I realize this thread isn’t as hot as it once was, but back when it was hot I sent a message to Flexibits support inquiring about a family subscription. Today I received this:
We will also be introducing a family plan where you can share a single subscription with completely separate accounts in the upcoming months.
This might alleviate some peoples’ pain, although it could also be argued that it is too little, too late. IMHO this feature should have been included when the subscription pricing was established, but I also understand that developers have to prioritize. Still, better late than never.
Your pricing tier recommendations make sense but you missed one important component; greed. Your suggestion would mean they’d lose considerable amounts of money over the long-term.
You assume they are consumer focused and tried to figure out a pricing tier that made sense for the customer while still maintaining a good image for themselves.
They completely disregarded their customer base just as Airmail did initially this past year with surprising existing users, who paid a one-time fee, to then pay a subscription as ransom to unlock the features they had already paid for.
Many of these companies don’t give a f*** about logic and goodwill. They simply care about the bottom line. Like some animals out there that want to eat and eat until the point they end up killing themselves. The same can be seen in the gaming industry whereby big companies (Bethesda, Ubisoft) are now suffering from their short-term anti-consumer strategies which get CASH NOW but ultimately alienate their loyal customer and future products do worse in sales. Classic story of killing the golden goose.
P.S. I agree with you about MPU. As they’ve settled into apps they’ve been using years, some of which are or have been sponsors, new workflows or app recommendations are few and far between. Most of the time, it feels like I’m listening to the same episode again and again and the content seems shallow. Being on the fence about things is ‘safe’, but ultimately uninteresting. Guess who loves meeting a group of people that all sit on the fence about most topics? No-one.
Most people have a problem with some software that is subscription not because said app requires subscription but because the developer simply wants a recurring income and the app in question has no business being subscription.
Cloud storage services, for example, are a no brainer subscription. No-one expects indefinite storage when we know they have overheads to maintain that storage.
However, there are many types of apps; calendars, writing apps, text expansion, habit tracker (see Habitify) which really doesn’t NEED a subscription, but again the developer WANTS a subscription. Because the app is costing them money for you to use it? No, they just want a steady income.
Sorry, but it is not my job to provide you with a steady income because I’m a nice guy. I, like many others, pay for services based on their value not out of charity or to make someone rich.
True, so do I. In the case of Flexibits, AFAIK, the company is still only two people. As I see it they make enough money to support their family or Fantastical disappears.
I like their software, Fantastical is a good product, but I won’t be subscribing to their new version. Have they made a wise decision moving to a subscription model? If they are still in business in a year or two the answer is probably yes. I wish them well.
Fantastical 3 has a service component too, the sync account and the Google API tier they purchase for you to handle notifications. That and the annual updates they’ll have to make to support macOS/iOS/iPadOS/watchOS releases are their ongoing overhead.
A cloud service shouldn’t be any more deserving of charity because we know how their operational costs work, though. We pay monthly/annual fees because there is a pricing floor in the market due to their costs, and we want what they offer. Fantastical will be the same for people who want a powerful calendar with server-based features.
Well, they had a user base in the millions and were the most regarded calendar app on iOS. They entirely wrecked that reputation and the majority of their userbase as potential paying customers.
Besides a few podcast hosts any the rare positive commenter on Twitter and on here, I haven’t seen anyone, who happily subscribed. If 1 out of 500 previous users subscribes after the trial period, they can be happy and even then it is questionable, whether the customers will stay for long.
False pride will make them stick to the model until Apple takes them under their wings with some unified app subscription bundle with “carefully selected, well designed apps” only available on that app equivalent of Apple Arcade. Which will be a shame on its own.
A customer who purchased more than 2 years ago is really not a customer any more. To expect developers to continually push out improvements or updates every time Apple updates an API or another version of it’s OS’s is not really practical, even though the twitterati expect it, and “regard” means nothing when the cash dries up.
As an individual I make websites, as a business I provide paid hosting and support for those sites and it is this that has grown in the past few years and now forms the basis of my income. Give me 100 regular and grateful paying clients over 2,000 entitled users draining my resources any day.
I agree that some services/apps are a better fit than others, but having tried nearly every other calendar app I decided the additional friction in them made Fantastical (for me) worth the subscription. I hope Fantastical ride the storm out succeed and give the finger to all those who have been often downright hateful towards them.
Going against the trend is often difficult but sometimes you just have to believe in your vision not everyone else’s. For example Copernicus, Faraday, Herschel and many more have been ridiculed when they believed they were right and the mob was wrong, had they not done so you might not have a lot of what we take for granted today.
Your definition of customer is totally biased towards your own benefit. By definition, customers are people who buy products. There’s no limit on the time frame anywhere. You can choose to give no support but they are still customers.
Choosing between good reputations among old customers and a successful business model are definitely not mutually exclusive as so many app developers have shown. Flexibits just didn’t choose to please old customers.
Sorry, but you are making false assumptions in regards to my willingness to pay for the work of developers. Please read my previous posts in this thread. I’m not explaining this again in such detail: The new Fantastical
Despite my initial comments, I’ve tried sticking with using the default calendars but have found that the interface and features are just not enough for me. I use my calendar almost all day and use it a lot to make decisions. Due to the recent changes in work I am adding video conference calls and working from a few different calendars that I need to switch between constantly. The default iOS calendars were driving me crazy as they added so many steps to my workflow and had such a limited set of views.
