As much fun as Sync is (and while I appreciate creators want to get paid)…
We’re talking like $15-30(!). That’s steep for a phone app. All this money stuff is pushing me back to Connect and Jerboa.
I wish Sync well. But I think I’m done with it already.
Voyager is fantastic IMO. wefwef.app , it is a web app, it will even put am icon for itself on your phone so it feels just like a regular app. Works really great, and is really fast.
Voyager is also available at m.lemmy.world since I see you are using lemmy.world
Interesting, I had no idea, thanks!
What do you mean? Is there a distinction between lemmy.world and m.lemmy.world?
It’s also available in the Android Play Store and will be on the iOS App Store soon.
Ditto. I used to be a big Sync fan and used it for years as my primary mobile client for Reddit until 8-10 months or so ago when the dev did a ‘fuck off and be unable to be contacted while something in the app breaks’ break, which led to a bunch of ads appearing despite paying for no ads (and according to people on the subreddit at the time it was not a one time occurrence lol). I switched that day to Boost and didn’t go back, but I was looking forward to trying out Sync for Lemmy when it released.
All the privacy and pricing concerns the last 24 hours have brought forth does not make me wanna even touch the app lol. I’m not paying that much money to fucking browse a glorified forum on my phone (specially when there’s many other options).
Yes.
There are a lot of other apps for Lemmy. Some are not as polished as Sync – but some are. And none (that I know of, on Android) are ad supported. Most are open source and 100% free.
This is a money grab. People were so excited for Sync that they don’t want to call it a money grab. But that’s what it is.
🙄 it’s a small dev, who got shut out of the previous customer base they’d built up, and now has to rebuild with fewer customers (and fewer potential customers at least short term).
If your job lost 70% of its customers, I bet you’d be begging your boss to raise prices to avoid a 70% pay cut.
It’s not a money grab. It drives me crazy how much stuff people say is a “money grab”, “theft”, “a scam”, “predatory”, etc. Asking for money isn’t malicious, neither is asking for more money than you personally think is reasonable/makes sense for your finances, and neither is offering a freemium ad supported app (which is better than nothing if you’re not willing to pay with money).
Edit: and sorry if that sounds overly aggressive, but you definitely struck a nerve/peeve as of late. It just seems like everyone wants to be as dramatic as possible lately.
I see your point. And you don’t deserve to be down voted, as it’s reasonable.
I do think he’s pricing it a bit steep for what the market can bear. Maybe not. I hope he gets as much as possible. I just know that I am priced out and will continue to use Connect.
I’m sorry to hear that you’re priced out, and I think it’s fine to give pricing feedback like that. I just am sick of everything being “outrage” where someone “dares” to try to make some money in exchange for their effort.
I both wish you a better financial situation and that a shorter term compromise arrives where you can afford the app, or that you continue to be satisfied with Connect. One of the beauties of the fediverse is that it’s not an all or nothing thing, there are other clients and other ways to support folks and the community (even just being a friendly person, so props there).
If your job lost 70% of its customers, I bet you’d be begging your boss to raise prices to avoid a 70% pay cut.
doing so will result in losing the remaining 30%
That’s a farce; it happens all the time, revenue stops increasing from growing the customer base, so the prices are raised on the existing customer base to cover costs and keep things operational. Why do you think Netflix still isn’t $8.99, and password sharing is no longer permitted?
If you definitely know you can’t make enough money on 30% of 1,000,000 people, but you can make enough money charging 10% of 1,000,000 people a higher rate, you’re going to do that … because it’s your only option. There are diminishing returns to picking up new customers with lower prices.
I agree. While $20 could still be seen as reasonable - even though making it one of the more expensive apps, thigh I’m willing to go for it if Sync continues development -, the asking price of $100 for the lifetime ultra is insane. I’m not aware of any other app that is this expensive. Of course, you could argue there’s subscription apps out there that don’t even have a lifetime model - e.g. Adobe, Microsoft Office -, But these provide considerably more value as well and are huge corporations.
My feeling is - and I don’t have facts to prove it - that the developers of the large reddit apps (esp. Apollo) simply became used to the money making machine and want to squeeze as much as possible out of it.
