I installed Sync to try it out, and noticed the subscription model for no ads, and for basic features like push notifications and exporting a list of your subscribed communities. $2/month or $100 for a “lifetime” subscription. Immediately uninstalled it, yes it has a beautiful interface but I’ve never been fond of subscription-based apps, especially for FOSS services. A low one-time fee would be acceptable to me, like the $4 fee for Toot! for Mastodon.
The silly thing to me about the subscription is, they say it’s to “cover the monthly running costs”. What running costs do they incur if Lemmy is free and open? I’m genuinely curious, if anyone knows please tell me.
My best guess would be the development cost. I guess they created the app as a business, not for/by the community.
I don’t blame them, but I also won’t support them. I’ll just keep supporting lemmy/jerboa instead. I don’t have absolutely anything against sync, but I generally don’t like supporting that business model and trust open source a little more.
The app itself uses cloud services and apis. Those cost money. Lemmy and lemmy instances cost money to run as well, and it is struggling to stay afloat with donations according to a post I read from the lemmy.world admins.
That being said, I am sure syncs monetization is setup in a way to at least make the creator a few bucks on top of paying for the services. Also, the ultimate tier on sync that is like 100 20 dollars a year basically adds access to some “advanced apis” providing translations and site previews.
Edit: 20 dollars a year not 100 for sync ultra. Also, it’s 20 dollars to remove ads forever. I think there was talk about a lifetime sync ultra for 100 dollars at some point and I got confused.
The app is technically free, but yes it is made by a single dev and it is/was his income, so it’s ad-supported.
The development is still ongoing and so some things aren’t finalized, but there is a one time payment option that will be available (something like $10) to just remove ads.
The Ultra tier which has the subscription cost (and much higher one time cost at $99) is what incurs monthly fees in this case, mostly for cloud storage for things like settings and I believe an OCR and translation API.
Ultimately, use whatever makes you happy and aligns with your principles, but there are at least a few good reasons why it is how it is.
I installed Sync to try it out, and noticed the subscription model for no ads, and for basic features like push notifications and exporting a list of your subscribed communities. $2/month or $100 for a “lifetime” subscription. Immediately uninstalled it, yes it has a beautiful interface but I’ve never been fond of subscription-based apps, especially for FOSS services. A low one-time fee would be acceptable to me, like the $4 fee for Toot! for Mastodon.
The silly thing to me about the subscription is, they say it’s to “cover the monthly running costs”. What running costs do they incur if Lemmy is free and open? I’m genuinely curious, if anyone knows please tell me.
My best guess would be the development cost. I guess they created the app as a business, not for/by the community.
I don’t blame them, but I also won’t support them. I’ll just keep supporting lemmy/jerboa instead. I don’t have absolutely anything against sync, but I generally don’t like supporting that business model and trust open source a little more.
I didn’t know sync was that expensive though lol
The app itself uses cloud services and apis. Those cost money. Lemmy and lemmy instances cost money to run as well, and it is struggling to stay afloat with donations according to a post I read from the lemmy.world admins.
That being said, I am sure syncs monetization is setup in a way to at least make the creator a few bucks on top of paying for the services. Also, the ultimate tier on sync that is like
10020 dollars a year basically adds access to some “advanced apis” providing translations and site previews.Edit: 20 dollars a year not 100 for sync ultra. Also, it’s 20 dollars to remove ads forever. I think there was talk about a lifetime sync ultra for 100 dollars at some point and I got confused.
I believe you are confusing the lifetime price with the yearly one.
Thanks for the correction. You are right. I think I got confused from another thread about sync. I looked it up and fixed it.
FYI There’s a 22€ (prolly 20$) lifetime purchase for “pro” which will cover most nice features as well.
$20 fee is specifically to remove ads, pro is a subscription or $100 fee
Does that get rid of ads?
Yes it does :)
Yes
A few points to make and answer:
The app is technically free, but yes it is made by a single dev and it is/was his income, so it’s ad-supported.
The development is still ongoing and so some things aren’t finalized, but there is a one time payment option that will be available (something like $10) to just remove ads.
The Ultra tier which has the subscription cost (and much higher one time cost at $99) is what incurs monthly fees in this case, mostly for cloud storage for things like settings and I believe an OCR and translation API.
Ultimately, use whatever makes you happy and aligns with your principles, but there are at least a few good reasons why it is how it is.
Bold of them to assume they’ll even still be maintaining this app in 4.16 years