this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
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Sync for Lemmy

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๐Ÿ‘€


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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

Afternoon everyone,

I wanted to go over a few points related to pricing, stats and the roadmap


Pricing

  1. Sync for Lemmy is completely free with ads (the same as Sync for Reddit)

  2. You can remove ads in the account picker or drawer for a one time fee of ~$20

  3. Sync Ultra also removes ads but it's not required

  4. I'll be working on regional prices over the coming weeks


There are now 24k installed users up from 100 the previous day!

I'm going to be spending the next few days going through all of the comments / messages and fixing any crashes.

As always thanks for the support and hope you're liking Sync!

Lj

Edit: testing edit

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[โ€“] [email protected] 49 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I just wanted to say I'm sorry for the backslash you're getting for charging money.

I'm also sorry people expect it to be $1 because the Reddit app was $1 back in 1825. I genuinely believe it's children complaining, because no functioning adult would complain about a price increase when rent has tripled or quadrupled since the $1 Reddit app. It's also annoying to see that people think that saying they bought the Reddit app for $1 and enjoyed it for 10 years is an argument. It goes to show it was severely underpriced.

It must be frustrating to have that type of response. Lemmy users seem to be really entitled when it comes to software, and the response you're getting scares me for the future. I really hope the Boost developer doesn't cancel his app after seeing how entitled Lemmy users are being right now.

What frustrates me more is the people complaining are continuing to use the free open source apps. Like great, you already have an alternative you prefer. Shut up. Stop bringing others down.

I wish you the best. Thank you for choosing to develop for Lemmy. I have my eyes on Boost, but I'm gladly using your free tier for the time being.

Thanks again!

[โ€“] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I paid 5 dollars back in 2016, and I was fully expecting to pay more for this version. 20 dollars for no ads is fine by me. However, I don't feel like the 100 dollars for lifetime ultra is worth it. Maybe someday when I feel like those extra perks are worthwhile

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[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

What bothers me with this controversy is that it's not clear for me how one can earn a living in the lemmy ecosystem if everything is FOSS. Also, one should understand that the app is in beta, but there was so much hype around that app.

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The people complaining about the price are the people that truly have no understanding how much love and care goes into creating good software. 20 dollars to remove ads for however many hours sync is going to save me with searching for each instance is well worth the cost for supporting development in the future.

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm fine with a price increase, but 4 times the price is quite the increase. Haven't made up my mind if it's worth it for me yet, if it was 5โ‚ฌ or maybe 10โ‚ฌ I would have immediately bought it.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Under AUD$2 to AUD$34 is quite the leap, and more than double what I anticipated.

I was very happy to drop AUD$10-15, and I'm aware that what I paid in 20 dickity 13 was a steal.

Quadrupled app costs would have been a bargain in my eyes.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 47 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

LJ,

I too am a reddit refugee. I like what you've done with this place.

:)

But we have to talk about pricing and privacy.

Pricing: tbh I see not much wrong with the 20 bucks. But I do think that you should take 2 bucks from that and donate one to the lemmy org (this is not reddit, nobody is getting paid, the lemmy devs also need an incentive) and the other one to lemmy.world because that's the instance you're dumping us all on. Hosting is not free, lemmy.world costs money and probably a lot of time to run. Being a reddit admin is a payed job, being Ruud at lemmy.world is most certainly not.

In this way "we" are giving back to the Foss community and it should silence a lot of critics. In that way you don't look like the evil capitalist earning a quick buck over the back of free labour of the foss community. I think that's 2 bucks well spent.

Privacy: since you're using admob and I forgot the other one, privacy is out the window. That's a big issue for the Foss community we're all relying on. Maybe it's wise to point out that once you pay for sync all that tracking that admob and the other one (not you I hope) does is out the window.

[โ€“] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

$20 is enough of a barrier to keep out new people. I was considering maybe trying it out until then.

I don't remember what I paid for RiF years ago, but it was a lot less than that. Heh, I looked it up. November 27th, 2013 I paid $1.99 for RiF. January 4th, 2014 I paid $0.99 for Sync for Reddit. I never used it, but apparently I had it.

$5-$8 seems much more reasonable. You'd probably even make more money through volume. $20 is prohibitive.

Edit: Oh God, it's $20 per year?!? Is that a joke?

[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Edit: Oh God, it's $20 per year?!? Is that a joke?

No, it's a one time payment just to remove ads.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago

Whether the pricing is appropriate is purely subjective. I paid the 20 bucks, thank you for your work. Looking forward to see this app thrive, it already works super smooth!

Hope you do not take the inevitably rude comments to heart.

[โ€“] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

My wishlist:

  • Downvote counts
  • Mod tools
[โ€“] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

A part from the comments on the images, I think there is a bug with alignment because the first comment has 3 lines instead of one as you can see from this image

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[โ€“] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

It's the best app but the pricing is insane. I mean, maybe you have experience from your other apps and you know this is the optimal price, but otherwise, consider changing it. People are surprised by the high price right now.

If it was me, I would price it like this:

  • Remove ads - $10 lifetime.

  • Ultra monthly - $3 per month, $20 per year, $50 lifetime.

Those sums are realistic and people are likely to find them acceptable. You would get more users instead of less users paying more.

But this is just me and I speak only as someone who never had an app in a appstore. Maybe you know better. But that's what I would do.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm seriously impressed with how functional this app is from the start. Like lots of others have said, it felt like coming home given how long I'd used Sync for. Didn't hesitate to pay for the ad free version once that option was added.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Took me a while to figure out how to sign in with my lemdro.id account.