While in the end it is entirely up to them, as there’s open source and free alternatives out there, I’m not too fond of this behavior.
I think that asking to be paid for your work is totally fine (albeit I myself made my lemmy app completely free and opensource, simply because its just my hobby project), but its a rather different story when you provide app for open source, nonprofit venture-free platform and start to inject ads and trackers into it. Its goes against the entire idea of free decentralised platform and makes it closer to profit-focused app like reddit/threads/etc imo
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Not the person you replied to but I don’t evaluate app prices in a vacuum. First I think of what paying actually gets me (e.g. no ads), then I consider how it compares to alternatives both free and paid. A paid app has to provide some value over a free app and an expensive app has to provide some value over cheaper apps. Furthermore if an app is priced such that I can buy 3-4 other apps while also being more expensive than any individual apps I’ve previously purchased then it gives me some pause.
I would pay extra to not have to hear people complain about a choice no one is forcing them to make
Do what works for you, and let other people do the same
Block this subreddit for a while I guess, check in after a month.
this subreddit
TRIGGERED
It would be a lot better if it was a true donation, since Lemmy itself doesn’t have ads. The developer also has very minimal fees to cover, so it makes no sense to add ads ontop of a free service and have a steep price to remove it (yes, 20+ dollars for an app toconly remove ads is steep, look around at other app prices). This was not the case for Sync on Reddit, it was a lot cheaper.
It just seems unnecessarily greedy by the developer
Hey, man’s gotta eat. And there’s many roads to Rome if you really don’t want to pay the developer to remove the ads.
Man’s gotta eat, but he doesn’t have to be gluttonous
Y’all are ridiculous. $20 is less than the median hourly wage in the US for both men and women, even worst case scenario you’re earning $7.25 an hour so almost 3 hours of work to pay for ad free Sync. I challenge you to make a better app in those same 3 hours so you don’t need to pay for it.
Not only are you paying for the app as it is now, you’re paying for years if not DECADES of updates too. All done by ONE GUY.
If you don’t like it, don’t use it. Stop character shaming the dev for trying to make an honest living creating an app a LOT of people (including myself) wanted.
Then don’t use sync
Yea I don’t anymore, switched to Voyager since it’s on google play store now
Thanks for the heads up on Voyager. Will definitely give that a try.
how does it compare ? I’ve been using Sync for years but I’ll gladly ditch any service that’s doesn’t align with my values provided I have an alternative
So far it’s pretty great, it has a few minor bugs in it and some features that could be added but looks like it has an active developer so not really an issue
It’s more expensive than the upgrade was for Reddit, but it’s a smaller market and you pay more for a niche product. I don’t have a problem with him getting paid for a good product.
I would like to point out that @ljdawson@lemmy.world has been very forward to the LW team and he has our full support. And while Lemmy itself doesn’t have ads and Lemmy World is running on donations and volunteers that doesn’t mean that every developer should be forced to do charity-work. This is his full-time job and he provided plenty of choices for those who don’t want to pay or who don’t want to pay the full price for Ultra. If that’s not enough, nobody is forcing you to do anything.
people seem to forget that the dev wants to work FULL TIME on the app, you are paying for having great updates quick bug fixes etc.
That was the case for sync for reddit too.
No kidding. Bunch of crybabies
It doesn’t feels like a choice in the modern world. It is either awful experience with shit ads or normal experience with paying. Is it that hard to understand people?
Greed.
I signed up for a year of Ultra yesterday, more as a show of support. I’m already regretting it after seeing how many tiers of pricing are now being shoved out.
I get the dev has to eat, but this is completely going against everything Lemmy is supposed to be about, while costing significantly more than its Reddit counterpart.
While not necessary, it would have been nice if there was a small discount for Ultra subscribers of Sync for Reddit. I got just over 1 year of usage out of my ‘lifetime’ purchase. A gesture, even a small one, would have been nice.
I’ve just been soured over this whole thing, tbh.
I added the new price tiers based on user feedback on here after launching.
I appreciate that, but your pricing is still still disproportionately high, especially when compared to the number of fantastic free alternatives out there.
