Tap the account switcher in the top left corner and you should see the option.
See my comment for a screenshot. I don’t know why I can’t seem to post a screenshot in the body of post. Every time I try it gets removed.
That’s realllly steep for a single app.
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I also paid with my Google Opinion Rewards even though I didn’t use it, but this price is literally double what I’ve gained in a year. A bit greedy, innit?
Have you seen price growth in London (where Sync author lives) in the last couple of years?
And have you seen the prices of Jerboa, Connect, Liftoff and Thunder?
How’s that relevant?
$0.99 in 2014. Was definitely a steal for how much I used it
I paid €2.69 in 2017 xD
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As much as I browsed reddit throughout the day for the past 5 years…$20 seems like nothing. Hell I spend $10 a month of a few Patreons for ad free content.
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Why not both?
Hey if it’s not stopping you, more money to support the developer and signal more Lemmy content! I’m personally doing the $2 sub until Boost for Lemmy comes out and may switch. Dunno yet, may come back and buy Sync too.
It is but it also isn’t. I paid $5 for sync pro for reddit and have gotten literally thousands of hours out of it. $20 isn’t that significant in the grand scheme of things if you like the app.
Yeah, that’s insane. Also the experience IMHO is not supreme vs something like Summit. I don’t really understand the hype.
First actual full featured client, so timing is a huge advantage. Maybe we’ll see a price dip when Boost for Lemmy comes out.
I’m on the verge. Let’s be honest, it’s fucking expensive. Where I live it’s pretty much an entire day’s worth of work to
buy this appremove ads. I understand LJ wanting to be paid for his work, but this steep pricing seems like he doesn’t believe in Lemmy and just wants to capitalise on it before it eventually goes to shit. Let me just point out greed was what originally drived us all off reddit.Well to make it bearable, set your DNS to an adblocking like
dns.aguard-dns.comand the ads will just be blank cuz they’re blocked.I have adaway, I don’t see them anyway (or perhaps because I’m in EU? Apparently revoking tracking permission removes ads?)
I’m doing the ultra at about $23 cdn per year. $2 a month for an app I use about 300 times a day for years seems like a good deal.
I’m not going to argue with what you’re happy to pay, I’m just curious why you are doing the math based on how much you use it instead of some other metric like the amount of labour it took to produce or maybe how much ad revenue you need to replace?
I see $23/year for a few years equaling the cost of outright owning a AAA video game (that will receive support and updates for years to follow too) that took millions of dollars and many thousands of man-hours to produce and it doesn’t add up…
These triple a games are expected to be sold in the millions. $20 is about enough for one hour of works in terms of labour. This times expected sales, which are on the thousands at max for Lemmy, and you got what it takes to develop an app like this.
I agree $20 isn’t all that much on its own (for a developer it’s likely only a third of an hour really) but that’s kind of the point. One person’s full-time development wage is less than that of 30 people, so why charge just as much just because the audience is much smaller? It seems what you’re saying is that Sync isn’t currently viable and needs to be over priced (for a comparable product) to survive.
Also, wouldn’t Sync be the equivalent of an indie game in this comparison? Why don’t those games have to charge more than the AAA games to make up for the smaller customer base?
I can turn it back around on you and say why do you think the worth is detached from how much usage it gets from its users? If anything something we use and enjoy using should be getting more rather than a one off AAA game we’ll enjoy for 20 hours one month.
There’s a resource and human effort cost that is the backing behind the pricing of most things. I’m actually having a very difficult time thinking of something that’s priced strictly based on the time+enjoyment metric without factoring labour+material at all outside of maybe famous works or art or other things that are “valuable” simply because they are rare. Are you able to provide an example of something commonly sold that would follow the time+enjoyment pricing scheme to help me wrap my head it?
A cruise and a staycation don’t cost the same even if they’re for the same duration, even if you get sick on the cruise and have to cut the trip short. It feels like you’re saying “I actually really enjoy the staycation, and even though more resources go into a cruise, I’ll gladly pay more to stay at home then go on the cruise” and that can’t possibly be what you’re saying…
Boy do I have some stuff to sell you then! How much do you happen to enjoy air would you say?
Haha, he down voted you.