Maybe it's embarrassing to admit but I must have scanned through that long list of servers five times before realizing I could just type in my own server. Could be helpful to add a line inviting users to type in their own server.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (3 children)

The backlash has surprised me a bit. I agree the price is a bit steep but considering the userbase is only a fraction of what Reddit has, it's understandable that the price would be higher.

I just didn't expect such negative reactions to either the ad component or the price. A lot have mentioned that it could become a form of gatekeeping for newcomers. I just hope it won't turn out that way.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think the biggest complaints are about the tracking stuff. That was a surprise to me as a long time user.

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Same. Glad it gets completely disabled once ads are gone.

[โ€“] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't know if this is already the case or not, or how hard it would be to implement, but since Ultra is a superset of ad-free, it would be swell if there was upgrade pricing so you could pay $80 to go from ad-free to Ultra. I definitely want ad-free but I'm not sure about Ultra and so I'm not getting either until I can make that decision to avoid throwing $20 down a hole.

[โ€“] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I could go down that route but for now if you want to switch DM me your order number and I'll do it manually.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Thank you for working so hard and fast! I know there's a lot of people talking down about it being closed source and optionally costing money, but as a long-time user and patron it's completely worth it for the quality of experience you're able to deliver!

[โ€“] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I got the lifetime sync ultra subscription for the reddit app for 34.99 after getting the ad-free version and then the pro version because I really liked it. I only used it for half a year, but hey, I guess that's the gamble you take with lifetime subscriptions. I now see that the lifetime subscription is โ‚ฌ114.99?! Is this a mistake? What is going on here?

If I compare it to the 18.99 a year price, it'd take over 6 years to break even. If I compare it to the old 11.99 price, it'd take over 9.5 years. I just don't understand the logic here.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A nice feature for us new people would be a way to subscribe to a community from the everything feed as opposed to having to click through to the community page.

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

This is one nice UX thing I noticed that Threads did and made it much easier to follow people from the main feed.

[โ€“] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

First time posting on Lemmy as a whole.

Thank you for making this app, been a Sync user for years and you made the hop to Lemmy seamless.

Already paid for ad-free and cannot wait to see where the app goes from here.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)
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[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

The price is perfectly fine. I had Sync Pro for Reddit for nearly a decade for only a few dollars.

Though Iโ€™m no longer on Android, when I return, Sync for Lemmy will be my first purchase.

Thanks for your hard work!

[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

For some reason I can't post with the app yet.

I figured that the button labeled "Submit" would do the trick. It just says "Coming soon". That kinds sucks, but other than that, I'm loving the app so far.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

One thing I didn't see mentioned yet: I quite liked the "go to random NSFW subreddit" function in the old app.

Would be cool to see that function again.

[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Can anyone confirm if the imgur album link in the comment below opens like it should in the app?

https://aussie.zone/comment/1519180

When I click on the link, I get a toast with an error and then it uses the internal browser to open the link on the website:

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[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Thanks so much for your hard work! I can only contribute through ads, but plan on going ultra when I'm able.

I hope that, when you look through comments, you don't take the negative ones too seriously. You've done so much for us. I hope you're proud. :)

[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Are there any plans to re-implenent the "Sync" feature that the Reddit app had?

Just curious because I need my offline reading!

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hi, there isn't a submission button yet. So will ask here. Sorry

Pricing will this app make more money with advertising revenue from me or the one off payment?

I am lucky enough to have Google play credit so can pay but just wondering to pay it not to pay?

Thanks for a great app can't wait till it's all up to speed. Ty WP gg

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Submit new posts is needed, this is similar to crashes in the app right now.

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Will you provide the option to use ultra lifetime from reddit?

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I just want to say thank you for getting Sync up and running on Lemmy. Please don't let the toxic comments sour your day. I for one is really grateful for what you do.

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

Installed and could immediately tell it was a great app. I just bought Ultra Lifetime.

My request would be the ability to collapse comments and to be able to promote certain post options buried in the menu to a button (like bookmark), namely, I use "hide post" a lot, and would like to choose to access it without having to drill into the menu. I recognize others might use other post options more frequently (like share or something), so it would be nice to make that configurable.

Thanks for a great app!! ๐Ÿ‘

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[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

My previous comment of praise got eaten by Lemmy. (draft saved, submitting comment, error) is that a sync bug or on the Lemmy side? I was excited that it at least saved a draft of the comment but it doesn't seem to be an option. Feature request?

The gist of my lost comment was that this app is great and I probably never would have found Boost had I come across this first. It's going to be a hard choice when boost finally comes out. Congratulations on a successful launch! I will be switching between this and summit for the time being

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Hey! Loving the app. One thing I'd appreciate is if it showed what instance you're on under or above the "Everything", "Local", and "Subscribed" text. It can be hard to tell the difference between accounts if I have them themed to look the same! For example,

  • Everything
  • lemm.ee

Or something like that

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[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Hey. Great work putting the app up so soon. There seems to be an issue every once in a while with loading content regardless of the origin Lemmy server. I'm guessing something on the API end. Is the API host specific instances (i.e. is the host of the sync API currently just the Lemmy.world instance)?

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[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Any chance there will be a separate Sync for Lemmy Pro app available? I'd prefer this method as I had with Sync for Reddit Pro instead of the in-app purchase.

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