My thinking is pretty simple: most people will probably choose the basic 2-device plan, which works out to about $0.85 per month. For an app like this, I think that is a reasonable price.
Another reason is that a lot of Mac apps charge a one-time fee upfront, but then require paid upgrades later. In practice, that often ends up being similar to paying for a few years of ongoing support anyway.
I also think a low-cost subscription sets a clearer expectation that the app will continue to be maintained and kept working as macOS changes. For software like this, where OS updates can easily break things, that felt like the more honest model.
> For an app like this, I think that’s a reasonable price.
Except that it’s not a price, it’s an access fee, and those are very different. If it were a price I’d have the thing I paid for — a binary to use as a like. Instead what I have is a token that you can revoke at any time for any reason, including you getting hit by a car or getting bored with the app.
> a low-cost subscription sets a clearer expectation that the app will continue to be maintained …
Forgive the bluntness, but it does no such thing. This app just launched. No one has reason to believe the little business behind it will still exist in 12 months. Death rate for products like this is very high. A subscription from me is a bet that you will still be around in a year, and you have zero track record.
I've taken the feedback here and added a perpetual personal license for 2 devices at $40 - it includes 2 years of updates and the app will keep on working after that.
I just hate managing subscriptions.
If you gave me the option to require manual subscription renewal, rather than auto-renewal, I would 100% buy this right now. Basically allow me to purchase for 1 year then click a button to confirm that I'm still getting value out of the product. If I don't click that button then you should assume I'm no longer interested and cancel my subscription.
(I don't like using my mac but sometimes I have to use it for work, and I wish I had this.)
Consumer purchase behavior is highly impulsive and irrational. Businesses are very rational and like subs, but for many people, subscription fatigue is a real thing. Make the lifetime option 3-10x the annual rate; done. People will buy it. In my app I set it at 3x (but my annual sub is quite high; 6/mo, 30/y or 100 lifetime) but other apps, like Halide, have 12/y or 80 lifetime last I checked.
You get guaranteed revenue, and you get it upfront - better for cashflow. And you can always tell customers “if you don’t like subs buy the lifetime option”.
This is correct. It’s quite possible to both satisfy more customers and work within your constraints.
Eg $30 bucks lifetime would be nice. You could put it in small print below the main pricing to avoid decision fatigue and keep things streamlined for subs.
Often those early adopters appreciate and become advocates. Subs fatigue is a real thing
A lot of consumer spending comes from motivation. Purchase intents come in burts, an "alright I'm gonna commit, I'm gonna do this" moment. As a consumer app developer, you really need to understand that. Some of your users might use your annual sub for five years, some only for one, some for two. If your average lifetime is 2.5 years, a lifetime price that's 3x the sub price gives you more revenue - and revenue upfront - than a sub. Subs are fantastic because they give you predictable recurring revenue, which is worth a lot in the long run (which is why Wikipedia prefers monthly donations instead of larger one-time sums, for example), but if you're getting started, cash flow is everything.
Consider how much software and goods you bought that you thought you were gonna use but then never touched. The $1000 music software bundle from Native Instruments you bought because you thought it would finally bring you to make music? That guitar you bought because you really thought you'd play it? The home gym equipment so you'd finally do some sports? These purchases came from a commitment "I'm gonna do it", and statistically speaking, most people don't follow through with this commitment. A monthly payment for these things would've been much, much cheaper for them. "Oh, but if I own it I can always pick it up again", you say? Who's stopping you from resubscribing if you want to? It's purely emotional.
There are tons of books on purchase psychology; this applies all the way to owning vs renting a flat.
The mistake many developers make is not factoring in how highly people value perceived security of one-time purchases. Offer a lifetime option, and price it accordingly. It's much easier to upsell people while they already have a purchase intent than to resell them your app every year when the new subscription bill comes in. Even if, statistically speaking, it would be much cheaper for most of your users to choose the annual subscription, you will end up with happier users if you offer an expensive lifetime option, and you will end up with more cash in your company. Everyone wins.
For a tool people come to depend on for their daily computing needs, this is wildly pessimistic. Look how many people use Unix shell tools on a daily basis. Some of that stuff is 60 years old! Imagine paying a subscription for 60 years to use bash.
Low cost subscriptions as the only options can also give multiple vibes as well. The one you highighlight is, a somewhat optimistic, "the publisher is fair with this price and I only need to pay for however much I actually use".
Another valid takeaway is basically the opposite "It's not clear if the publisher is committed to this software. The price is so low and the best guarantee they want to give is it'll be supported 1 year from now - are they really confident in the product"? Worse yet, you don't give any guarantees about price more than an hour out in your current subscription, so the pessimistic thought could just be "It's fair enough now but do I really want to get used to it for a year and then the price is jacked up by then?" (this can be solved with more than a non-subscription option. E.g. longer term subscriptions, only if you truly are trying to advertise "years of support to come" rather than "support for the next year and then we'll see").
Even in the case one wants to start/stick with the subscription having a lifetime and/or versioned option only adds more to all of the things you listed as reasons for offering a subscription alone. E.g. seeing that "lifetime is equal to at least x years" or "y year term subscription" and then the user going with the 1 year subscription is strictly better signaling to them than just having a 1 year subscription.