That comment was actually meant to be to someone else lol. Oh well, wanna join my promising business opportunity? This thread has a bunch of potential
suckerscustomers
I bet if they sold a version called Sync-Budget for $4 they’d sell more than five times the amount than Sync-Ultimate.
Life in London is very very expensive, it’s one of the most expensive cities in the world. And Sync author lives in London. I live in London myself and I can see his price as fair, lol.
Could you give me a comparison by telling me the price in baguettes?
Baguettes are banned since Brexit.
But charging London prices for people who don’t live in London isn’t really very equitable either
No one is forcing you to pay.
Yeah, nah. That’s too pricey to remove ads for a single app.
You’re not paying to remove ads. You’re supporting the development and making it worthwhile for the developer to continue to create the app.
That it happens to remove ads is just a side benefit. You can remove ads from all apps using a VPN based ad blocker anyway (on android).
I paid €2.51 to remove ads on Sync for Reddit. I would have spent maybe a tenner but it’s over €20 for the Lemmy app. As much as I love Sync, that’s a big nope from me.
Remember, Lemmy has a lot less active users than Reddit. Even if ALL active Lemmy users on Lemmy.world buy the app at its original $2 price, it’s still not enough to sustain full time development. Both higher one time purchase price and subscription is needed for the app’s survival, even then I’m still not sure if it’s enough for the dev to sustain themselves. I’m getting the ultra subscription for this reason because I don’t want the app to go away, and I encourage people that really like the app to do so as well.
The userbase of Reddit is over 10x higher.
That’s quite the understatement. 400 million vs 60,000 monthly active users.
But why male models?
I picked 10 cause the price was about 10x higher.
Monthly active users aren’t counted the same. Lemmy only counts people who post or comment. Still a big difference, but 60,000 is not the entire userbase of Lemmy.
No, we’re paying to remove ads. And $26 CDN to remove ads feels really high when I paid $3.69 to remove ads in Boost and $4.49 to remove ads in Relay in 2019.
I like how you bothered to speak of supporting the dev yet mentioned how to stop ads with a VPN based blocker.
Yes it is steep for me in Quebec with taxes it is 31 $ . But I had the option to use 20$ in google play credits from Google rewards. 11$ is an ok deal. Remember that sync is the first Lemmy app from former Reddit devs and that the developer worked really hard to release it.
I am aware of the scenario. Sync for Lemmy is not just relaunching into a fresh world here. The dev shouldn’t come in with unreasonable pricing. Not when we can use very nice apps such as Connect instead for free, and ad free.
Paying to remove ads is supporting the dev. This is doubly true when you can get no ads without paying (though sync will still have blank spots where the ads were supposed to go).
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It’s a lifetime option. They may well make $20 over the next 10 years.
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You can keep sync when you get a new phone. It goes with your google account, it’s what the “restore purchases” option is for during the setup.
It’s tied to your Google account, not the phone.
Why does that matter? I’ve replaced my phone 4 times so since I bought sync for reddit, still used the same 7 dollar purchase to the end.
Yes we are paying to remove ads.
If people want to keep supporting the dev, just buy the subscription or check if he has a donations link. But this purchase is just what it says: Remove Ads.
You’re like, really smart… Nothing gets past you!
Why not support a FOSS, then?
Sure, but if you’re someone who wants sync specifically (say, if you used it for reddit), then you need to support it if you want it to stay in development.
It’s just really weird to pay twenty dollars to not have ads on a platform that doesn’t inherently have ads - a platform that has been purposefully designed to avoid the needs for ads or the trappings of capitalism. To voluntarily reinfect yourself into that ecosystem seems at best weird, and at worst sort of a violation of what the fediverse is about.
I understand the sentiment. Most devs that release Lemmy apps do so as a side projects. They don’t make money doing it. In fact, they actually losing money and time to work on their side projects. It’s actually amazing how many apps we now have in just a short time.
That being said, Sync developer is one of a few dev who work on a lemmy app full time. This results in higher quality app, even though it’s still in beta right now. But since he’s literally doing this for a living, he’ll need to make some money to continue his work. People was begging for him to make an app for Lemmy, and he actually does it. Whether he’ll continue doing this or not will depends on whether he can make a living or not. And since the market for Lemmy apps is so small, there is no other choice but to charge a higher price to make the calculus works. For a lot of people that rooting for him, paying $20 or $17/year is no brainer if it means they get to have their favorite app working on Lemmy.