After trialing the new Fantastical I’ve decided that it is worth the cost for me, as I use calendars so much. I really missed the interface, especially on the Mac with the menubar app. So, I’ve begrudgingly departed with my hard earned money and subscribed.
I somehow overlooked that long post and enjoyed reading it—thank you! I especially liked the history of the UI; I had also posted earlier about some of those problems remaining in 3 that currently make it too difficult to use with my peculiar calendar situation.
But ultimately its thesis is they should charge more upfront and less over time to make people happy, which is interesting but might not quite work since part of the cloud service is needed to make Fantastical 3 work well, and because complicated pricing can be difficult to sell even if it lets users choose options that fit them better.
And that almost no one wants a powerful calendar enough to pay what the developer asks, and enough users are vengeful about pricing changes that making them happy outweighs receiving money from rational buyers, which is indirect unwillingness to pay by saying no one else wants to pay.
Absolutely not and it’s a completely wrong assessment. For your information I am currently doing all support work for free and halving design fees to try and help in the current situation.
The point is that I help clients they help me it’s a reciprocal and usually paid for arrangement however in times like these money is not the only form of payment buying credit and loyalty is Probably worth more
I could not support my paying clients like this if “buy once expect service for ever” clients were draining both my financial and time resources, in fact I would be out of business.
Believe me if I was in it totally for my benefit I would be a lot richer than I am (which is not at all ).
I have used Fantastical since version 1. When Fantastical 3 first came out I was taken aback by the subscription cost, but I watched all of the MacSparky Field Guide on Fantastical 3. I enjoyed his Field Guide on OmniFocus and thought the one on Fantastical did a great job pointing out the newer features. I gave Fantastical the 14 day trial and ended up subscribing. The new features like the meeting proposals, weather, and the special calendars are valuable to me and make it worth the subscription fee. BusyCal is a great product as well but seems a bit antiquated in their UI, and I have tried it on several occasions but I need something that works across both Mac and iOS. BusyCal does have an iOS component, however it’s reliability is questionable at best. Fantastical works seamlessly across iOS and Mac and now that I use my iPad Pro more than ever that is essential to me. I never saw anything like the meeting proposal before and at first thought I would never use it, but I find myself using it a lot more and the use of it has also made some colleagues get Fantastical for that reason alone, I also love having the calendar sets, I have separate sets for work, and personal and then can view them all at once should I choose. Since being able to pull in special calendars like my favorite team schedules or TV shows it has helped me plan better for the things I wanted to see or do. So the $40 a year or so I pay is well worth it to me.
When using natural language is it possible to add say an appointment and the person is in your contacts but you want all there information in the calendar event, is it possible to do that through natural language?
Right now I use week cal and I can enter an event time but then I have to click contacts to enter the title and name , Address.
You are EXACTLY correct, Lars! I think the sheer, unadulterated money-grabbing greed will ultimately bite the behinds of many of these developers. The prices are hidden. Often the prices in the App Store are not accurate. Apple should insist. The prices should absolutely be spelled out.
An unknown number of developers pull all sorts of sleazy practices. They switch their prices around like some sort of shell game. Linea Sketch just ignores Apples rules. Their latest scam is selling a lifetime membership after having had cut off owners who had already contracted with them. After a year of “free” membership, the customer cannot access their artwork AT ALL if they don’t ante up, even though they already own the right to use the app.
There is no additional pressure on them aside from the groundswell from the customers as many of us live on fixed incomes and most of us aren’t independently wealthy. The podcasters could weigh in on it. I certainly wouldn’t mind paying extra from time to time in a useful app with thoughtful improvements. Noteworthy is that many of these apps have learning curves which puts the customer at a disadvantage.
There are ways to see that developers are reimbursed. I am so encouraged by the model Agenda uses. Actually, it comes out to more than I want to pay but I love the gorgeous UI, the fantastic responsiveness of tech support. I certainly am not bothered by paying for Agenda. To bottom line it– to do so is at least partially my idea. My workflow will NEVER be disrupted (I don’t think). I’m quite comfortable with their price model and recommend it to other developers.
Podcasters could help us out. They’d likely be more inclined to take our POV more seriously if they were more aware that most of us do not have bottomless wallets. I know I use to buy more apps just for fun or to experiment.
It doesn’t HAVE to be the developers (who have the upper hand if we like their app) vs the customers. But rather REASONABLE price modeling that isn’t ever never ending.
The bottom is going to fall out of subscription ransomed software, according to my crystal ball. And, remember, elephants never forget!
Used the 20% discount via the Talk Show (WWDC20 show; expired now) to take 1 year Fantastical Premium.
Looks like I/they indeed need a longer period than the (previously used) 14 day free trial to convince me, as I’m unpleasantly surprised by the number of bugs I encountered in the Premium features in the few days I have been playing with those…
Each of us have the choice. I dumped this app as soon as they started subscription. Do have a few subscription apps that worth paying for IMHO but not this. There are a lot of apps out there, a lot of good ones but equal amount of overrated ones. No point complaining, continue paying or dump them. I’m guilty of buying too many apps on impulse.