1y ago

Please put your money where your mouth is.

Sync Ultra is a very reasonable $17 a YEAR. YouTube Premium is reaching that per MONTH. I have sync downloaded and it was the first thing I did. Thanks lj for the beautiful app.

[EDIT: That was a poor comparison, as pointed out in the comments. Leaving it for discussion sake.

There are many counterpoints and actually good discussion happening down below. Even if you don't agree, thanks for showing me a different perspective!

If you want to support Sync, make sure to support the Lemmy Devs and your instance holders as well!

*This post was made early in the day before the update added the OTP option.]

388 comments

First thing I did after opening the app was to look for the Pro (ultra) in-app purchase. But monhtly payments, no thank you.
- Yea, I would gladly pay to remove ads. Like I already did for the Sync for Reddit. Twice. But no one likes subscriptions.
- Same here. I hate subscriptions but would happily buy a Pro version like I did with Sync for Reddit.
  
  What would you be willing to pay? I paid £4 for Sync in 2018. I can't imagine a Pro (non-ultra) version would be that cheap this time.
  At the minimum I'd think it'd match 1 year of Ultra (£17). Not sure if I'd pay that for Lemmy since I still use Sync for Reddit more.
- Yeah, same here. It is a shame :(
- I'm really confused why people feel this way. Can't you just cancel it if you feel like it's not worth it anymore?
  
  I just don't do subscriptions. One of the aspects I hated about my foray into the Apple app store where everything seemed to be subscription or ads. Quickly missed Android and places like f-droid where I knew I could find ad free and subscription free open source alternatives.
  I was happy to pay for apps like Procreate and Lumafusion though, so it's not that I'm against paying for ads. I just don't do subscriptions.
  
  Unless the app offers you cloud functions like email, cloud storage, multi-player gaming, or social media sites(lemmy, kbin, mastodon), etc. I see subscriptions as a no-go.
  
  I gladly pay subscriptions for services. I see that the Ultra has cloud backup of settings, but how much storage could that possibly use? Certainly not $2/mo worth. For that price I'll want the equivalent of 100Gb of storage in the cloud.
  edit: I'd send $2/mo. to the admins of my instance. They're running the servers that host all this content.

Since we're doing meaningless comparisons:
uBlock Origin is FREE
ReVanced is FREE
Infinity is FREE
Jerboa is FREE
Wefwef is FREE
Leanish is FREE
Slide is FREE
Thunder is FREE
Am I doing that right?
- Oh, but Adobe charges the very reasonable $600/yr and Autodesk a bargain $3000+ per year for their software, so clearly Sync must not be that good to only be asking $17 a year. I think I'll look for something more professionally priced, instead.
- Isn't sync also free?
  
  From what I've heard, you pay by viewing ads. Those can be blocked at the DNS level, though.

As someone from a third world country, fuck no. That shit is too expensive for me. Maybe to you privileged folk it's reasonable. To me it's nonsense.
I feel shitty about it too since I was a long time sync pro user, I thought sync for lemmy would also have an affordable pro version but fuck me I guess
- You actually have the only reasonable response in this thread
- The dev has said that he's working on making pricing regional in the next few weeks.
- Ultra =! Pro
  Adfree is available as a separate lifetime purchase for 10 USD.
  
  You have countries where people don't earn $1 a day. Once they cover their basic needs, $10 is like wining the lottery.
  It's where Youtube does better. The price of premium is adapted to the local situation.
  
  'Remove ads' is ₹2000 ($24.17) in India.
  
  Still too expensive.
  
  Where is the one time purchase?
- Living in a first world country is not "privilege" there are people who didn't choose where to be born.
  Just use the free app like I did when I lived in Venezuela (I was born there)
  
  Privilege is not something necessarily gained on purpose. Being born to a wealthy family is privilege and not a choice either, but there is undeniable privilege. It's not a negative thing, it's something one should be aware of where they may have it and recognize it. It's not something to feel guilty over, it just.. is.
  
