this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
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Lemmy

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Subscription models for an app that’s not hosting anything is just the dev wanting a constant revenue stream, no matter how they try to word it. (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 1 year ago by spiritedpause@sh.itjust.works to c/lemmy@lemmy.ml
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Subscription models only make sense for an app/service that have recurring costs. In the case of Lemmy apps, the instances are the ones with recurring hosting costs, not the apps.

If an app doesn’t have recurring hosting costs, it only makes sense to have one up front payment and then maybe in app purchases to pay for new features going forward

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[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Well, there are recurring costs, such as:

  • App/Play store developer license - like $100/year, so not huge
  • development efforts to fix bugs, implement features; even just keeping up with Lemmy backend changes is a fair amount of work since it's constantly changing
  • many development tools require hosting, such as CI/CD, so even if it's 100% outside contributor driven, there are still costs

But those costs are pretty fixed.

Hosting an instance, however, is an order of magnitude or two more expensive. Instead of costing up to hundreds per year (not counting dev time), hosting tends to cost hundreds per month for larger instances.

So if people are continually coming to an app, I could see a fixed purchase price being different, and ads are probably enough to support it entirely on a free tier. An instance requires ongoing donations instead.

[–] example@reddthat.com 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

unless they changed it, play dev is a one time purchase, only apple takes a yearly fee.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

I thought Play was $25/year or something, but it's been years since I cared enough to check. If so, I guess for Android-only apps, it's much less of an issue.