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?
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).
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.
While liftoff was the only third party I liked, I still think it was pretty unimpressive. It ran ok and that’s about it. Features were lacking, aesthetics are bad, some glitches. For me the $20 or whatever it is for sync is worth it. I’ve used reddit since 2012 and browsed exclusively on my phone, swapping between relay and sync. If you average that cost out, even considering the $5 or whatever it was to get rid of ads on Reddit, it’s basically nothing. The usage tracking is pretty shitty though.
EDIT: Ok I just saw the lifetime price for ultra, damn wtf lol. Again, averaging that cost over the ten years I’ve used the app means it’s still a good deal but fuck upfront that’s a lot lmao
I’ll just wait, they are usable enough. If you want the Lemmy experience to improve, donate $5 or $20 for Lemmy (in-browser) UI development, which is still default for most devices and it very much sucks. (Part of it is lack of support for anything like cross-domain cookies in browser technology that would store what your home instance is so that you would be always redirected to browse from home but even without it there are problems.)
Okay, I won’t push you from Sync. But if you have the money to remove its ads, please also consider supporting Lemmy directly or indirectly (Mozilla, among other things, funded the effort to find and patch TootRoot before it became a problem). If you don’t want to just donate, switching to Mozilla VPN will also help.
Yeah I’ve been using a lot of the available apps and while I had my favorites (Summit and Liftoff) there has always been little quirks that I’ve just been dealing with. The moment Sync hit my device it’s like I’m back to my reddit experience for the last decade. I’ll still keep an eye on the other apps, because I very much prefer and try to support open source developers. But I just can’t force a subpar experience on myself.
The Summit dev has been extremely responsive and has added in a few features I requested on a quick turnaround. They also happen to be out of town on a work trip this week so the timing probably sucks for them. And as I’m typing this I’m remembering that ones not even open source 🤦♂️.
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.
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).
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 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
Given how much time I spent on Sync with Reddit, I imagine the ultra one-time price ($99) will end up being a dollar per hour in a few months and just go down from there.
A dollar per hour for entertainment is generally a good deal to me.
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.
Hilarious watching people complain about an app that gives you a CHOICE to buy it if you want to. I really hope the dev is laughing at you guys with me because this is some really low IQ shit.
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.
I think the developer should have just made the app ad-free, and charged for features people will want.
It’s not a feature to remove ads. It’s just normal. At least for many of us Linux users, we never see ads since we have so many ways to combat them.
But yes, if Lemmy starts to become very popular, it will pull in everyone who uses windows and has ads and shit in their face all day. They are used to it. Maybe they will pay.
So you would rather have micro transaction/dlc for various features… Instead of having a free path and a paid path…
Honestly all these hardcore, zealot Linux users all bent out of shape because god forbid they pay for someone’s work while acting like they’re on the high road, really makes Linux users look bad. I’ve come across way too many posts about yet another person triggered because OMG, it wasn’t just free and the dev can’t survive off good vibes and a ‘donate’ button no one would click.
For all the people mad sync isn’t free, how many of the Foss projects have you donated too. A fiver one time a decade ago to one project means nothing. Going to guess I’ll get more downvotes than people showing proof the donate, regularly.
I bought sync. Bought it here and bought it on Reddit many years ago. With the amount of time I used it, probably came out to less than a penny per hour of use.
It seems you are grouping me in with previous people you have talked to. And I hate micro transactions or dlc.
I would simply lower the prices. That’s it. I think people should pay for quality software, including search engines and email providers that are high quality. I do that of course myself. It’s the only way to get away from the ad/tracking model we have today.
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.
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.
Mozilla VPN uses Mullvad’s servers so it offers pretty much the same QoS but some of it goes to a non-profit that develops and supports Firefox, funds white hats finding and patching bugs in the Fediverse. and fights for an open web.
I feel like ads in lemmy would be a hard to implement thing, it would need to be done on the instance level… and people would just jump ship to another instance that didn’t have ads. it’s possible that it could post ads as posts that get federated but it sounds like an amazing way to potentially get your instance defederated in concern that it’s going to devolve to constant spam.
I mean, right now, yeah. But these instances use resources, which means they’re not free. Someone needs to cover the bill. I remember when YouTubers were put on blast when they started running ads and now it’s normal.
Or there might be instances that are specific paid and that’s known. Like an OnlyLemmy or something.
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?
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
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
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.
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 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.
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