  Dude you don't know what privilege means huh
  
  Buddy that is literally the definition of privilege
  
  Another Venezuelan here. Im still living here.
  
  Dude, delet this
- Bro, go away. I've seen you way more than I want
  
  Lol I'm a bit stoned and this made me laugh. I love how you spoke to that person like they were your sibling.

Give me a one-time purchase of like $10-15 and I will, but I don't do (non-voluntary) subs.
I don't need any of the push notification services.
Edit: Added within hours. Immediately got it.
- I remember going for the largest OTP for Sync quite happily. Might have been £30 or something. Subscription? Nah.
  Edit: Looks like the remove ads OTP option has been added so I've hopped onto that.
- Same. More than happy to support development, but I don't need another automatic subscription. I did OTP in the old app several times (purchased for different accounts, and again just because I use dns ad blockers, but still wanted to support the app). I am happy to do the same here, but not as a subscription.
  Lj, please offer an option for OTP that removes ads while still being expensive enough to cover your costs.
  It doesn't need to include push notifications or image preloading, or any other features that require you to maintain or rent infrastructure. I would be willing to pay $20 or $30 for a one time purchase option that doesn't make me feel like I am a drain to you when I block ads and tracking.
  I will never look at ads or consent to tracking or violating my privacy, and I am willing to pay a (non-recurring) fee to enable that. I am sure I am not alone here.
  
  I agree with essentially everything you've said. I left Reddit almost entirely because I refused to give up Sync, but I will not pay a subscription for it.
- Yeah the pro version will do that
- Would you be okay if the one time purchase meant you did not receive any updates to Sync? Or perhaps it only got a few months of updates? That seems fair to me.
  
  No, but I'd be willing to pay years ahead at once for something that I know I'll be using for longer than that.
  Everything has an expiration date anyways, because I don't live forever. Who knows if we'll still be using Android 10 years from now. It's just basically a discount on very long term usage that gives the money ahead of time while taking the gamble that I will actually be using it for longer than the subscription price would be.

No. !fucksubscriptions@lemmy.world !
I would gladly pay once though.
- Yep. As stupid as is sounds, I would pay even higher for a one off purchase.
  
  Sounds entirely reasonable to me
  
  You can pay once to remove ads. There's a subscription called ultra that adds some features like translations but it isn't necessary.
  
  Understandable. Dev says it's coming, not sure what the pricing will be.
- Welp, there it is, second reasonable response in this thread
- The why not just sub for the yearly plan, then immediately cancel - same thing as a one time payment, you get to support the dev, and you don't have a subscription to worry about
  
  Because then the ads come back after a year. I want no ads for life for a one time fee. Sync for reddit offered that, why not here?
  
  Because one year < forever.
- Okay then how much are you willing to spend? Say around 35 bucks? Developers need to eat too. ¯(ツ)/¯
  
  Developers make more money than I do, and I need to worry about my own food first lol. I'd pay $35 one time, but I also remember a time not that long ago where $10 one-time could buy you basically anything on the app store lol.
  I like the app, but I hate recurring fees more. Jerboa is free. It might not be perfect, but it works, is ad-free, is on F-Droid, and is infinitely more affordable than $17/yr.
  
  A developer of this caliber can easily get 90K CAD at his day job, and even more in the US.

fuck subs...onetime payment every time, but I won't pay a sub for an app for a service that is free...
I donate to the lemmy instances, but not an app!
- I mean.. Lemmy is free to use, it's just the sync dev(s) that put in work to make it beautiful. Art is free... But an art exhibit is not.
  Idk. Other people have made a good point. $17/yr is not bad. Especially for a team who have always been awesome.
- I'm right with you. Sync was the only reason I even started using Reddit. I happily paid the onetime fee and I'm more than happy to do it again. If the sub actually covered costs to keep Lemmy-instances running it would be one thing but that's not the case now. Let's see how it all paves out.
- Subbed to lemmy.world Patreon, one time payment for the app. I like having nice things, nice things only come if there's reward in making them. I'm someone's reward for doing something nice.