I love your app, and I’ve supported you as a Pro and Ultra member on Sync for Reddit as well, but I really think you should reconsider the current subscription pricing and lifetime purchases for Ultra options. As far as I’m aware, Sync is also one of the only major Lemmy apps that has introduced ads/pay to remove ads option. You’ve brought subscriptions and money into a platform that is now home to an exodus of users that hated how those things were slowly destroying Reddit. It just doesn’t sit right with me.
I’ve signed up for a year out of a show as support for you. The best thing you could do is show your long-term support for this platform by encouraging growth and fair options for users rather than creating multi-tiered pay walls with questionably high prices.
If lemmy is just for Foss crusaders it has no future
There’s a huge difference between wanting something for free and wanting something fairly priced.
I never said I wanted it for free. I’ve even paid for a year of Ultra to show some support towards the dev. But I still think the lifetime and regional pricing needs to be adjusted.
Maybe you should consider further regional prices. Here in Argentina it is U$S 20. I really want to support the app, but it is quite steep given our conversion rate and average income…
I put in for a yearly ultra subscription and I’d do it again. Not everybody here is a FOSS crusader or hanging around on /c/piracy. Some of us are just Reddit refugees that want our Sync back because it was awesome.
Hell, just add a built in pirate mode for these people that removes ads for free. I bet most of us would gladly pay anyway, and it will hopefully put an end to all the sobbing
I paid for ad removal, considering lifetime ultra but this price is very steep. I have no idea if Lemmy is even around a few years from now. Could you confirm or deny that this price for ultra is here to stay?
Also, would it be possible to get a discount on ultra lifetime later if you already bought ad removal?
It’s more like blackmail tbh. “Pay or i’ll track the shit out of you and sell the data to advertisers”. I can see why people are put off, and I am also. And what’s the guarantee if we pay that the data isn’t collected and sold anyway?
I’ve seen a lot of websites do the same thing. Either allow cookies or pay
Gawd, tinfoil hats are in right now!
How’s it tinfoil hat? It’s very clear how much tracking is going on if you don’t subscribe. None of this stuff is made up.
Then don’t use it if that bothers you. It’s not blackmail lol
There’s a difference between “There’s a lot tracking happening if you don’t pay!” and “What’s the guarantee you don’t track us if we pay?” and that difference comes in the form of a hat… Made of tinfoil…
Notice how it was a question? See this ‘?’
Between the ads, pricing and tracking I’m just going to stick to Liftoff, it works really well.
Liftoff is good but I’m trying Infinity right now and it’s even better imo.
me too, infinity is free, open source, very good looking, customizable, fits android and is fast, very fast(infinity for lemmy has some bugs but it just released)
Finally back on Infinite, finally back home
Infinity Gang Rise Up
Use Liftoff
I tried both Liftoff and Thunder but I prefer Infinity.
Wait-. There is an infinity for lemmy ???
yes, typing from it right now, see pinned post in /c/infinity_or_lemmy
bit late but, liftoff doesn’t feel the same like sync, sync looks and feels like a native android app
So. Much. Better. I just don’t get the Sync mania.
Liftoff is buggy as hell and has terrible performance and UX, as does basically every other Lemmy client
I use it daily. No bugs and the UI is excellent
AUD $33.99. No thanks.
Inflation
I got it for 15. Is it expensive for ad removal? Yes. Is it too expensive? No, for me personally no. I wanted to support the dev and I did it. Also It’s the only app I am going to use until Lemmy is no more.
You paid $15 for ad removal, when the dev himself is the one putting in the ads 💩 lemmy doesn’t have ads, sync does.
You played yourself.
I know Lemmy does not put ads duh.
That’s how ad removal for literally every app in existence works. The ads aren’t some kind of natural disaster that I’m paying the developer to “fight” lmao
Simple solution. Get DNS66 from the F-droid site (not the Play Store version that wants a subscription). That takes care of the ads in all my apps. It inserts itself like a VPN, filtering all Internet traffic, blocking the ad servers.
or NextDNS or Adguard
Personally I’m more for using a custom DNS server to block ads.
I was using Blokada 5, but found that it used a bit too much of my battery.
Now I just set my DNS to dns.adblock.com, and it gives me the same result.
