[sebular]

Congratulations! Beautiful design, very simple and appealing. The onboarding flow filled me with optimism, which I appreciated.

That said, I bounced off at the pricing. The $30 lifetime price isn’t something I find inherently too expensive, but I need to see if the app works for me before committing to it. It was weird that if I went forward with the free trial it would automatically put me on the exorbitant $3/week price. That option was repellent and got me worried about forgetting to either cancel or make the purchase. Compounding the issue was uncertainty about whether I even _could_ make the lifetime purchase after accepting the free trial.

Then I lost momentum and started thinking about how I was about to drop $30 on an app that’s just some HN poster’s 4-month project, and I have no clue how crippled it will be if (when) you decide to shut down the API.

If you’re confident the app itself is habit-forming, I’d recommend just letting people use it for a couple weeks and then hitting them with the paywall. And when you’re asking for that kind of money and using the word “lifetime”, I’d describe how you’re going to guarantee that to the user, even if they’re the only person who ended up buying your app.

Edit: Now I’m stuck on the payment options screen with no way to delete my account. Not happy about that.

[chrismatheson]

I actually got stuck with a bug in the flow. "What drives you" I couldn't seem to move on from this step, no button visible (maybe my old device for factor (iPhone mini 12)

But I also would have bounced on the "free trial, auto payment after" I understand the thinking around them, but for me it's just not a pattern im ever going to opt into. It feel predatory, you will probably forget and then ill get some amount of "months" off you. Like gym memberships.

[chrismatheson]

FWIW I have a few app ideas that are about lifestyle / personal system. and i've thought about pricing strategies etc, specifically to balance "the Ick" with what I know are proven industry standards that Do maximise conversions & profit, and what I think is more personally palatable. (no real word experience though)

I would be much more likely to convert if the "trail" as months maybe years instead of days or weeks (this is a lifestyle thing after all, if customers find it genuinely useful and buy into the system for months then $30 a year is nothing)

OR

free-trial followed by locked out. No "automatically start billing"

[maghfoor]

Thank you for a thorough review. It's very helpful honestly. You raise some valid concerns I will make the following changes.

- I will add an option for the user to delete their account upon hitting the paywall if they don't want to continue. - I didn't want the app to be free to begin with as it doesn't attract serious users and also because I'm an indie maker and free users is not something that I can ultimately afford at this current stage. - You're right, I should have a way for the user to trial the app and then pay once instead of the trial being on the weekly subscription only.

As for guaranteeing lifetime access, a lot of web based products offer lifetime access and I guess it's just a matter of trusting the maker if they will support it. For my particular app I know that I've been involved in the productivity space for quite some years and only now making an app that suits my needs. I imagine myself using this for all the years to come and if I stop using it, it's self hosted on a server I own and I will keep it live forever. If the user doesn't trust that then that's completely fair and fine. No issues with that.

Lots of useful feedback, thanks again for the write up! Still building and learning and trying to be as genuine as possible.