Sync for Reddit Pro was 2.99€... I was expecting that much or up to 5€ for Sync for Lemmy... But these prices are just ridiculous. As much as I like Sync I just can't justify this kind of pricing when there are so many free alternatives without ads and tracking.
Right now I'm using Sync and it's really nice but it's not that much better than Jerboa for my use case.
- I was paying 12 a year for Lastpass and that at least has uses, now using bitwarden, because it does the same and is free
- In 2014....
  
  August 2019
- I originally paid $5 or something for sync pro in 2014. That worked out to be almost 9 years of daily use for me and was way too cheap for the utility that was provided.
  Lifetime subscriptions for $5 are not really sustainable for the developer, eventually the pool of new users dries up. I think 17$ a year is very reasonable, if not cheap (for users in western countries).

Hate subscription based models. I wouldnt mind paying one-off but until then sorry sync , I am FOSSing
- Actually the app just updated and has a one time purchase for removing ads now.
- The one-time IAP is implemented now.
  
  Lmao $100. There are so many other services who's lifetime is less than that and aren't just a front end.
  This is starting to feel like a pretty disrespectful cash grab. Sync Pro was my Reddit app but it was never a $100 service.
  Edit: Ah so there's tiers now. $20 for ad free as an option too. Meanwhile you get a lesser focused experience because obviously anything worth a damn is going to be Ultra exclusive.
  Edit2: Just tried out Connect for Lemmy. Feels really close to Sync with gestures and such. I recommend. I was sitting on Jerboa waiting for Sync, but not with this pricing. And I'm pretty sensitive to server hosters cost. It's insane instances are out here operating at a loss providing content for these apps and Sync wants use them to charge people to provide a front end.
  
  God damn bro. Its $100. Fuck that , I would rather give that money to a homeless or someone I need than paying it for a stupid app.
  
  😃 Let's gooooooo 💥💥
- Same. I refuse to subscribe to an app on any platform (mobile, console, PC). Not about to start now. At least they offer a lifetime subscription unlike some software (coughSignalRGBcough), but $99 is a little ridiculous. That's more than a video game! $15-20 is more reasonable. IIRC I only paid about $10 for Relay for Reddit back then.
- what is fossing
  
  Checkout Fdroid app store.

Don't really care about any ultra features. Once one-time-pay ad removal is there, I'm getting it. Just like I had Sync Pro and Sync Ultra (if those aren't reinstated even). I will not do subscriptions.
- Ad removal is here, you have to update the app
  
  Indeed! Just purchased
- What was Sync Ultra before?
  
  Sync for Reddit - Sync Ultra
  
  Sync for Lemmy - Sync Ultra
- Hmthe one-time IAP is implemented now.
- You can remove ads with sync pro (one time payment) , as well with sync ulta (subscription).

Fuck off.
Im not paying you to remove the Ads that you injected into an addless service. Theres a half dozen other Lemmy apps already that dont pull this bullshit. And honestly synch doesnt do anything those apps dont. So other than being a mindless consumer or someone whose easily influenced by these vote manipulation shill posts, why the actual fuck would I spend money on it?
- I spent money on it because someone spent the time to make the thing and I like the thing. Should people not get paid for making a thing? Do you only want to have something unpaid volunteers made?
  I've been involved in open source stuff for decades, and it's pretty close to dead for user facing things. The biggest reason is that no one can get paid for their efforts.
  
