NOTE: If you already bought TimeTune Premium in the past, this change will not affect you; you’ll keep enjoying a lifetime license and you won’t have to pay again.
Since we first published TimeTune in October 2014, the app has relied on a single purchase to remove the advertising banner and unlock Premium features.
We’ve been holding off on the subscription model for a long time, because we know it’s not a popular option.
But after careful consideration, we finally decided to adopt subscriptions instead of a single payment.
Why? 🤔
ONE-TIME PURCHASES ARE NOT SUSTAINABLE
For an app to survive on a single purchase, it needs to meet some (if not all) of these conditions:
- Having tens of thousands of downloads per day.
- New users buying the app every day.
- Showing lots of ads.
- Selling extra stuff with additional purchases.
That’s why many developers who rely on a single purchase stop developing their apps after a few months or years. The model may work for a while but in the long run it always stagnates.
It also creates a lot of tension in development. We must put continuous effort into attracting new users to the app when we should be spending that time improving the project.
CAN’T WE RELY ON ADVERTISING?
Unfortunately, advertising revenue is too unreliable 📉
Ad revenue heavily depends on seasonality and many factors we can’t control. It varies without any kind of warning or explanation.
Apart from that, the TimeTune app only shows a banner at the bottom. We chose a banner because banners are not intrusive, but they are the lowest revenue generators in mobile advertising.
The only way we could improve ad revenue (up to a point) would be showing a huge amount of full-screen ads. That may work for games, but it would get annoying in productivity apps.
ARE THERE OTHER ALTERNATIVES?
The only alternative that (maybe) could work would be making the app paid to all users and charging for big app releases.
That’s the model that Adobe and other companies used in the past. They charged for each new version of Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.
In 2021, for example, we released TimeTune 4.0. That version took a long time and effort to get developed. But everyone could get the update for free. Users who bought the app in 2014 (when the app was really cheap) now have a much more powerful tool at no extra cost.
Unfortunately, it’s not easy nor convenient to use this model in Google Play because:
- Each new version should be published as a new app (which would create confusion and hurt discoverability).
- We would be forced to maintain multiple versions of the app (which would require even more resources and development time).
OUR GOAL WITH SUBSCRIPTIONS
After taking a look inwards and examining the subscription services and apps we pay for in TimeTune (e.g. graphics provider, translation platform, web hosting, domains, app store optimization, cloud storage), we realized something:
Although we don’t like to pay for subscriptions either, we pay for some of them with pleasure.
Why? Because some apps and services are so useful that they are worth every penny.
And that’s our goal with subscriptions. We want you to feel confident you are paying for something that is worth it, useful and that is continuously improving ✨
Apart from that, having a reliable revenue stream will allow us to dedicate more resources to the project. In the end, that’s the only way TimeTune can grow and improve.
HURRY UP! 📣
We don’t have a specific date for the switch to subscriptions yet. It will be soon, but until the date arrives we’re offering a last chance to purchase a lifetime license with a one-time payment at the current price.
So if you were thinking about purchasing TimeTune Premium, hurry up before it’s too late!
We hope you understand why this change is necessary. If you have any questions, you can leave a comment in this article or contact us on our social media channels:
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