, you are really setapp power user!
Personally I use maybe 2 or 3 on regular basis. Other apps which I use rarely, costs 10-20$ on official web site.
Many subscribed because of ulysses and later discovered some useful apps which made them continue to pay for service. I don’t think that setapp would have so many subscribers if ulysses was Mac only from day one.
I don’t use Setapp! Over the years I just have bought a lot of the apps they happen to provide, so I know that the quality level is very high.
For anyone in the same boat as me, I deleted Ulysses from my Mac (using SetApp), then re-installed from the Mac App Store and subscribed anew. That all works as you’d expect. But on iOS and iPadOS it still says they are licensed via SetApp even after deleting and reinstalling. I contacted Ulysses Support about this and they said wait until 31st August and it will switch over automatically.
Jeremy, quoting Nik Savin (so the responses are to what Nik has to say, not to @Jeremy — but thanks to Jeremy for posting!):
There wasn’t any direct communication to current users at all. There was only the blog post, and then various sources on the web commenting on the information contained in it. There was a notice in the Setapp app itself that pointed to the blog post, but that was it — and not everyone opens Setapp with any regularity once they have their preferred applications installed. I only found out about the change because I regularly read this forum.
Why was there no email announcement sent to current users?
This makes some sense, though that could be stated more explicitly in your materials. It’s also worth pointing out that the price of the service has doubled over time; early on, $9.99/month was good for two Macs, not one.
Even now, the pricing is confusing. For example, your pricing page currently lists a single Mac for $9.99/month and a family plan of four Macs for $19.99/month. But your post announcing the expansion to iOS says that all one needs to use Setapp on an iOS device is an active subscription with an open seat.
Here’s the math for someone with a single Mac who’s not on the education plan, but has two devices:
That second option leaves room for another device to be added in the future, without adding cost, so it’s the right choice if, indeed, a seat is a seat.
Perhaps it wasn’t officially communicated as a benefit, but it was certainly implied, even if not all developers allowed a Setapp subscription to unlock their app’s iOS counterpart.
A search for iOS on your site produces this:
The highlighted post now redirects to your Setapp for iOS announcement, but the text on the card is pretty clear. And then there’s “How to Write Your Best with Ulysses”, which contains the following text: “Ulysses also has an iOS client for editing your texts on iPhone and iPad. So when you use the app via Setapp, you can have the same license for iOS.”
It’s vitally important to compensate developers fairly. On that we agree.
Part of making things right will be issuing prorated refunds to those who request them after cancelling their subscriptions. Setapp may not be able to control whether developers who previously allowed a subscription to unlock their iOS apps will continue to do so. And honestly, it may not be in the developers’ best interest to do so. That’s fair!
But given the previous messaging around iOS apps, this change does amount to a forced change in terms for current subscribers, and if they cancel as a result, a prorated refund (especially for those who pay yearly rather than monthly) is appropriate.
If Setapp takes this step as part of making things right, I’ll be likely to consider the service again if I’m ever in a position where it makes financial sense.
I agree with everything you said @acavender, though I will not personally be likely to revisit the service in the future.
Because I was paying monthly, and I cannot begrudge the service nor price I was getting, I will let my sub roll through to September 7th.
I would just add that as much detail as SetApp may wish to get into, it is the user sentiment that counts. No amount of courtroom arguing will stop people disliking the defendant.
I don’t know…I still think that for me that message came across as being from a thoughtful, caring company that realised it made a (number of) bad mistakes in this launch.
We’ll see soon enough what they intend to do to remedy the situation, but I for one am open to listening (and seeing if it is enough to get me backtracking on cancelling a seat).
I agree that the post from Nik seems sincere. Setapp is a great idea, and overall I’ve been pleased with it — I’ve subscribed on a couple of occasions. I’d like to see the company succeed.
And I get that trying to figure out how to offer value to subscribers while being fair to developers and justly compensate one’s own employees is a challenge.