  Should people not get paid for making a thing?
  Clearly not an argument made in good faith, but ill bite anyway.
  I never said people shouldnt get paid for stuff. Im saying the practice of making a service a worse and then asking people to pay you to undo the things you intentionally put in to make it worse is scummy.
  Do you only want to have something unpaid volunteers made?
  No, I want a good service, and if my choices are between an app that takes a free service, adds in their own shitty ads then asks you for money to restore it back to its original default quality, and an app that just provides that original default quality without asking me for money, then of course im going to go for the latter. Lemmy and the fediverse as a whole are things people have put time and effort into developing and they dont gimp it to try and sucker people into giving them money, have you spent money on lemmy? Would you be okay if the lemmy.world admins gimped this instance and asked you for money to un-gimp it? Probably not.
  Its just a scummy business practice and avoiding it is a big reason WHY im on the fediverse in the first place.
- Hey man you get my vote!
  Adding a subscription too, WTF it's literally the crappiest business system (on top of creating a problem, ads, and asking money to remove it).
  You know 17$ a year is more than giving 10$ to the Lemmy Devs and using a free reader (give 5$ to them too a year and you still win)!
- Hear hear! Here here even! Putting ads into a free service, then asking for money as a subscription to remove them. FFS. How can people fall for this? If your app is good, and I like it, I'll pay. But don't pull that crap.

I wouldn't buy YouTube Premium either and they have significant hosting costs compared to the this app. So do the Lemmy server owners as well.
I think the dev deserves compensation for their app but the asking price is too much, for me anyway.

Lots of entitlement here...
Saying someone makes enough in their day job so all their other contributions should be free is...wow.
I guess I'm one of the few that thinks all work should be compensated. Especially work I can't do myself or that I prefer over others.
And really, it's not up to me to say what that compensation should be. It's only my job to decide if the offer is acceptable to me for what I perceive is the benefit over other options.
Because there are other options. But I'm here because I don't want the other options. I would guess many others are, too.
- Totally agree.. This person does a shit load of work building and maintaining an app, they sure as hell should get paid for it.
- No one says sync for lemmy should be free. Most people just oppose the subscription based model. Also our user data is being sold to data hoarding companies by sync for lemmy. That is extremely conflicting with the open source model of lemmy.
  
  No one? What are you talking about? Have you read any of these threads?
  
  Sync for Lemmy doesn't have trackers and the one time purchase is $20

I'm not comfortable with a subscription model, sorry. I will happily pay for a one-time fee. For the use I do of Lemmy I'll pay up to €5. If they want to release a new version of the app in, say, 2-3 years down the line and ask for a new fee, I'm fine too.
I'll wait until Boost releases (it was my default Reddit app) and will choose between Sync, Boost, Summit, and Infinity paid versions.
- It already has a one-time payment option. Try update and look in the settings.
  
  Well, that was fast :)
  Anyway, it is €115. That's way out of my league. I will wait for Boost and see.
- Infinity paid version?
  
  I mean, between those which have paid version (Boost and Sync, I think)
- Why are people so stingy when it comes to software pricing? I feel like the app store model of $1 apps really killed the general publics idea of the value of software and ended up driving the ad based revenue system a lot.
  €5 is all you would pay? Let's say you use the app one hour per week for two years, you are valuing that at ~0.004¢. that is astronomically low, and is already based off of a pretty low usage rate.
  Do you think the app would provide less value to you over 2 years than a single beer at a bar?
  At $20 us (I don't know the cost in euros) and the same usage it puts Sync's value at a still cheap 0.016¢ (USD)
  Even if you only used it once per month over a 2 year period it's still only about 20 cents each use.
  In my opinion a $20 one time fee for an application that I will likely use daily, with a trusted track record and a quality experience is more than fair. That's the same as a video game I would play for maybe 10 hours or a movie that I will watch once or maybe twice.
  I didn't mean to unload on you specifically, but I see this 'outrage pricing' a lot and it irks me.

I don't need the ultra features. I didn't even need the pro features. I bought Sync pro for Reddit as a "thank you" to the author. A subscription is a bit different. I would be more willing to spend a couple bucks on each feature release than a subscription.

