Give Freemium a Chance

Back in August, I wrote this:

The future of sustainable app development is to give away as much value as possible and empower those who receive more value to pay more for it.

And today, I put my money where my mouth is. Timer 2.0 is now available in the App Store for free.

If one of the beautiful new themes catches your eye, each theme is just 99¢. Or you can grab all 9 new themes as a bundle for just $4.99. You can also buy new alert sounds or glyphs to label your timers. Then there’s the Ultimate Bundle — for a whopping $9.99 you get all current and future sounds, themes, glyphs, and other enhancements.

$10 for a timer app? Well, no, the app is actually completely free. There is an ad, but we worked quite hard to make the ad as beautiful and non-intrusive as possible. It’s just an app icon that takes you to the App Store when tapped. Buy anything in the app and the ad goes away.

So yes, you can spend $10 in Timer, but most people won’t. I’m sure some people will complain about the price of the Ultimate Bundle, but why should I price my apps for the complainers? The $10 bundle is for people who love the app and want every single enhancement. And that’s the beauty of freemium — people who are price sensitive get to use the app for free, people who aren’t get to spend money and receive things they value in return.

My hope is that Timer does well and proves that freemium on the App Store can be so much more than manipulative free-to-play games.

david