Not people who are outraged by that concept.
But the main reason I wouldn't install it despite being happy customizing linux is that it's yet another black box I need to trust and that knows way too much. It's really insane how much you need to compromise your security on macos to have a decent developer experience.
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OP here - based on the feedback, I’ve switched boringBar to a perpetual license for personal use: https://boringbar.app
It’s now $40 for 2 devices and includes 2 years of updates. After that, you can keep using the version you have, or choose to pay for updates again later.
For businesses, I’m keeping the existing annual pricing.
A lot of the comments on pricing were fair, and I appreciate people being direct about it. I still care a lot about long-term maintenance for an app like this, but I think this is a better balance.
There is a model that worked for decades: If you spent a _significant_ amount of work enhancing an existing tool you'd release a new major version. The would be a discount for license holders of the old version. Why reinvent the world over and over again?
Not saying that was OPs motivation but that's obviously why the shift happened.
I’m not sure OP should have capitulated. Someone who loves this tool will probably gladly pay more.
Is it easier to convince one person to pay $100 or 100 people to pay $1?
Developers (or power users for that matter) aren't really known to be generous with their personal money for recurring software fees. But this is the primary target group. I want value in return for my money. If you have monthly recurring costs then I can understand the monthly fee. If not then it's a rip-off.
Can you try? Of course. But I guess I'm not the only one who has been pushed away from that particular software product. Even if it's good I will not give it another try. First impressions count.
People will replicate it, sure, but supporting it regularly is another thing. I guess the majority wanted a perpetual license - so it's a win for the masses.
defensibility nowadays is app support and development. the more work you pour into it the more defensible it will be.
I personally would gladly pay to have app constantly polished and improved. What I would not use is some vibe-coded alternative that was slopped with AI in a day and pushed to github with a tweet "i made a free X alternative" and then abandoned.
I'm not paying $40 for a taskbar replacement. And not for two years of updates and a two device limit on top.
Maybe if it was $10, I could consider it. Prices for macOS apps are insane in my opinion. Everyone wants to charge yearly or every two years now too.
For example, I am rolling my own window manager (that needs some much needed TLC). I ditched Alfred for Spotlight. Though Alfred is better, I will survive just fine. And the list goes on.
I am not trying to take a dig at the OP. I am sure he or she put effort into this application. But I am genuinely curious -- does anybody actually need this software? Cmd+Tab, a decent window manager, and Spotlight would solve the same problems for free.
It costs $99 a year just to be able to write Mac apps at all.
Any sort of buy-once app on macOS is unsustainable to the developer. They are paying Apple $99 a year forever.
If you want cheap/free apps get off of Apple’s ecosystem and switch to Linux.
$99 costs publishing apps for profit.
Anyone can compile and run for free.
but isn't that it?
Personally, I dare not replace the Dock with Windows-style task bar for fear that my OLED display might have burn-in on it. Yet, when I need an alternative, I would rather make an APP for my own.
At home, I have a Mac Studio[0] set up in my office with my music stuff, and I'm writing this on my MacBoor Air[1] here on my lap in the living room. I also have a work laptop, although it's safely tucked away in my backback right now. My wife has an MBA, too, but that's hers and I don't mess with it. So I'm elbow-deep in Macs that are used solely by me, and I bounce between them regularly.
The 2-device limit is a dealbreaker for me. It's where I stop reading. I don't care if it cures cancer: I won't buy an app that makes me pick and choose which of the devices in my care I can use it on. I'm sympathetic to why vendors pick that limit. I get that you don't want me to buy a single license and spread it around my friends and work circles. That's completely reasonable and understandable. And yet, it completely breaks my use case. I bet I'm far from alone in this.
[0]A previous job let me keep it when I left.
[1]I bought to hack on personal projects instead of using [0], which was work-owned at the time.
I'm not about to abuse my OmniFocus licenses, even though I could. They sold me a great product at a reasonable price, with permission to throw a copy on everything I own so I can use it no matter which chair I'm sitting at. They trust and respect me, and I trust and respect them.
Old guard will say what they will about software licensing but at the end of the day it’s all the same.
But hey, the masses have spoken - and a perpetual license it is. Vox populi, vox dei.
For this particular situation, your risk probably isn't that people will stop paying. It's more likely that people like it enough that a free alternative pops up (it's not so different from rectangle and alttab.) You're probably better off taking the money up front.
I don't have a problem with paying subscriptions, I have a problem with the subscription list itself becoming untenable.
Users get certainty, and you still have a clear path to future revenue when that window expires.
Subscription makes a lot more sense once you’re in cloud/collaborative territory which we've just entered. Sounds like you landed in a good place with this split.
Will be trying out DB Pro again in the near future!
If you'd open source it then there is at least the chance of gaining a community. And you'd be giving back to the community that you have benefitted from for decades.
Some visibility into the roadmap and operations (an anonymous LLC doesn't really say "Trust") is needed for me to feel good about typing my credit card number into the form.
A subscription for a menu bar, though, kills it for me. I have apps on Macs that are over 20 years old. Some of those companies don’t exist anymore. I’m not going to risk paying $100 for a decade of your app and hope that your company, or your goodwill, stays around that long.