The app is amazing and I'm not against the Dev just because of what they are charging. They can charge whatever they want, if there is a market willing to pay it's fine.
But 115€ lifetime is like 10-20 times more than the price I would pay. So as a consumer I'll just stay with the free version or another Lemmy app.
As a former infinity user, "Infinity for Lemmy" is the one I'm waiting for. I'm also interested in trying Voyager android app once it is released.
Now this "sync for Lemmy" app looks very well probably the best Lemmy app at the moment. Only thing is lacking for me (so far) is to have community icons in the small cards post layout. (So I can identify what's the topic is about before reading the title).
For the text size I changed base text to Medium and then I changed the specific description and comment relative text size to "Regular". This gives me the same text size as Infinity, at least in the comments.
- I currently am using Infinity for Lemmy. It's pretty damn great despite the fact that it's still early development.
  https://codeberg.org/Bazsalanszky/Infinity-For-Lemmy
  
  Yes me too. But it's still an alpha. An alpha that evolves really fast day by day. The new Dev seems amazing.
  Sync ATM looks so polished, elegant, material design well implemented, is fast, it hides the bottom nav bar when scrolling down (infinity also does this) etc.
  So now I switched to sync as main app. But I still keep updating Infinity until it gets more polished and stable.
  (In Reddit I keep using Infinity+).
- As a former infinity user, "Infinity for Lemmy" is the one I'm waiting for.
  https://codeberg.org/Bazsalanszky/Infinity-For-Lemmy/releases
  
  Yeah I've been using it for a week already but I mean that I was waiting for non alpha release

Prices are ridiculous, especially for returning users. The Lemmy app is basically the Reddit app. You can't convince me that at least 85% of the code was re-used from it. If you used the code from the app I already paid for (twice) I feel like I should get a discount.
Subscription models suck too.
- Same here. I waited for this App, am happy it is here, but I was shocked by the pricing. I paid for sync twice, and was willing to do it again, but this is ridiculous.
  
  Exactly. I'd pay again if the prices were sane.
- Would be nice if they had a discount for those that purchased app before..at least for the OTP.

I would start by donating to your home instance, first and foremost.
But yeah if you love the all you're using, whichever it is, donate to its devs, too
- I'm donating to myself and nothing is happening! /s

YouTube Premium pays for Youtube itself and provides a higher payout to the content creators you watch. If you actually want to support the people you watch on Youtube Premium is the best option for that, premium views pay out sometimes 10x as much as ad revenue on videos. It's the best way to have a good experience and support the people you watch outside of giving them money directly.
Meanwhile, this is like paying some 3rd party website to scrape Youtube and make sure the people you watch don't see a penny. Since presumably if one of the servers like Lemmy.World breaks down and adds ad's to offset the astronomical server fees and growth, Sync would block them, if not they are doing a disservice to people who bought ad free.
- This is paying to the creator of the app, who works on this app full time, unlike most devs whose Lemmy apps are side projects.
- like paying some 3rd party website to scrape Youtube
  A sad day we live in that people see it this way instead of questioning why there's only one front end application for YouTube. Back in the day it used to be common to have different third party client applications for a backend service.

I despise recurring fees, so no. $17 sounds good for a 1-time fee though.
- There's a one time purchase to remove ads.
  The ultra subscription adds a few features like translations that use cloud services.
  
  It would be nice to have a one-time donation option for the ultra version, instead of just removing ads
  
  I'm cool with a 1 time fee to stop ads, but I don't see how to do that anywhere. I can only figure out how to pay $2/month or $17/year for Ultra
- Sub once then cancel to show your support then
  
  Support for the subscription? Because that's what you would do

No regional pricing.
I would never pay more then 10$ for a full game i could play for hundreds of hours, let alone 20$ to remove black rectangles from a free app.
sync ultra is just stupidly expensive, I'm not even talking about it, just the permanent ad removal option.

I moved to Lemmy because Sync was announced that's where they were going, but I'm not going to pay a monthly subscription for an app. I expected a reasonable one time payment like I had on Sync for Reddit. If that's not an option then I'll have to figure something else out
- They have the Ultra lifetime option which is a 1-Time payment..
  
  Where? I see monthly and annual.

You're comparing a service that stores a gajillion gajillions of petabytes to sync?
- Thats a good point, but I was referring to payment for a service/software that I use. Ive had the YT family plan since it was called YT Red. I'm very willing to pay for the tools I use.