I’ve already canceled my subscription because it simply no longer makes financial sense for me, but should my situation change in the future, I’m certainly open to considering Setapp again if they handle this well.
Agreeing with you here. Setapp has severely damaged my trust as a customer, in a field everybody knows by now is touchy - subscriptions.
I will keep my independence from now on - I’m already depending on Apple and developers’ goodwills to play fair to maintain the tools I need, Setapp adds another intermediary that I don’t need and visibly cannot trust.
That’s a really good point, SetApp being an intermediary you have to rely on. For instance, what if their response to the business model not working out had been to shutter the service?
Set app for me isn’t worth it. I would never subscribe for any software.
I just stick with the stock Apple apps.
My demands have been met: just got refunded of the remaining time on my Setapp plan. I am satisfied by that outcome, and will now happily subscribe to Ulysses directly while leaving forever that Setapp experiment behind.
For the sake of completeness, update from the company:
This is Nik Savin again, Product Manager of Setapp.
I wanted to thank everyone for your patience and feedback these last few days! The entire team appreciates the time the Setapp community has taken to share your thoughts with us, your enthusiasm for Setapp, and your constructive ideas.
We’re ready to share the first step we are seriously considering to alleviate many of your concerns. Please note that this is not 100% finalized yet, but we’re sharing it here today in the interests of keeping a dialogue open and ensuring that we are heading in the right direction. Importantly, we are also looking at several other actions and we understand that this might not be enough by itself to fully resolve all of the current pain points.
Here it is: The proposal is to decrease the fee to add an additional device, whether it’s a Mac, iPhone, or iPad, from $4.99 currently to $2.49 for all subscription plans. Each additional device would cost the same $2.49. For student and edu plans, the price would also be $2.49 per additional device (unfortunately, this is a technical limitation at the moment). Once implemented, this would affect both new and existing subscriptions as of their next billing date. According to our analysis, this should keep the price of Setapp under $15 per month for almost everyone.
This will allow us to keep the business model sustainable and continue to make the platform attractive for developers to join the iOS plan in the future.
One other important note I’d like to make is that we have been rethinking the entire pricing policy, and looking at, for example, whether pricing by app usage or moving to a universal purchase model would work for Setapp. Please know that any such changes would likely take us several weeks or potentially even months to properly evaluate and implement since they entail re-negotiations with app developers and in many cases a significant amount of technical development work.
That said, we would like to know what you think. Would this ease the burden on you enough? Does this make Setapp more appealing to you in the long run? What other steps would you like to see immediately or in the long-term?
I would like to thank you in advance for your comments. We’ll review them and come back to you again soon with a decision on this and when we’re ready to share any additional proposals.
As for me, they entirely lost my good faith. As I said above, I am already relying on Apple and developers to maintain my access to the tools I use. Setapp has shown that, at the very least, it is not considering things thoroughly, and that alone is enough to lose my trust as a customer. That’s one more intermediary I don’t need or want.
And, the math of adding 5$ / month for an iPad AND an iPhone still doesn’t work out. I’d rather pay the devs of the apps I use directly – they’re getting more money and I’m paying less.
Thanks for the info and the quote from Mr. Setapp.
$2.49US / month would be $90/year for me which still exceeds the $50 for Ulysses per year. Obviously it’s better, but doesn’t solve my personal utility function.
I’m a little sad about this drama – just a couple months ago Setapp was sending releases celebrating they had reached (I think) 100 employees, life was good, customers were wonderful. I wish them well.
Someone mentioned maybe Apple would create a software subscription bundle like Setapp. I really don’t want them to slam down another big foot on the market like that. I would love to see an independent company offer an attractive bundle in the market.
Grrrrr … Why is Setapp’s communication with its paid user base limited to social media? Have they forgotten how to use email? With all due respect I have better things to do with my attention than follow the companies that make and market the tools I use on FB, IG, and Twitter. If they’ve got something to tell me—and a change to the pricing model is certainly something subscribers need to be told—then send me an email.