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Sync isn’t the type of app that needs to be worked on full time. It’s an alternate interface of an existing website.
This price is too steep and I will either wait for it to go down or switch to another app when they become more full featured.
So I guess any new updates and features will just release on their own, huh?
The thing that set Sync and Apollo apart from a horde of other 3rd party reddit client apps was due to both dev was working full time on their app, and the quality of those apps prove it. The sync dev has been working full time on lemmy app in the past few weeks, and we can already see how good the app is compared o other lemmy apps.
If Apollo dev were also making a lemmy app, the price would be more or less the same simply due to small lemmy user base. The economy of scale simply is not there yet. The only way those devs can lower the price and still be able to sustain themselves is if lemmy gain a whole lot more total active users.
If there’s no other choice why is it the only app making that choice? I also don’t think that proprietary closed, profit incentivized systems are inherently better. The kbin PWA app is beyond sufficient.
I’m not saying there is no other choice. Lemmy core devs are paid by a grant to work on Lemmy full time for example. Other apps developers may have a different funding model (donation, or even out of their own pocket), but for Sync, the dev is a commercial app developer so he does what he do best: making a paid app.
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This platform needs money to keep going. If donations do not cover expenses, it will either find funding or just close. So, it may end up using “trappings of capitalism”.
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The market will definitely speak on this one since the platform itself isn’t monetized and there are tons of other options for those who don’t want to pay that much. If it ends up not being workable, it won’t be workable, and the model will need to adapt or fold.
I’d never pay that much for a phone app, personally, especially on android, because I’ve had apps that change dramatically to the point I no longer like/can use them. It’s a bit better on iOS because the devices are supported a lot longer with OS updates (literally the reason I switched after a lifetime with android flexibility - sick of apps not working and my phones not being supported officially for more than 2 years).
This isn’t to say I won’t pay for things I want and support - I did pay for a Plex lifetime subscription like 9 years ago ($100, it’s 120 now, and a large amount of paying for it is app access, but also managed home users so my close friends/family can be logged in to my account directly without impacting me in any way) because the value was well worth it after subscribing month to month to test it and using the free version for several years prior. The value for what I paid has increased substantially with new features and just simple longevity. The model seems to work well enough for what they provide, both to them and to their users. I can swap to another self-host if it falls apart, but in the 12 or so years I’ve been using it, only a small number of changes have negatively impacted me, and only slightly (tho I paid early, so if features were paywalled after being free, I’m not aware of it, tho they have made some previously paid things free, like plexamp). I can skip server updates and roll them back easily if it stops working with my OS, and my users wouldn’t know the difference for a long time.
This tends not to be the case with mobile apps because devices are constantly changing, and side-loading apks can be a challenge for your average person. It’s a lot less static overall than pc hardware, so app-breaking updates on older mobile hardware are way way more likely. I can’t afford new phones all the time, so that’s a problem to me.
I’m looking at the relative useful lifecycle of the software. If I can get maybe a couple years before my OS version isn’t properly supported to run the app anymore, and it’s difficult to fix without upgrading hardware or rooting and flashing (not something everyone can or wants to do), I probably don’t want it. I turned off automatic app updates for years because of this issue, but they stop working after a while anyway.
I was talking about servers, not client apps.
Regarding the app, yes, $20 is too expensive for just turning off ads. Moon Reader Pro asks $8 for an ad-free experience, and yet I think it’s a bit too much for me. But it’s a market, and demand will correct the price. If nobody pays $20 to disable ads, the devs can consider reducing the price, at least temporarily. So I don’t see any problems here.
As for totally free apps, I consider them as a sort of gift. Some people are giving away the results of their labor for free, maybe because it’s their hobby, or because of ideology, but definitely because they have spare time to work on their apps. But it can change, and active development can stop. The only thing able to motivate them to continue the work is a profit, allowing them to spend some time without sacrificing anything else. We can end up with ads, subscriptions, single-time payments, or maybe just donations. I think it’s inevitable for active projects.
Last thread was complaints of not wanting subscriptions this thread is complaints of too expensive 🤷. By all means keep the ads or use another app. Imo it’s not super surprising to be pricey when it’s a one time purchase instead of the subscription.