I think the main issue is we don't know where Lemmy is one year from now. I have already started to see a decline in my usage because there simply isn't enough content. /c/football is virtually dead it feels like and it (or rather /r/soccer) was my number one subreddit.

Would rather donate my time or money to FOSS like Thunder. Service models aren't the way for me.

I'll put my money where my mouth is just like last time if they give a one time option to remove ads. I don't the extra stuff and don't want another subscription.
- There is, at least on the version I'm running (beta 26). It should be present in the profile menu on the top left.

Maybe if it is better than boost's implementation. But at that price, especially on such a young platform, I'm certainly only buying one.
Sync might be in trouble if boost costs less while being on par with its previous reddit counterpart.
- What do you mean? It's 20 bucks to remove ads. It's not even a subscription.
  The subscription for ultra is something else entirely.
  
  There was an update adding a one time purchase option to remove ads. Earlier, there was only a subscription option.
- I loved Boost for reddit, it was so so good, still waiting for the lemmy version

The test of reasonableness is different for everyone.
I have no interest in cloud backup, or any other feature that incurs a cost to the dev. So why would I pay a subscription fee to "cover" those features?
If I like the app after sustained use, I might be willing to pay a one-time $8-$12 fee to remove ads/thank the dev/buy them a coffee
But I have zero interest in an ongoing subscription at this stage. There's just not enough value for me in spending that sort of money.
- I might be willing to pay a one-time $8-$12 fee to remove ads/thank the dev/buy them a coffee
  it's $20 one time purchase to remove ads
  
  That's still a bit steep, just to remove ads.

My personal limit is one time 10$, those other optons are simply too much.
- One time $10. Or like $1-2 yearly top. And that is only because I like the app. No way I would pay even that much for something else.

I'm not trying to say it's unreasonably priced, but that comparison with YouTube is not really fair. Delivering video content is an incredibly expensive service
- And YouTube actually produces content, and some of your subscription goes to the independent creators. If this subscription somehow paid for Lemmy servers that I was using then it'd be far more reasonable. One time purchase or no purchase for me

Is there not going to be a lifetime pro (one-time purchase) option?
- There is, people are knee-jerking to the beta version, which is subscription for now. Once things are out of beta, a one-time-purchase version will be available.
  
  It's already there. Got added in an update.

I went ahead and bought a year because I want to support this project. I am hoping by the time that's due to expire, there will be non-subscription options
- That's a mature approach to this, and one that I agree with. I didn't think the pricing too steep. I can agree, I don't like having subscriptions if I can avoid it. But less than $20 a year... its nothing for an app ill likely use every day (and not owned by a mega corporation)
  
  As much as I like the app, after currency conversions that's a lot, especially as a recurring subscription. For a one time fee, I'd just want to remove ads without any extra bells and whistles.

I would be OK with paying to just remove ads but the price (₱1100) is just too much for me.
- You can subscribe to Sync Ultra for a yearly price of ₱930 to save ₱378/y compared to if you pay ₱109 monthly. But at that point it's wiser to just eventually save ₱1100 to be able to remove ads.
  Or just use NextDNS to prevent the ads from getting to your phone in the first place. 😉
  
  Sadly I don't like having another subscription. And NextDNS doesn't work for me.

Jerboa has no ads. Why would i pay $17 a year for removing ads that sync puts on their app themselves? There is nothing that sync is bringing to the table that jerboa doesnt have ad/subscription free.
- Except it doesn't crash almost every time you try to load more comments.
  
  Ok replace Jerboa with Connect

Am I the only one who thinks that sync pro for reddit subscribers should have their one time purchase be honored/restored?
- Not with the overhaul required. That said, the asking price is too steep.
- Yeaaaaa I would like that but I don't see it being possible or feasible, I bought sync dev years ago, don't mind throwing another few dollars in
  
  Yeah but the one-time purchase now is hardly another few dollars... Its $99 now, which is absurd.
  Edit: I see now that there is a $20 version to remove ads. Still would be great if they honored folks who paid for reddit's syncpro, especially considering that version blocked reddit ads, and this version blocks ads inserted by the app itself.
  