This was a botched rollout from top to bottom.
I agree completely. I have been baffled why some companies insist on using Twitter for support. Email is far more efficient as you can include a lot more information. And, I just simply am not going to devote my time to following multiple social media platforms.
Nik Savin, as quoted by Jeremy:
On some users losing access to certain iOS apps: Since Setapp started, some developers have allowed access to their iOS companion apps themselves (i.e. Diarly, MoneyWiz, Paste, Remote Mouse, SQLPro Studio, Step Two and Ulysses). This was never communicated as an official benefit of Setapp subscription plans, an inconsistent practice across our partner developers, and essentially a workaround until official support was available.
(OK yes, I was going with another word but remembered we like to keep it PG here)
That is some gaslighting / revisionist-history nonsense right there. They ABSOLUTELY touted being able to use Ulysses on iOS as a feature / value-add of their previous Setapp setup, as did just about every significant review of Setapp.
To say now that it wasn’t “really” a feature is just a flat-out lie.
Show me one single instance before this “Setapp for iOS” announcement where Setapp said anything like that.
Don’t pee on my leg, tell me it’s raining, and then claim that I stepped into the stream.
Sounds like asking them to prove a negative. I thought that part of the reply sounded a little fishy but I never cared enough to Google to see what they said at launch to prove otherwise. But that’s what you’d need to do: prove otherwise.
I think that both the explanatory posts are highly disingenuous. The issue isn’t communication, it’s cost. Sure there are some people who’d have been OK with the new pricing if it had been presented better, but the real point here is that a multi-device user pays more - possibly a lot more. Calling this a problem of poor communication is dishonest - and, IMO, stupid. If you want to keep your customers onside, treat them with respect.
Blockquote
This was never communicated as an official benefit of Setapp subscription plans
This part is an excellent example.Even if it’s true in a strict legal sense, it’s still disingenuous. Setapp was well aware that they had users taking advantage of this feature and were content to let it happen and to allow their customers to think it was an integral feature of the service. It might work in court to claim it was a “workaround”, but if it ever got to court, Setapp would have lost anyway. Litigation has never been an effective way of building a customer base.
The simple truth here is (1) the cost of Setapp is going up for many users and (2) many users will now have to pay for something they were getting for free.
Corporations should stop blaming “poor communication” for substantive mistakes - it’s lazy and dishonest, and people see through it. I have had many times to give customers and colleagues bad news (I’m a project manager and software projects don’t always (understatement!) go as planned) and I can say with confidence that honesty buys time and goodwill even from extremely angry and disappointed customers. Dishonesty has the opposite effect.
As an aside, this is a good example of why I don’t like subscriptions. I’m not in control of my costs.
Hm… I don‘t really get all the negativity in this thread. I agree that the initial communication was poorly handled and the price structure too high. However… 2,49$/€ for an additional seat is a steal, at least if you use more than two or three apps on a semi-regular basis. I did the math a couple of months ago when my subscription was up for renewal and it totally works for me as I use many (many!) apps: >400€ in total if I would buy/pay a subscription for every app I use. Considering that I am eligible for the edu discount it is totally worth it. Even without edu discount I would need more than three years of Setapp to get to the calculated 400+ €.
That said, I just love it to almost always find a Setapp solution if I look for an app to solve a particular problem I might face.
So… I‘ll definitely keep my subscription and based on what will be added on the iOS side I‘ll really consider adding an additional seat for my iPad.
It is not.
Case in point: say I need two popular subscription apps on my iOS devices – an iPhone and iPad : Ulysses and Mindnode (which are not the cheapest, either). This adds 60$ / year. This is still more than the separate subscriptions, which I would also have on my Macs if I paid for them.
The way this works, Setapp with two Macs and two iOS devices (which is not infrequent for power users) amounts to roughly 190$ / year.
For that amount of money, I can buy all the apps I need in Setapp, subscribe to the rest and I’ll still come out ahead.