Welcome to the internet
“We want this”
“No not like that”
Sync is good enough to get 20 bucks easily. If I wasn’t on iPhone, I would immediately.
But it wasn’t before. You can’t expect to turn around and say “the thing that cost you 30$ a month ago is now 100$” and not expect to piss off a lot of people. I bought that reddit lifetime at that price, I have zero intentions of spending 100$ for a site that is still in it’s infancy
Having paid $6 for reddit sync probably over a decade ago while the dev has maintained and improved the app over those years with no additional money from me, I think I got a pretty good deal. It’s definitely a calculation to make but I don’t think $20 would have been unreasonable a decade ago and I don’t really think it is now. Maybe also dont forget to put some blame on reddit, the dev got fucked there and has to rebuild the customer base that would have included recurring payment customers (unlike me).
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If the subscription was $200/year, would you consider $250 for lifetime to be a deal?
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God forbid you pay $20 once to support the dev and for an app you’ll use 1-2 hours a day for potentially the rest of your life…yet you’ll pay $10 for a streaming service you’ll never touch for months on end…
My man, I’m not using lemmy 2 hours a day every day for 60 something years
Everyone’s usage is different…but I’m sure many people used Sync for Reddit as much since it was out.
This is why subscriptions are becoming the norm
How is the amount of time you spend on a app a consideration for the price? Using Sync more doesn’t cost the dev any more so not sure why they would be factored into it. It feels like you’re conflating personal value with cost.
Jesus, dude! It’s a one-time payment for lifetime of no adds! Plus you support the developer.
People are spoiled.
Quite the opposite. I already block ads, I want to support the developer. But I don’t want a subscription nor do I want to pay a huge fee for one app. I use a lot of apps and it’s not feasible to pay that much for each one.
$33.99 AUD. I guess I’ll just wait for Boost.
Any news when it will be published?
Why am I seeing $169.99 AUD?
I think that’s the price for the lifetime subscription. The one time payment to remove ads it’s about $20.
For people who REALLY love the app?
22EUR
Yall not have liftoff in the way down under?
That’s so aggressive just to remove ads. I get it that devs need to eat but holy shit man.
I think people (me included) have a very poor sense of what apps are worth.
$20 for an app you use nearly every day for years is unthinkable.
$20 for a single decent meal at a restaurant is fine.
Seems odd to me that anyone should think $20 spent on an excellent app is too much.
I think the issue is that Lemmy is still developing and we don’t know what it’s going to look like even 6 months from now. $20 for unlimited access isn’t bad at all if you know you’ll get your money’s worth. I’m still hesitant with Lemmy because there are features that it lacks. I’m optimistic that they will be added, but I can’t be sure.
Same here but after 6 years of using Sync I know what I get out of Sync, my hesitation is only in regard to the Lemmy project itself.
Except for the years of development the dev has a track record for developing the same thing but for reddit. /s
I don’t think the hesitation is with the developer of Sync. I think he is worried about the sustained success from Lemmy. If people keep staying active, more people will join. But it could also fade away quickly (I hope not).
Hasn’t the Lemmy dev been working on it for like 3 years straight regardless of how many people were using it? Now that active users are at an all time high it seems unlikely that he would just drop it
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I have a hard time justifying $20 for a mobile app. I don’t think I’ve spent more than $5.99 on an app and I used play rewards money so it wasn’t even mine.
I’ve paid 10 for a beer, so 2 beers?
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I think people (me included) have a very poor sense of what apps are worth.
Apps, like literally everything else, are worth what people are willing to pay for them.
It’s okay… whiners on this thread will spend $20 for two Starbucks drinks which last you minutes of taste enjoyment…but browse Sync everyday and complain $20 for life is too much…
Not trying to say that 20 is a lot, but 10$ coffee sounds like im not drinking coffee
Just one developer.
Sync was Reddit for me and I didn’t even bat an eye about buying pro at the time (around 3€ I think).
Paying 23€ for ad removal is just being greedy right now, I really want to support the dev but this is just too much.
That’s lifetime for an awesome app made by an independent developer. And its being updated regularly. Honestly if I wasn’t broke I wouldn’t mind paying it. That’s like 2 pizzas
I know it’s “just two pizzas” the problem is everyone and their uncle wants two pizzas… Everywhere we turn people are extracting us for every cent at some point you’ve gotta draw lines.
