(Edited to add context) Paywalling features most other apps have for free isn't a great look

With the slow growth of the Lemmy userbase a one-time purchase is very risky from my perspective

From our perspective, dropping $30 on an app is risky because of the number of apps that have come and gone (or stagnated) since the Rexxit of 2023 just four months ago. Memmy, Lemmur, Limbo, and others (even Voyager to an extent) have either stagnated or been discontinued since then. I've joined numerous TestFlights during the Rexxit and am still bouncing between apps. I still don't know which one is going to be the best.

What's also confusing is the choice to put basic features like the jump button and blocking behind the subscription but theming and icons are free.

Thanks for responding to this. That does make sense. I really enjoy this app, I think it’s better than most of the right now so I’m in favor of supporting the development. $30 is a lot to stomach though, but I do see where you’re coming from.

Hey FWIW I support your pricing model and feature decisions. I have paid for lifetime and would consider also using a tip jar feature for future releases. Thank you for Avelon!

I, for one, don’t think your pricing is absurd and your explanation makes total sense.

All those paywalled features are not necessities. With the free version you’re still getting a smooth and polished app. What even is the smart jump function? I’ve been enjoying the app without it and am okay with it being a paid feature.

People using other apps’ stagnation as an argument are not realizing that stagnation occurs because devs lose steam. They lose steam because there’s no longer any incentive to develop. I don’t think it’s fair to ask devs for more features and continue to maintain apps for free.

How can you justify putting an safety feature like content filtering behind a paywall. Content filtering and blocking is an important part of the fediverse.

However, non basic features like theming and app icons are free?

I had a long response typed up but I think I accidentally discovered a bug - Avelon crashed while I was typing!

I really appreciate your reply here and I'll try to condense my thoughts, as someone who works in tech and is responsible for a product that brings in significant dollars of revenue (albeit B2B so not quite the same).

I think you are doing an awesome job at adding ease of setup and overall quality on top of the Lemmy platform. Others have noted the two sides of the longevity aspect, we all just have to deal with that.

To me the main missing piece is feature differentiation; where most people are used to apps like this paywalling things like themes and icons, I can go to several other apps for free to get the features you want a subscription fee (or large lump sum) for. The comment jump button is a good example, no it isn't necessary but for people used to having it it feels that way.

When this is all so new, you can't really expect people to trust you enough to think a big lifetime purchase is worth it, and subscriptions only feel logical when they are paying for an ongoing cost.

I'd say if you were to keep adding good features and maintaining the app, and especially if you add something like push notifications where you incur a cost I need to cover to use, I would be more likely to feel comfortable paying (and would expect you to build in a profit layer over your server costs).

Sorry for the late response but I guess this situation is a good example of some of the points I'm going to address.

First, I am an avid Unix/Linux user and professional, having started using them in the early 90s as a kid. I basically grew amidst Linux going from a pet project to what we all see today, and the reason I'm bringing this up is to try and set aside any notion that I don't like Linux or any of its related projects. I do, I use Linux and related projects daily, both for personal and professional reasons.

But there are things I don't like about it. One of the biggest is the community behavior where someone (or a group) disagree with something, then the """solution""" most people default to is to split off and start a parallel project, that is very similar to the previous one and that maybe addresses the disagreement that spawned it in the first place.

The Federated network is just yet another example of this behavior. I understand how Twitter and Reddit drove many people out of their respective platforms and created the opportunity for a new thing, but I also see Mastodon and Lemmy doing the same thing dozens if not hundreds of Linux distros, Android versions, etc have and still do: they keep fragmenting things over and over and over.

There is the mindset that the niche is more important than the broader audience, there is very little focus on non-technical users and instances come and go like it doesn't matter if someone spends hours, days, weeks finding communities they enjoy, then all of a sudden they have to figure out a way to redo all that on a new instance because the previous one decided to shut down.

Lemmy is still only a tiny fraction of Reddit in terms of userbase and especially content. I browse these platforms for these reasons, not to brag about being "OG", or because a small community for some very specific niche migrated over. This ends limiting my time around here way more than I'd like. Lemmy just "runs out" of stuff I feel interested in much faster than Reddit does.

The second "big point" is more directly related to Avelon and the other apps for Lemmy.

I'd say that even though Avelon has been getting better and better, my "main" Lemmy app is still Memmy because it's the app that managed to put together the bigger number of features that I am particularly interested in - gestures navigation first, several tiny QoL bits later, such as reblurring NSFW content after opening it.

A lot of the apps have some of these features but lack many others. Avelon gets closer to Memmy for me, but the gestures always pull me back towards Memmy because I just don't like doomscrolling through anything and having to reach around the screen to do stuff.

All of the above said, these are the reasons why I don't feel inclined to paying for any Lemmy apps yet. No matter if it's a subscription or lifetime payment of any kind, none of the currently available apps are at a point where I feel like paying for something to access a platform that at any moment might fragment itself further and have even less content for me to access with said paid app(s).

I don't mean any offense or attack, especially on you. You seem interested in making Avelon better every update and I respect that. But even the "ancestral" history on Reddit and Apollo added to this position of mine. I was an early adopter of Apollo Pro and Ultra Lifetime, and even though I used that app for years, often hours daily, I suffered with many bugs that never got properly addressed. So I've learned the lesson of putting money on what I will get whenever the payment goes through, not the promise of future updates. And finally I think I can conclude my position: I'll consider either subscribing or getting lifetime whenever both Avelon and Lemmy are at a stage where I feel it's worth the money. Otherwise I'll keep an eye on both and hoping they get there.