bukinoshita/taskr

PRO users (pricing)

bukinoshita opened this issue · 16 comments

bukinoshita commented

This is not decided yet, would love to hear feedback on this since it's my first time charging users.

I want to give more power for users and make it easier to use taskr.

Taskr is free, but I also want to enable PRO users. So I was thinking on this pricing table.

OSS

  • Taskr Desktop App (macOS; Windows; Linux) — FREE
  • Taskr App (iOS; Android) — Free
  • Lock stable version (still receives bug fixes)

PRO

  • Enable cloud-sync (sync between devices) — $1.99/month or $15/year ($1.25/month)
  • Free New updates
  • Custom plugins (more info)
  • Theming (more info)

pricing

Costs: Apple Developer Program, Servers (API, Auto Updater Server, Website), Database and Domain

universvm commented

I understand that since you just started and that you'd have costs to provide cloud sync and other such features. However, have you considered letting users use THEIR OWN cloud (like Google Drive, iCloud, whatever) just like Enpass does? It could easily be implemented at almost no costs for you. Do you think it could be done?

Also, I am confused about how the "New Updates" is a premium feature. Does this mean standard users will not see their app updated at all?

Keep up with the good work! You've done great progresses!

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bukinoshita commented

Great idea @universvm! I did not think about that. Will take a look on how to do that. Do I required any type of API to be able to do that or I can auto-sync by just sending a json every N min?

It's a premium feature because you are paying for the license. It's not decided yet. I use sketchapp to design my interfaces and they have a similar pricing model here

Some points about New Updates:

Your license comes with a year’s worth of updates. Once that year is up, you can keep using the last version of Sketch you downloaded, forever.

What happens if I don’t renew my license?

If you don’t want to renew your license after it expires, you can continue to use the version of Taskr that you have, for as long as you want, but you won’t be able to receive any further updates. You will no longer be able to upload changes to Taskr Cloud. Any documents you previously uploaded will stay on Cloud until you choose to remove them. If you decide you want to renew at a later date, that’s fine — you’re welcome back at any time.

Do I need to renew my license to receive fixes?

We split up Taskr releases into regular updates and bug-fix updates. You’ll always be entitled to a bug-fix update for your last version, even after your license has expired.

What do you think @universvm?

universvm commented

Ok, so I understood the pricing in the wrong way. Since it was mentioned "per year" I thought that it needs to be renewed every year, otherwise it would "revert back" to the OSS version.

Business model

In this case the business model is kind of similar to Objective Development's: you pay for a version, say 1.0, and you can get all the updates of the 1.0 version. I am not very practical with business models in apps so I will not add any further comments on it.

Cloud Sync

I think the easiest way may be with sending a file every N min, however I have never done any work on it, so there may be more efficient ways I'm not aware of.

bukinoshita commented

Got it! Thanks for all the feedback! I'm not sure about if the new updates worth it as a PRO tho, not yet. Because since it's a simple app I don't believe it would have so many updates in the future. It would probably be a plus.

Maybe the right path is to invest hard on theming, plugins and cloud-sync.

ssssamstrup commented

universvm's idea of building it on another platform is great, however pick one that already runs on all the platforms you want. iCloud is limited to Apple devices, whereas Dropbox is on all major platforms and have an api for it*.

I don't know this from building anything myself, but from using several other services that use dropbox as their backbone (iA writer fx.)

bukinoshita commented

Yes! I'm going to start with Dropbox instead Google Driver. Maybe support both in the future... but for now Dropbox is my choice.

joeauty commented

I suggest looking into the Google Firebase Realtime Database service (https://firebase.google.com/docs/database/) for your cloud syncing. I think it is perfectly reasonable to charge for the cloud syncing, particularly since there are costs involved. One feature that OS X Notes doesn't have that you could attach to the pro service is sharing to dos with others - sort of like a little desktop version of Google Docs, except for to dos? I bet you could manage this flow with Firebase easily simply by locking individual to do items that are being edited?

I suppose this might be outside of the scope of what you had envisioned for this app, but I've tried Google Issues/Projects, Jira, Trello, and Asana (I don't remember when we worked together if you were there for the switch from Jira to Asana?!) Each have their pros and cons and no clear favorites, but if you were to build slowly and carefully you could keep the OSS version for people that just want something super basic, and the Pro version for people looking for something a little more collaborative?

I mean, at the end of the day Asana and Trello and all of these products are just to dos like Taskr, but with a bunch of other stuff added.

Just some ideas...

bukinoshita commented

@joeauty

One feature that OS X Notes doesn't have that you could attach to the pro service is sharing to dos with others - sort of like a little desktop version of Google Docs, except for to dos?

That's a cool feature to have. What would be the benefits of sharing a to-do? Want to hear your point of view on that.

you could keep the OSS version for people that just want something super basic, and the Pro version for people looking for something a little more collaborative

That's what I'll try to do with plugins that are available for PRO users. What I'm envisioning for that is having plugins as npm packages and user can edit a json file (preferences) and when they edit the file it triggers a npm install for the app. That way, users can still have a simple app or choose to make it more powerful.

 module.exports = {
  config: {
    updateChannel: 'stable',
    fontSize: 13,
    fontFamily: 'Monaco',
    foregroundColor: '#f2f2f2',
    backgroundColor: '#000',
  },
  plugins: [ // here you can add any plugin built for Taskr
    'taskr-team',
    'taskr-github'
  ]
}

Of course that I'd definetely need a non-developer way of doing that (UI). And also not sure how that would work on iOS devices, I have an idea but didn't test it yet.

joeauty commented

That's a cool feature to have. What would be the benefits of sharing a to-do? Want to hear your point of view on that.

For collaboration. For devs this would be sprints/kanban boards, although I would foresee an opportunity to focus on non-devs, so this could be for things like sales leads, inventory, fitness, whatever else would require multiple steps in a larger project or set of goals.

joeauty commented

Maybe you could white label this and create versions of this that are tailored for things like fitness or some other sort of market, using language appropriate to them or perhaps providing some additional metadata (e.g. km run for fitness, km driven for tracking mileage reimbursement, etc.)?

ssssamstrup commented
matAlmeida commented

The best way, in my opnion, is that the PRO version should be natively focused in collaboration and the tailored features using plugins. While the OSS should be indvidual but with the cloud sync included (most of the task apps does this for free), the dropbox/drive thing is the way.

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ssssamstrup commented

Or you could just have it all contained in one app and then provide a trial period, letting people try out all the features and getting to know the app, and you wouldn't need OSS/PRO. Then the app would just come without any plugins installed and you could teach the user how to find and add the ones you need when they've used the app for a bit.

At least I believe that you should pay for what you use - it still takes time and effort to develop and maintain and people will be happier for a product they are paying for and know they can depend on.

This is at least something that always bother me when trying new apps/systems: that you can't actually try them fully before buying in. I'm paying for 3 todo systems this month because of this, so I could actually try them out. 14 days should be enough to let them try it out and have time to learn to use the extended features.

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bukinoshita commented

@joeauty Got it! I will try to introduce this in the future. team support is on the list.

bukinoshita commented

@ssssamstrup I really want the app to remain FREE with basic features. This is one of the reasons that I created Taskr. And for sure the PRO version will have a 14 days trial.

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bukinoshita commented

pricing

I think this resumes my point of view + feedbacks.

OSS
  • Desktop App
  • iOS App
PRO
  • Cloud-sync
  • Plugins (integration with 3rd party app such as taskr-github; taskr-slack + more power to Taskr such as taskr-team; taskr-reminder)
  • Theming

PRO version 14 days free trial

Thoughts?

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