I’ve already cancelled most subscriptions.
Sync lemmy is simply too much.
Compare it to nzb360, one OF THE BEST apps out there, and he’s like half the price.
Lifetime should be 9.99 MAX, then make lower tiers so people can still support the dev.
Maybe we all are just poor
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It should be like $5
The number of users in lemmy is so low compared to reddit. Those who buy this app are way less here. In reddit there were 100k+ downloads. Here it is not even going to be half of it. So price change can be justified.
One point I like to say is yeah this price is too high for some third world countries. Region based pricing should be there. 20$ here is 10% of my income (entry level job). So it will take time for me to buy the app. Until then i support the ad driven model. I am getting far better user experience with this app than all other lemmy apps I have tried.
That is true, however this is not really relevant for buying a product. And an app that relies on ads where you can buy premium for $20 is just that in my eyes, a commercial product, and that is fine. But dividing the costs between all uses to etimate a price is weird to me, that’s not how market works and ignores offer and demand. This argument is nothing a potential buyer would consider when buying an app. And $20 is a lot of money especially in todays tike, I don’t think I have seen a price like that apart from really big commercial apps. But yeah if you want to support, do that, but consider spending money to your instance instead and using one of the other great apps available.
I’ll be throwing some money to sync and some money to my instance.
If it was $5 I’d buy, but $20, yeesh.
Elaborate
They do not value other people’s time and also do not realize that everything on the internet is free because of advertising
It’s like 1/2 of the monthly entry level income in my 3rd world country.
Well, the author lives in London and £19 he asks for is like one meal in London.
i can feed myself for way less then that in the US. is there THAT big of a discrepancy, or do you mean eating out?
After a trip to the UK last month, grocery stores are VERY cheap compared to what the US pays. Eating out is crazy expensive though.
There was some talk on Discord about making the pricing regional, no idea on timeline though. But it does not sound reasonable if that’s half a monthly entry salary for you!
Just got the update and… Yeah, it’s almost $100 on my currency. I’m not sure if I ever saw an app this expensive before, not that I buy a lot of apps, but still. Love the app and lj has always been awesome, but will have to pass :(
$100 is a lifetime purchase of all the fancy features or whatever, 20 is just the one time purchase to remove ads
Sync isn’t really the right fit for my needs/preferences, but I thought it’d be worthwhile to clarify
That one is $500, $100 is just to remove ads. It’s not in dollars for me.
Good lord, what? Can you post a screenshot?
Sure
It looks like that 97.99 is 20 US dollars so that seems right.
Yep, but even then it’s still kinda out of our reality here.
Triste ser brasileiro
Né? Kkkkk
Eu ia pagar pq usei muito no reddit e o dev é gente boa, mas pesado demais 100zão
Sim mano, lembro que paguei menos de 30 reais na versão dev do sync for reddit 😢
Well, this is how it’s for my currency.
I’m seeing it as $100 as well.
$100 is a lifetime purchase of all the fancy features or whatever, 20 is just the one time purchase to remove ads
Sync isn’t really the right fit for my needs/preferences, but I thought it’d be worthwhile to clarify
Ah, thank you for clearing that up for me. Makes sense now.
Yup, same here. I was ready to pay something around 10 to 20USD, but in no way am I ever paying close to 100USD in a mobile app like Sync.
Completely bonkers!
₹9900 for lifetime ultra, this is expensive. Entry level smartphones that the majority of Indians use costs much less than that.
I will stick to connect and keep buying kuro some coffee every 2 3 months
It is not friendly to regional pricing. Can’t really blame the dev since their own bill are probably in dollars, but I think I’ll pass myself as it is fairly expensive for an app here. I could buy like 3 or 4 full video games for the price.
it was 12.99 for a hot second if you grabbed it when it first went live. I was thinking about it, but then saw it went to 19.99 just recently. Imma gonna wait.
Yeah I was gonna grab it at 12.99 but then it got changed. I honestly thought it was gonna be 9.99 but oh well
An hour ago I would have sworn it was $16.99. I had to edit a bunch of comments where I told people the price.