  :/ had to buy sync twice. Had it for a few years and one day it was like ! hey I'm not working anymore !
  A bit frustrating but honestly sync is worth chipping some money towards.
- The devs time in rewriting and testing a whole new backend for Lemmy isn't free though.
- I got Ultra Lifetime when it launched 13 months ago, $35 as I recall. People who didn't go the "supportive" route paid $19 for that year. This rubs me up the wrong way even though I don't care about the money, it's not actual adversity or anything. Just doesn't sit well. Also paid the previous prices when the app launched many years ago
- I agree.
- Ultra Lifetime is arguable but as I understand it, it's not that easy because Google Play doesn't have a way to transfer subscriptions between apps like that.
  Pro I don't think makes sense because it was pretty cheap to begin with. Pro ended up costing me $0.00062/day ($2.50 11 years ago). Kind of makes me feel guilty to be honest.
  
  Don't feel guilty. We were early backers before Ultra was a thing and probably before costs to run Sync were high

17 a year seems reasonable if it's an app you use daily. There are costs associated with making and maintaing app.

I bought pro back in 2013 I believe. And lifetime ultra once it came out that reddit was banning third party apps as support.
I'm not gonna do.a.subscription. I'm just not.
- There's a one time purchase to remove ads.
  
  Where?

I don't know though, I feel like giving money to an app for Lemmy would kind of be like supporting the wrong person. Especially if you haven't even donated to your instance's owner yet.
- Good point... Do both!
- Or to Lemmy's developers, which makes your instance possible, which makes the third-party app possible.
- Yeah it feels a bit wild to add ads to the experience while charging 5x as much to remove them as the Reddit Synce app on a service that people are hosting on good will and at a loss, compared to Reddit being itself ad filled and a premium selling service.
  It'd be different if like some of the subscription went to the servers people use or something. But it really feels like taking from everyone and charging a pretty high price for it compared to any app, let alone a front end only one.
- Great point!

The dev of sync have to split the ads and subscription revenue with the instances. It would be fair like this. He donating 30% of the revenue to them. He is paid and he pays for the usage of the instances.
Youtube premium isn't the same. Youtube itself has huge server, storage, bandwidth cost and premium is paying for it. The cost of the app is a fraction of it.
On youtube, you have each second tons of new content. What I don't have inside the app. The content comes from the instances. The equivalent would be paying a subscription to the instances.
The creators receive a part of my subscription what isn't the case here.
With youtube premium, I have youtube music an additional service included.
In my opinion, the first point is the fairest. The dev splits the revenues with the instances. It would be nearer to the Youtube model.

Lots of comments about the subscription. I had pro for years and had no idea the dev had switched to a subscription model. Had been anticipating the release but now.... I would gladly pay again but not though a subscription no matter how good the app is. First time I see an ad on the app I'll just go back to connect.

I'm not paying a subscription and the first ad I see I'm uninstalling it.
Sync pro was my go to for reddit, but I refuse to pay for a subscription.
- Wait until the revanced team patches the ads. There's an open request for it on the GitHub, so very likely it will happen.
  
  Lucky patcher and adaway. Haven't seen one ad so far.
- I would be happy with a less intrusive one

first thing I did after opening

Too late, already did

If you want something free and open source, Jeroba works great and has no trackers
- jeroba is trash
  