Mullvad VPN also includes the ability to block all ads at the DNS level, so if you don’t already have a VPN (or if you’re not happy with your current one), I highly recommend it. Great VPN, great speed, great company.
Or RethinkDNS
Imho 15 eur is actually a fair price. In my country you can get a McDonald’s meal for that price that satisfies me once whereas Sync satisfies me everyday 😄. And 25 still seems okay to me for a nice app like this. I can imagine a lot of effort is put in this app. But everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
I used to use sync pro for Reddit. I now have connect and sync for Lemmy installed. Connect seems better in every way? What features is it missing?
Just try sync for some time and you’ll notice a huge difference.
fr, the performance, look, features, customization of Sync for reddit were out of this world, I am sure this will continue for sync for lemmy too
I was using connect before I moved to sync (I had used it forever on Reddit) and connect is so much more janky while scrolling or viewing/dismissing images. Sync is smooth and feels way more polished.
Customization and polish, for one.
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The irony is, the price is going up instead of going down. How
isin the world he based his decision on pricing.deleted by creator
At some point of time , peopla got excited and paid in drove for Ultra. It signalled a good sign and that might fueled his decision to charge higher.
I nearly bought it, but the come to my senses of how pricy it is. I really like Sync, it’s the smoothest app out there. But, I’ll wait a bit long, and for Boost - to see how it compares in terms of features and pricing. I might be on a double exodus - first from Reddit and then from Sync.
BTW, I can’t reply to the other (kbin) user comment. Not sure if it is a bug. So I’ll paste it here.
You have a point. Anyway, by doing so he will only be targeting a very niche group of users of an already very niche market. The move will definitely help to satisfy the needs of this small number of users but I doubt it will help the expand Lemmy’s market. I expect, which I could definitely be wrong, Sync market share will become stagnant for the coming future. Other apps will learn from this fiasco and offers much more reasonable pricing models, which in turn will hurt Sync more… Just my 5 cent.
Yeah, i was ready to pay for one year ultra and then after 5 minute of use, i realized…wow, it’s barebone. It couldn’t even post! Not to mention not having 2 separate pinned icon, not having mod tools, not even able to view community, can’t see report, so on and on. If you’re an admin/mod, this mean you have to check with the browser ver for admin/mod stuff.
The price is this way because there’s a bunch of diehard fan blowing smoke up his arse in discord.
I don’t have any skin in the game, as I don’t use the app nor any other, but the userbase for the Fediverse is like a hundred times smaller than Reddit at least. The same work on Reddit that could earn $200 is only going to earn $2 here.
I don’t know what the price should be, but it makes sense that it goes up.
Honestly I think we all need to relax. Lemmy is a niche app that’s rising, and it’s one guy. I paid for ultra since it was cheaper than the pay for no ads option.
$29AUD or whatever it was per year for ultra is literally paying a dev once a year for their work, and to keep it updated and build features.
The outrage is really ridiculous considering how quickly the app was built, how decent the experience is and the realities of the real world right now.
Pay the cash, you’re not going to remember it by the time you’re paid next. For the job you did, producing something. Like this guy did.
WTF is this in CAD!?
So I just took a look because I paid 19cad for the remove ads option which was distinct from “sync ultra”.
I think part of what’s confusing is there was never previously a sync ultra lifetime price it was always just monthly or yearly. And sync pro was the lifetime price which was also out before ultra was a thing.
If you open the menu, above sync ultra is there a “remove ads” button with a more reasonable (lifetime/onetime) price?
According to Google that’s about 30.75CAD
The amounts are CAD. $134!?
That’s for life.
Oh, sorry, I misunderstood - i though that was USD and you were asking how much it would be in CAD. My bad.
Just to check, when it was 15, was that possibly the annual cost for Ultra? Whereas this is the lifetime cost for removing ads only.
no, it was the remove ads, there is a different menu for the ultra I think
Ah fair enough - yeah, bit odd that. Not sure why it would change so soon.
It’s been $33.99 AUD since it was released.
$37.99 NZD here
Typical for Australia though tbh, getting the shit end of the deal
Strictly speaking, everyone is getting the shit end of the deal. Reddit Sync was 4 quid, one off payment.