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I saw that, balked a bit and then went eh whatever i like sync so i bought it. I would have reacted differently at $20.
way too expensive.
also no regional pricing?
I would never pay more then 8-10$ for a full game, let alone 20$ for lack of random black rectangles in a free app.There seems to be regional pricing. At least in Europe
ah, right my fault.
apparently just having an American google account on your device forces all prices to be in usd.
installing from the play store web page remotely should make the app show the correct prices, but i haven’t tried that yet.
I think you are bit stingy then. Or maybe you can’t afford it I guess. But 8 dollars is nothing these days. It’s a burger.
burger is 2-3$ here, around 1-1.5$ for a McDonald’s cheeseburger (the cheapest option in the menu), i would rather buy like 10-15 burgers for that price.
Where is here? I’m jealous :) (of the mcd prices, don’t know about the rest)
Yeah sorry, math is hard for my brain right now appearently… :)
I paid to remove the ads. I want to support the developer and this is the best Reddit app I used as well.
Having said that, this is a really steep price tbh and will be a hard sell for my friends. I am loyal to Sync and still see value in this price since I use it so much. But it really is steep.
The whole pricing debate is so exhausting. Anybody who feels $20 is too steep for an app they might use for the next decade is welcome to their opinion, but they’ll never have the same perspective as those of us who enjoyed a decade of improvements to Sync for Reddit. LJ is a class act, Sync is leagues ahead of all other 3PAs, and I’m happy to pay my share.
There are so many FOSS & alternative options. LJ is dedicating his full attention to a niche platform and has set up a subscription model that allows this project to remain sustainable for him & his team (yes, team). Feel free to go with any other option, but let’s not pretend that Sync is the antichrist for being the first Lemmy 3PA developer that is prioritizing sustainability after a decade of supporting users who paid $2
too steep for an app they might use for the next decade
Lemmy is still a niche and who knows what will happen in a decade
Even without it being a decade, people happily spend $20 to get 2 drinks at a bar, go see one movie, get one game (or one third of a AAA game), eat one meal at a restaurant, pay for parking once, or on a trinket or toy that looks neat on their desk.
Acting like $20 is steep for software is, imo, part of the reason we end up in this ad-supported model in the first place. A lot of people don’t attribute the actual challenge of writing software and the value they get out of it because it’s so abstract to them.
The Fediverse is still a pretty big experiment. The first thing I thought when I saw that Ultra lifetime price was if Lemmy would even still be as relevant as it is today (which isn’t that high of a bar, mind you) in 5.5 years—the amount of time it would take for the lifetime purchase to pay off as a better deal than the yearly subscription.
Not only that, but it truly is a front end for Lemmy; not the service itself. I get that the dev has bills to pay and I guess that this is their only hustle (?), but $100 is a bit of an unreasonable ask in my opinion. If I were rich, I’d buy it. But I’m not, so there you go.
Not that anyone should care, but personally I’m waiting to see what Boost does, as that was what I used back in Reddit.
Exactly my point :) This platform is unstable & the userbase isn’t dependable, especially so in the context of 3PA customers
How do you make this project viable/sustainable? Price it appropriately. I’ve already completed one decade with LJ & Sync, so I’m happy to bank on this app. And if it doesn’t, that’s the gamble - nobody is forced to agree, but it’d be odd for anyone to argue Sync should be priced in accordance with any expectation that the platform dies in the next year or so.
Paid. Haven’t actually seen any ads. The only complaint that I have, is that u/spez doesn’t get a notification, with a comment on the value of building brand loyalty through respect and support of your user base.
TWENTY DOLLARS ??? bro $20 for an ad-free version of an app is nuts
Twenty dollars one time in a world of subscriptions for an app you use hours a day really isn’t that bad. Think how much you spend on other luxuries in your day to day and $20 doesn’t get you that much.
I also spend my days drinking tap water and breathing air. You can’t say that because you use something every day that you have to pay an inflated price for it. Other developers also spend a lot of time on their apps and don’t ask these absurd prices.
I thought it was $20 for a year and $99 for lifetime?
The yearly fee includes extra features
The $99 is for sync ultra with ad free and extra services. For $20 you only get ad free. You can also subscribe to sync ultra for $20 per year.
Sync ultra provides services like an online translation that have to be paid by the developer. Thus the subscription.