  I wouldn't say trash, but Sync is superior in absolutely every way

I think the cost is prohibitively high considering 99% of Reddit users have never used Lemmy before and have no idea how it works. There is a massive opportunity to soak up all those disolutioned redditors and a low entry price to kick things off over the next 6 to 12 months might have been a key way to achieve that. As it stands the cost is massive to a lot of people who will either use alternative apps or just won't even switch to Lemmy at all. You can't even submit your own posts yet. It's not prime time ready. I truly loved Sync for Reddit and have paid for Pro twice, and shown support to LJ, but I think this pricing level is a mistake.
- Totally agreed. Encourage more lost redditors and former reddit Sync users with a very low price point. Give it some sort of marketing hype term like "Founder's Premium", a one-time payment of $8 gets you sync for Lemmy with no ads, forever. Available to early adopters until Sept 1st.
  Maybe add higher priced tiers for those who have the cash and want to essentially donate / thank the author.
  Lemmy is already strange and unknown to a lot of folks. Sync feels like coming back to sit in your old favorite comfy chair, but in a totally new house that feels very foreign. So people are going to be wary. Asking them to either subscribe or pay a huge one time premium is going to discourage folks at a critical time where they should be encouraged instead.

I'm not a sync user but I feel like the dev may have missed an option - pay what you want. PWYW feels almost like a donation.
- If I remember right PWYW works best when coupled with charity/a good cause. So if for example Sync was offered as PWYW with a percentage going to the Lemmy backend developers, that might work.
  
  If the option had been offered, I think some people would have gone for that.

I paid for ultra mainly to support the Dev. Lemmy isn't good enough for me to switch over just yet but I'll be keeping my eye on it now that Sync for Lemmy exists.

Does the subscription also partly fund the instances I subscribe to (lemmy.world, lemmy.ml, etc servers)? If so then I'm onboard
- At present, I don't think it does, which is a shame.
- This is actually a great suggestion. If e.g. 50% are going to instance owner of your choosing, I imagine more people would be willing to subscribe, perhaps at even higher price point.

Good thing there's Liftoff for Lemmy

Outrageous price for an app. It doesn't even provide the content. It's just an app to show it. We have completely free options. That is it's competition, not youtube. Such a strange thing to compare it to. Youtube provides the framework and code and hosts the videos. It isn't simply a frontend app.

I just bought a lifetime license for Sync. The customization, feature set, and options put it well above the 5 other Lemmy apps I've used. With almost a decade of consistent upgrades to Sync for Lemmy, I trust and support this developer.
I don't think I paid very much for the original version so I don't mind supporting him now but I understand that's not for everyone, so I think $20 for lifetime ad-free is very reasonable.
- 20usd? It's 15000 jpy for me.. That's like 120usd for lifetime. Hard to justify that for an app tbh.
  
  You are talking about the Ultra lifetime. Just ad free is $20 USD.
  
  120usd for lifetime. Hard to justify that for an app tbh.
  I've used Sync for Reddit since February 2015. Had I paid $120 for that time it would've been $1.25 per month. And with the amount of time I spent on reddit that would've been more than fair.
  It really depends on what you're getting out of the app. And it's tough to say how Lemmy will develop so I'm cautious to buy a subscription let alone a lifetime sub now. But it could absolutely be justifiable.

The idea of buying something when I haven't used it yet is kind of ridiculous, especially when the only option is an auto-renewing subscription service. If I could pay for a single month without having to figure out how and when I can cancel or it was a single purchase, I'd be more likely to give it a shot. Signing up for a subscription without knowing if the product is good just doesn't make sense to me
Add that to the fact that I have to pay to get the same no ads experience as many other free apps, that kinda rubs me the wrong way
- After thinking a little more, I had another frustrating realization. Some of the core tenants of the fediverse are being ad-free and respecting privacy. Sync breaks both of these, inserting ads in an ad free platform and collecting your personal data for the purpose of selling it to ad companies (explicitly stated in privacy policy).
  As much as I liked sync for Reddit, I don't think I'm going to use sync for Lemmy. The paradigm of the platform is different, but sync has not adapted
  
  I think it might be better if sync actually not offering free version at all instead of including ads, given the almost universal hate for data collection among Lemmy users.
- If I could pay for a single month without having to figure out how and when I can cancel
  You just just subscribe and then immediately cancel the subscription in the play store just like any other play store subscription service.

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