
Forcing a subscription model resulted in 2500 1-star reviews in 2 weeks - andrei_says_
Flexibits, the makers of Fantastical announced a new version and a subscription plan on January 29.<p>At the time of this change they had thousands of mostly 5-star reviews on the App store.<p>Two weeks later, they have over 2500 1-star reviews, many from existing paid customers who were forced into a slew of non-consensual changes. (https:&#x2F;&#x2F;apps.apple.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;app&#x2F;fantastical-calendar-tasks&#x2F;id718043190#see-all&#x2F;reviews)<p>Their new version changed a few things:<p>* it now required everyone to have a flexibits account just to make the app work, with no additional functionality apart from un-breaking the app.<p>* while it allowed some extra features for previous paid users of the app, it still littered the UI with affordances which only work in the $40-year subscription version<p>* the upgrade happened automatically for everyone who had their app store set to autoupdate<p>* in a later update, flexibits (I think) removed the flexibits account creation requirement.<p>* flexibits wrote a blog post about how they need to switch to subscription model because they need money. (https:&#x2F;&#x2F;flexibits.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;)<p>In their app update notes flexibits insists that version 3 has all version 2 features unlocked for customers who paid for v.2.<p>But, 1. there&#x27;s no feature list comparison anywhere, and 2., there&#x27;s no way to remove the UI pollution caused by listing locked-out features of the subscription-only app even for paid users of v.2 who were forced in the upgrade. A nag-free interface is a <i>feature</i> of the paid app which has been taken away.<p>This is a textbook example of how not to handle such a transition. It is so sad to see an otherwise brilliant team exercising such a tone-deaf execution and alienating their existing customer base.<p>It is even sadder that they continue to pretend that this is OK in the face of frustrated reviews and twitter responses from existing, paying customers. (https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;flexibits&#x2F;status&#x2F;1225134145178931200).
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mistermackle
I really hate these dark patterns but it seems par for the course for this
industry. At what point do people realize good relationships with long term
customers matters more than the incremental dollar?

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andrei_says_
I don't think it's a zero sum game. Just from the top of my mind, how about

\- offer bug updates for v.2 existing customers with no additional feature
development

\- offer a paid upgrade with lower subscription for existing customers

\- offer more affordable iphone-only or ipad-only subscriptions (currently
it's $40/year for a suite of iphone, desktop, ipad apps)

\- offer an _ad-free_ v.3 upgrade locked to v.2 features to existing customers

\- offer a v.3 upgrade requiring existing customer to make an informed choice
vs. forcing it as an upgrade replacing their their current, paid for app with
another one nagging them for subscription.

I spent 1 minute on these options, as an amateur in the field, and they all
sound like viable possibilities for increasing revenue while retaining
respectful trusting relationship with existing paying customers.

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buffaloo
The Mac mindset is to overpay for perceived top quality hardware and keep it a
long time, consistent with purchased software (even at a premium price).
Subscription model is ill-suited to the Mac crowd.

