- Why have you chosen to make users opt out of a subscription when the free trial ends, rather than letting them opt in?
- Why is the annual payment option pushed so hard, in favour of the monthly payment option?
I'm reiterating this because promoting an opt-in, monthly payment model (thus giving more opportunities for any unintentional ongoing payments to be noticed by the payer) seems to me to be the kindest approach to subscriptions for users with ADHD, and a model that would be most empathetic to their condition.
We're actually working on several different sign-ups flows at the moment including opt-in post free trial, longer free trial, web sign-up and one-off purchase vs subscription. It is not our intention to push annual significantly over monthly - we wanted to give a significant discount to yearly subscribers but perhaps the difference between the two is too large. The previously mentioned issue with scrolling is due to to a bug with small screen sizes on Android which we're working to fix.
As you have a number of people with ADHD working on your app, I would be curious to know if any of them raised concerns about these specifics of your subscription model, during planning and development of the app?
Constructive criticism is useful but there are many here breaking the “take the most charitable possible interpretation” rule of HN.
So please do listen to this feedback and please do act on it, but don’t take the personal attacks and name calling in some of the comments here too seriously.
You are being polite and gracious in your responses!
Probably not, because your users are people who will forget to cancel and then forget to tell you about that.
> Some people also like having the subscription because it is a pay per use model
What does this mean? It sounds like users are complaining that if they download the app and don't use it it charges them $100.
> Would love any suggestions on how to improve this.
Howabout when the free trial ends, at that time the user has to approve a charge before continuing to use the app.
At the very least, bill monthly and make the trial not auto-renew at full price. And, since the target market is people with executive dysfunction, I'd love to see your team go the extra mile and default to pushing notifications the week before and day before a user's subscription renews, giving them ample time to cancel if it doesn't fit their budget this month.
Now I have a bunch of automations set up that ping me and say “you’ve got this subscription… are you actually using it?”
It took me a fair bit of effort to engineer but it’s saved me a whole load of money.
> A lot of other apps follow a similar model, we allow people to cancel anytime and have refunded everyone that has forgotten to cancel.
Many ADHD people also forget or are too embarrassed to do that.
Life hack that works for some: at least on iOS and in my region one can subscribe, immediately unsubscribe and continue to use a product during its free trial period without risking getting trapped.
Go ahead and collect the payment info before giving them access to the free trial, let them use the thing for free for X days, then when the free trial is up, block their access and ask them whether or not they'd like to pay for the subscription. It could literally just be one big button that says "accept." Then ideally, ask them again before each recurring charge.
Some people here are proposing an absurd amount of friction - one highly upvoted post suggested that the app should require users to re-enter their payment info before every charge. What if this app is great? What if I actually want to give them my money? Making me type in my credit card info repeatedly is nightmarishly bad UX.
Reducing friction is a good thing, even here. The important bit is just getting the user's clear consent by making it opt-in instead of opt-out.
First, the app stores are pretty prescriptive about how you handle introductory trials on subscriptions (especially Apple), which means you are usually stuck with "start trial + opt-out" as the only viable model if you're billing through the App Store.
Second, behavioral/commitment theory often shows that for apps or really any behavior change that requires some effort, a longer time commitment/investment gets people to actually invest the effort they need to actually get value out of the product. If you let people pay for a month, they won't actually put in any effort and then at the end of the month they'll be like "I'm not getting any value here" and they'll just cancel. They won't put in the effort to build the habits. So most wellness apps/products (from meditation/fitness apps to gym memberships) end up with some sort of free trial period, followed by an annual commitment (and if there's a monthly option, it's at a steep hike from the annual one).
Finally, when you're early on in the life of your startup, you're mostly trying to get to product-market fit and see whether people are willing to use / pay for what you've built. You just choose a pricing period/plan that makes sense, focus on the product, then when you get the product where you want, you go back and experiment with finding the ideal pricing plan for you and your users.
That said, it's clear in this case that this model may not be great for the target audience (in fact, even for neurotypicals, canceling subscriptions and such is still a challenge to manage). And obviously the app creators could have put more thought into it.
We ended up with an opt-out free trial plan as per Apple's rules on iOS, with a monthly plan where the yearly plan is a 25% discount if you choose it, and several reminders before the trial converts to paid. We also allow users to do a standard opt-in plan if they're not signing up through iOS (ie only need to put credit card after trial expires). We offer refunds where we can for people who got billed but didn't intend to, but Apple has to process those refunds too.
I know many providers do not dare to give up on opt-out trials, since it brings them money. It is scary to trust your future clients - maybe they won't buy after all? But if you don't trust them, why would they trust you?
Your current model of opt-in subscriptions makes it clear you're looking for the best model for your bank account
There's no job shortage, so don't make excuses for them
I don't want them to do it for free. I want then to not make a predatory product. I want them to make their money through a more honest business
And if they can't do that, I want them to do nothing
(As for 'quoting you', it's called paraphrasing. I'd have hoped it was rather obvious I was not suggesting that you said those exact words.)
And thats why I don't want you quoting me or paraphrasing me. You're putting words into my mouth that I never said or even implied. And once again, I find it extremely insulting.
I'm going to make it clear so you don't do it again. I want then to make an honest business model and to stop this predatory one
I ... they're the same picture ...
Usually the word free in "free and open source" is libre, as in freedom, not free beer.
You can do good work for "your community" without putting profits first
Linux is free and somehow that has gotten decades of support.
It's shocking that the myth of Linux being created and maintained by a bunch of dedicated outlaw nerds, typing away in their basements for free in their spare time (while presumably also working 50 hour weeks at their tech jobs, to pay the bills?) persists to any degree whatsoever in 2021.
Countless huge companies rely upon Linux in major ways, and therefore fund its development and maintenance.
Sources:
https://www.linuxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020FOSSC...
https://linux.slashdot.org/story/10/01/21/230201/75-of-linux...
We're working on extending the free trial / moving to a freemium model.
Please. You aren't spaceX "working on" your next engine, or AMD "working on" the next processor architecture. All you have to do to end the unethical behavior is flip a few bits in a database. Don't pretend it's some kind of grand technical challenge.
You're luring in people who are trying to improve their mental health and tricking them out of their money. The product isn't even technically innovative. No idea why YC is compromising its brand like this.
I would expect that it's more financially lucrative to have a happy userbase, which translates to a good reputation and thus larger user-base, rather rip-off a few who will eventually give bad reviews and create a bad reputation. To me the current pricing model sounds more like a bad decision rather than anything else. But in any case, if I didn't like it I would just not use it, rather than throwing accusations around on malicious intentions without having any evidence.
PS: I am not even remotely affiliated with the creators of that app
Deep down do you believe that they would have changed if not for this public outcry?
Make it free for 30 days THEN throw up a pay screen. You're a funded startup what's the issue here?
I'd ordinarily be willing to believe that, but I can't stop thinking: this is a service with a very specific target market - people with a condition whose defining characteristic is being vulnerable to be exploited through the exact payment model that Inflow has chosen. To accept this as a honest mistake is to believe that they never thought about their target audience at all, which is inconsistent with their claims of having people with deep understanding of the condition on board.
> But in any case, if I didn't like it I would just not use it, rather than throwing accusations around on malicious intentions without having any evidence.
Startups are getting way too much mileage from Hanlon's razor.
What I mainly question is the demand culture, that a lot of users have towards developers - even towards people voluntarily put their time to do opensource work.